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I think it all depends on your situation. I just bought some ARH and had them Jet-Hot coated for my Camaro. I wanted the chrome look and I didn't want them turning blue after a while. An uncoated header and a coated header look totally different after a year.
I am also supercharged and cammed at over 700HP, so I thought it was necessary. I intend to take my car to shows and all and I'm spending a ton of money in the engine compartment so I wanted to make sure they looked good. And I figured it couldn't hurt with it being supercharged and cammed.
Did you coat all the pipes, or just the headers themselves?
Did you coat all the pipes, or just the headers themselves?
That is a good question. Once it got time to actually install the cat-back I thought I should coat the cat-back but I am on a schedule of mods before our GM Nationals @ Carlisle Camaro show and I wanted to make sure it was done in time so I moved on without coating the cat-back.
Yes...though the degree (sorry, couldn't help it) to which it will help is unclear. Cats dig heat, so how could more heat to the now-remote cats hurt their heat-starved performance?
I suppose I will find out soon. I just got my headers back. Coated the headers, x-pipe and outside of the cats. I figured one way to find out.
Coating the outside of the cats...that could prove to be a terrific idea. On a stock exhaust with the cats mounted right at the manifolds, coated cats might actually run too hot, but with coated LT headers...coated cats may just be the "hot" ticket!
My friend here on the forum has coated the entire system (only the outside on the cats) on his 07 H/C Coupe, his 07 Z06, and 2 of his other cars with no ill effects and he swears by the process.
I have had uncoated headers with zero troubles for 6 years now. My friend had coated headers and after about 5 years his coating flaked off and they looked terrible.
I've also seen coated headers flake. If you coat the inside of the headers, flaking would clog your cats and you'll never know why you're losing power.