Has anyone wrapped their header?

 

I will be once I get one...

Going to be wrapping the intake manifold with some heat-reflective stuff once I get a chance to pull it off

 

Just planning...lol

 

I didn't wrap mine, although I did have to remove the upper & lower heat shield to fit it in.

 

i have my headers ceramic coated headers. it was worth it because you can't use the heat shield and it emits less heat. i would wrap it as another option. it should be just as good

 

wrapping can be good and bad

 

Tell me about the bad because I wrapped the headers I had before without spraying anything and had them for about 10k miles and no rust.But my worries are if they could crack?

 

bumppppp!!

 

I have experience with wrapped pipes, specifically my DC ceramic coated header when I was NA on my 00' Si.

The header was on for around 12,000 miles over the course of 4 years (I don't drive it much). It greatly reduced underhood temps. So good you could touch the header with the car running.

When I removed it to install my turbo, it looked as good as the day I installed it, despite the long list of haters and nay sayers telling me the wrap would rot out the header. So why didn't it? The car was garaged most of the time and not driven in the winter. This is the main reason it looked so good. I also prepped the header and wrapped it the right way.

I strongly believe that prep and execution of the wrap will determine how long the header and wrap will last.

Before the wrap is applied, paint the header with a high heat ceramic paint, even if it's already ceramic coated. If it's a stainless header, you probably don't need to. The wrap must be applied evenly and tightly with no gaps. After wrapping, you MUST coat the wrap several times with a high heat paint. This will set the wrap and help protect it from oil, water, etc. That last step is very important.

If the car sits outside all the time and is subjected to a lot of rain, humidity, winter driving, etc, it will accelerate degradation of the pipe. Do a crappy job wrapping it and it may lead to faster rot as well.

On my Greddy kit, I wrapped the elbow and the downpipe. I would have wrapped the manifold, but it was just too tight. My main concern was the elbow being right next to the AC compressor and the downpipe is right next to the charge pipe and oil drain line.

 

I have the street header and wrapped it. As with the above post, I sprayed it with high temp paint, wrapped it, and then sealed it with the same paint. Because I live in PA we are very wet / salty, and this is my daily driver. That being said there is very mild corrosion of the paint (both on the wrap and on the 1-2 spots where the wrap missed) but because the header is ss there is no worry. I may pull it out in a few years to re paint / re wrap, but as far as the corrosion is concerned im not worried.

also, the wrap has reduced my underhood temps to lower than when the heat shield was there.

 

yeah i was going to say about the rusting.

 

Do you like this headers? I'm looking to buy this one..

 

What header

 

I was thinking about getting my header coated but I dunno where to send it.