The SLP ceramic coating that is. Is it as good as Jet-Hot? Anybody have any first hand experience with SLP coated headers?

 

As far as I know nothing is as good as JET-HOT. I'm pretty sure they use micronized silver, and silver is the best conductor of heat. That's why alot of computer people tend to use silver for their high end cooling solutions. I'm a poor highskool kid, so my headers prolly won't be coated

 

i feel ur pain

 

If the normal SLP headers are stainless steel, why get them coated at all?

 

There are two reasons. The first being that they will still rust a little bit. We're not talking about rusting out, but you will get some very light surface rust that you will have to remove every once in a while. (The reason for this is that they don't use a really good grade stainless steel that absolutely doesn't rust, they use a different grade that is pretty good, but not quite perfect. They would be really exspensive if they were made of a really good grade of stainless steel.) The second point being that it helps lower under hood temps by reflecting the heat off the inside of the headers, and not transfering it to the engine compartment through the outside of the headers. (Sometimes headers get glowing red hot... you can just imagine how hot that is.) The coated headers will keep the engine compartment temps much lower, probably more around what the stock manifolds did, but maybe even less. (It also keeps your plugs and plug wires much cooler which is very important, you don't want to burn off your wires and ruin your plugs.) The coating also helps a little bit with flow. It smooths out the inside of the header and lowers the disruptions of the flow of the gases caused by any imperfections in the header. (Not exactly a big deal though, because it's only worth 1-3 hp or so.)

If you have any more questions on the stainless steel, there was a post a week or two ago about that, or I'm sure somebody here with a background in metalurgy (sp?) will be here soon that can explain this better. Hoped this helped. If you need anything else you can email me. (Click on email button for addy)

-Kyle