Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Custom Corner Coating header pipes

There is some spare change left from fixing my bike from the last geezer caused crash. So, because my header pipes never blued to that nice Triumph blue and started rusting within a few months, I am thinking about having them ceramic or powder coated. The silencer part is just fine. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? I really don't want to reward Triumph for selling me a bike with heads that turned out this way by buying another set.

Ted

Ceramic for the headers or BBQ black spray bomb.

I want to ceramic coat mine with the chrome or stainless colored stuff

ceramic coat is the best way, but the stuff is susceptible to scratching easy , should not be too bad on the headers though, pipes gets harry sometimes. Other way is high engine heat ceramic you can buy in a can, but you really need to rough them up quite a bit prime them then bake them in the oven for a while, stuff is about 10 bucks a can or so, either way you will get the satin black finish, BBQ black has worked for me on pipes etc in the past, upside is if you get a scratch or something its pretty easy to touch it up, also you can get a less dull black in it, but prepping the heads then a zinc type primer (yellow i believe) sand then paint is key.

PS Powder coating will not work, can't handle that heat.

For me the rattle can bbq paint just wouldn't work because I'm a clean bike freak and like getting the fried bugs off my headers. Ceramic would be much more durable.

I found a website purporting to have a product that might be what you're looking for. It's called Jet Hot and their site shows a variety of colors in several heat ranges. They claim to have a chrome finish that withstands 1750 F. If true that's more than enough to handle exhaust temperatures from these two cylinder engines. As to the durability, well, that is an unknown. As the saying goes, "Your results may vary".

Jet Hot is a company pretty well known for ceramic coating headers, I haven't heard anything negative about them

I had the headers on my Bonneville ceramic coated a couple of years ago. As has been stated it does scratch a bit and mine developed a kind of brown undertone (original color is black) after being run in rainy weather. Not sure what happened but they still look good.
PS Bonneville does not have the heat shield like the America so the part you see endures more heat than the America would.
Bottom line is I would do it again... the bonnie pipes were blued as far as the bend toward the back of the bike before coating.

At one point I got an estimate from JetHot to do my short specialty spares. I think it was about $115 plus shipping. Not super expensive. That was several years ago though. They're all about customer service. Sent me a whole packet of information and a video.

Thanks for the input. I'll probably give it a shot this winter. Ceramic coating them can't make em look any worse and the price is cheaper than replacing them.

Ted

This company does ceramic coating on headers. Follow the link to Pipe Tattooing. I haven't tried it yet myself, but it looks kinda neat.
http://www.wolfeblasting.com/html/WOLFESPERFORMANCECOATINGS.html