Reply to "ceramic coating headers @ home"

Wow, I wish you lived closer to Houston, we make good use of your kiln :^)

In regard to the earlier post of the spray from the can coating, I was helping an owner of a GT5s perform his initial start up on his engine one evening after dark. I'll add that according to the neighbors, it was too late that evening. Regardless, he had a flat tappet cam so we were prepared to break-in the new cam by keeping the revs above 2500RPM for 25 minutes or so.

We had one guy with a hose to spray cool water on the radiator and my job was to search out leaks in the engine bay. Shortly after the engine lit, the headers started turning red, they then went yellow and finally white hot. I had never seen anything like it in real life. Youtube, yes. But never in person. We didn't want to shut down the engine at risk of the cam; so, we pressed on. It was incredible, the entire header was white hot; not just a few inches off the head. Later he figured out that he had plumbed the air pump incorrectly into the header. I'm getting to my point.

At first, there was a lot of smoke accompanying the glowing headers, and I remarked that whatever initially coated those headers is long gone. I could not see how anything could have survived that experience. I was wrong, he informs me that the spray can high temp paint bonded beautifully to the header. Now you know how to make your own kiln.