Quote:
Originally Posted by dank24
alright, so myself, and about 70% of the people on ephatch have/had the same problem. Plus even on older civic's people have the same problem with the dc ceramic headers. Plus if someone wraps the ceramic headers they will rust even faster.
I never had problems with the comptech header, the greddy header on my ek, and I just ran the ebay special on my eg
I am not talking down, just telling my experience and others experiences with dc
|
Your headers with cracked coatings were badly made. Another factor could be that they were subject to impact during shipping or installation. Ceramic is a coating made of metallic oxides, and those coatings are brittle. Any impact will crack them. Once cracked, expansion and contraction of the substrate (steel headers) will continue to shrug off the ceramic as cracks radiate away from the original crack.
P.s. One of the early producers of ceramic-coated headers was a company called something like "JetKote" or "JetCoat". From the name, I am guessing that they used a thermal spray process called Plasma Spray. Plasma systems generate temperatures above 30,000 degrees F. It takes such high temperatures to melt metallic oxides and propel them with enough velocity to evenly coat various substrates. The average jet engine has around 4000 parts, and about 3000 of them are made with Plasma applied coatings, and many of those are ceramic for insulation against high temperatures. When a jet engine is due for a rebuild, the coated parts are stripped, re-coated, and re-used.
The only advantage in performance of ceramic coatings vs. aluminizing or SS is that ceramic insulates heat to keep it INSIDE the header system, instead of radiating outward to heat up the engine bay.