I agree with Larry on almost all points, except the advice not to coat
old headers. My car came to me with a set of original LAT headers, so
they were both old, and coated with surface rust. Plus, the car was
sagging on the front suspension, and the bottom header tubes on both
sides had kissed curbs and other obstructions, and were almost flattened
on the bottom.
I cut the flattened parts out of the tubes and replaced them with
sections I cut out of new, same size tubing before coating. I was blown
away by the thickness of the material in these original pipes. I had no
problem fusion gas welding the pieces in there.
The caveat is that, as Larry says, the coating will not hide the pitted
surface. None-the-less, I still have a good solid set of original
headers with a good coating of ceramic to protect them well into the
future.
I would drill some holes in my headers to see how much material is
there, however rusty they appear to be, before I tossed 'em. You might
be surprised!
Dave
Behalf Of Larry Paulick
Sent: November 5, 2004 11:22 AM
To: Jim Sencindiver
Cc: FunbeamChuck; Frank Marrone; tigers@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: Re: Dr. Gas
"I would not fool with old headers, as you don't know the condition, and
why waste your time and money on parts that may be wearing out. Coating
will not take care of thin rusted headers."
Larry
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