Which one is better?
Stainless Steel or Ceramic?
Thinking about which one to get, and need some opinions!

 

ceramic. holds the heat IN the piping and sends it out the exhaust

 

I would say stainless steel covered with ceramic!! haha

Ceramic will retain heat in the pipes where it belongs... Stainless will be more show worthy... My 2 cents!!

Marko!!

 

Stainless steel is the way to go.

 

there isnt "ceramic" headers. thatd mean it was clay, which isnt possible. but ceramic coated headers are real

 

I've heard stories of ceramic headers cracking...... anyone can confirm that?

 

if anyone believes that headers are made from ceramic itself, they shouldn't be driving a car.

i think you're reading a little too far into this........once again

 

The ceramic coating on the header can crack from accidental impact. The pipes and flanges do not crack.

 

the ceramic just coats the steel in the inside to help retain the heat through the exhaust and send it out the tailpipe. stainless is your best bet for realiability and not cracking if the welds are decent. stainless will last longer.

 

thanks!!! great help you guys...........
but I am still debating upon which one to get....

 

If you just want a header for your street car go with stainless, it will last you way longer. If your racing a lot and concerned about under hood temps then go with ceramic, it probably won't last as long but it's more functional than SS.

 

Neither one will wear out in a lifetime of normal use. Unless you plan on putting hundreds of thousands of race only miles on your car (which I doubt) The ceramic coating will help keep the heat of the exhaust from staying under the hood where it doesn't do anything good. The stainless will look nice for a while, until continuous heat cycling turns it bluish-gold. Appearance should be way down on your list as the header exits from the rear of the L15 and can't be seen unless you work at it. If you look at the photos of all the various headers you will find that they are all very similar to one another in design. The only real exceptions are the DC (which can be hard to find)and the Weapon R race (which has had quality control issues)

 

In every experience I've had with exhausts and coatings, ceramic is junk.

Every single exhaust part I've had with a ceramic coating has cracked.

I'm sure that there are some people out there with good experiences, but the ceramic coated headers I had on my firebird.... Cracked.

Now, the dump pipe on my turbo kit.... Cracked.

I donno, maybe I'm just unlucky with these, but I'm a little bitter about ceramic coatings.

 

I'm afraid that more often than not "ceramic" is probably not really all its supposed to be. My Cadillac has a ceramic coated exhaust manifold and it weighs two freaking tons! Of course if you install the centrifugal advance weights backwards in the distributor (thereby causing the engine to run extremely timing retarded) you'll burn even that ceramic coating right off! Don't ask me how I know this BTW Just be aware that no coating is 100% effective, there are good examples and bad....

 

im willing the bet that the ceramics that break, are the ones that arent stainless steel ceramic. Exhaust gas contains h2o and will rust the header from the inside creating a weak point therefor cracking. Alot of cheaper headers can get away with this is because you dont see the metal because its coated. so you cant tell if its just mild steal or SS.

If you get ceramic make sure its also SS as well

The best coating you can get is swain lightning coating :thumbup:

 

i always figured the ceramic coating hides the bad welding job they did on the mild steel headers so they fill it up with brittle ceramic which makes it crack anyway. im not sure why you would put a ceramic coating on a SS header but you can if you want. i would just stick with a reliable company who makes a SS header and call it a day.

 

for the reasons above... they keep heat in. better for the engine bay, and the hotter the gas, the faster it flows. SS is not impossible to rust so another coating just makes it that much more solid

 

only cheap stainless steels rust. use a 300 series ss and everything will work out.

 

hmm... thanks for all the good opinions.........

 

my point exactly