Hey i was wondering if there was any difference between getting Stainless Steel vs Ceramic Coated Headers.. What would be better if there was a difference?

 

ceramic headers are meant to insulate more exhaust heat for better exhaust flow. i believe the principle is called scavenging (can't remember offhand). with cars such as ours though i would imagine the gains are negligible for such a thin ceramic coat.

the one nice thing about them though is that they won't discolor like plain stainless steel, so it will just look a little nicer when you look in the engine bay.

 

I like the rainbowy look...that sounded :ghey:

 

As was said ceramic coated will keep the heat inside the header a little better than SS but SS will never rust. SS also has a polished finished. Both do change colors with heat.

 

interesting, i thought they were ceramic coated SS. are they just raw steel?

 

why yes, yes it did

 

SS headers tend to crack at the welding seams especially if poor fitment put lots of stress onto the joints. On the other hand, ceramic coated headers are made from mild steel, which is comparatively malleable, and is more forgiving to stress related cracks.

 

Yes this is true. Some companies like Melrose who makes headers for Corvettes will not use SS b/c of the issue with welds cracking b/c the material is SS.

Satin, yes CC headers are generally mild steel unless someone CCed their SS header.

 

In addition, exhaust leaks are very easy to spot because you will see black carbon soot deposited at whereever the crack or hole is.

 

hah, i always though the diff between SS and ceramic was that ceramic looks purty >.>

 

I've seen a fair share of ceramic coated headers with cracks at the welds... mainly DC on civics/integras...

 

My previous car was a heavily-modded Integra GS. At the very beginning, I installed the full HKS exhaust-manifold back exhaust kit. Then later I switched to a Remus axle back muffler but still keeping all the large diameter HKS pipings, just because the Remus sounded real good.

Later I installed a very high quality (=expensive) Japanese-made stainless steel RS*R header. But since it was made for Civic's, the cat (or bypass pipe) had to be lengthened by cutting and welding an extra length of pipe. For this reason, the cat (or bypass pipe) was crooked and was putting stress onto the header - I only knew about this after the mechanics told me during installing the second set of header (DC-sports).

As a result, the SS RS*R header lasted for 1.5 year, and cracks were found on the weld joints on 2 cylinder-pipes. Then I switched to DC-sports ceramic coating header which lasted for more than 4 years (I traded in the car) without a single crack. The cat (or bypass pipe) was still crooked, because the mechanic told me the mild steel CC header was very forgiving at slight misaligments unlike SS headers, which seemed very true in my case. In fact, my only friends with Civic's and Integra's that had weld joints cracks with their DC headers were caused by the bottom of the headers hitting something, because the cars were too low and bottoming out.

This is real experience, not BS talks heard from friends of friends. However, this is SS vs CC headers in general. The hgh quality (=$$$) Comptech SS seems to have perfect fit and shouldn't be in any way stressed, and I don't know if DC still make CC headers the same high quality as when 10-15 years back.