Thread: Exhaust to Stainless or not

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You can probably do ss as cheap as ceramic coating, and you can still weld/repair/modify it at any time

Plus, stainless is truly forever. I just polished up the 20+ year old mufflers from Stainless Specialities on my 27 and they look like new, inside and out. Spreading out the cost over many years, stainless becomes a real bargain. It will never need any work again, unless you want to bring back the shine at some point.

Don

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

You can probably do ss as cheap as ceramic coating, and you can still weld/repair/modify it at any time

Jerry's exactly correct. It's going to cost you $500 to $600 to ceramic coat a full mild steel system, with headers. The cost of mild steel plus ceramic is close to the same price as SS.

One thing not discussed is heat radiation. I drove my roadster for 7,000 miles "in bare steel" before I took it apart for paint. While the car was apart I had the entire exhaust and headers ceramic coated in satin black (at EMBEE). It is amazing how much cooler the exhaust system runs after it was coated. I was concerned about the heat because I run smooth hood sides and did not want to be blistering the new paint.

When building the system make sure you design it to have parts that are "no longer" than five feet. I spoke with several ceramic coaters before I built the system and that seemed like thats the maximum oven size for most ceramic coating companies. Also, I used stainless steel V-Band clamps to connect the mufflers, and they work great. The hardest (most time consuming part) of building the whole system was building the hangers.