so what about getting the coating and still using heat wrap on top of that? has anyone ever tried that? with the way my new setup is going together my down pipe is going pretty close to the passenger side sparkplugs and would like more protection for my wires and plugs

 

I had my headers coated with sprayed aluminium, in a N/A application about twenty years ago, and then wrapped and painted them with high temp paint. It lasted about ten years before i wraped and painted them agian. They still look great and the headers have never rusted, but the car is never driven in the rain so that is no surprise. The heat and noise reduction is significant. No problems yet.

 

what kind of bbq paint is best? Ive always heard about bbq paint?

 

I am not a big fan of header wrap, BUT after melting one of my Moroso Ultra 40 wires (with heat sleeves) I ended up wrapping the area were I was havening problems with the heat. Well...let me tell you A HUGE difference. This was on a kit that was ceramic coated. So my opinion is...if you have a heat problem. The header wrap works the best! Makes your nice ceramic coated headers look like shit...But works.

 

Dont wrap, I had a thick steam pipe turbo header and wraped a 4 inch section to protect the alternator. It cracked right at the point it was wrapped. The metal there was all brittle and flakey. It does something to the metal. I cut this brittle section out and put a new section in and the manifold is fine after many years of use, unwrapped.

 

I just wrapped an old PTK kit and I'm happy with the way it's turned out, visually. The PTK kit was originally coated with Jet-Hot black, but was rusty as hell and looked terrible.

Previously, the upper portion of the downpipe (from turbine outlet to firewall) was wrapped and was that way for approximately 5 yrs. Not only was the metal just fine, but it was the only part where the Jet-Hot still looked decent.