If you live locally to our shop, please feel free to contact us at 727-233-1195 to discuss your performance coating needs. For those customers who do not live locally to the shop, if you are purchasing headers, cylinder heads, intake manifolds or other performance parts from us, we would love to coat your products for you before they ship to your door. Ninety-nine percent of the headers we sell are actually coated in-house! If you did not purchase your parts from us, but still want them coated, we can do that, too.

Our standard turnaround time for all coatings is two to three days. Technical information and pricing for our various coatings are listed below. If you don’t see what you are looking for, please call us and we will let you know what we can do.

Exhaust Coatings

The two primary reasons for coating exhaust parts are to prevent rust and ugly tarnishing of the metal and also to reduce the under hood temperature and keep the heat in the exhaust pipes so that heat will be dispersed through the tailpipe. Our 2000 degree Ceramic Coatings will keep your exhaust headers from turning into ugly burnt looking multi-colors. The coatings come in four colors: midnight blue, black satin, titanium, and cherry red.

Our 2000 degree Ceramic Coatings are capable of reducing the temperature by well over 100 degrees (measured just 1” away from the header surface in running tests of low and high RPM). This significantly reduces the under hood temperatures of the car, which also reduces the wear on surrounding items (like plastics, hoses, etc). Lower under hood temperatures results in cooler intake air temperatures, which means more horsepower. The coating also improves exhaust scavenging of the cylinders, making more power as well. Coating any header (Stainless Steel or otherwise) is highly effective.

We do not use chrome coatings because their temperature tolerance is much lower at 1300 degrees. The chrome coatings typically cannot handle the high temperatures and the coatings end up turning into a rainbow of colors the first time the engine is fired. We do not use such a coating for these reasons. Our 2000 degree Ceramic Coatings are color stable throughout the life of the header. Color stable means that a header coated with black satin will always be black (it won’t change to white, blue, the color of the rainbow, etc).

We also provide an unheard of guarantee for our customers regarding our 2000 degree Ceramic Coatings. If you buy the headers from us and we coat them for you, you are protected by a lifetime of surface protection. We also protect the customer with a policy of fitment issues. If the header manufacturer requires you to send your headers back for adjustment or replacement, we will coat the new set free of charge. This policy does not extend to custom built headers.

The cost of the 2000 degree Ceramic Coating on “shorty” headers is typically $199.99. Long tube headers typically will cost $259.99. Please note there is a $40 additional charge for headers coated with cherry red. Look for occasional specials on coated headers for price breaks.

Cylinder Head Coatings

Combustion chambers, valve faces and oil valley areas are all critical to making horsepower and longevity. We coat the combustion chambers and valve faces with a thermal barrier ceramic coating for several reasons. The thermal barrier coating prevents the combustion heat from seeping through the chamber and into the oil / water passages. This results in reduced oil & water temperatures under hard driving. We often hear of a solid 10 degree drop in temperature from our customers.

Another reason for coating the chambers and valve faces is to prevent detonation. The coating has the ability to spread the heat over the surface instead of concentrating the heat in one spot. By spreading the heat over the entire chamber surface, it stops the buildup of “hot spots,” which are the source of detonation. Depending on your setup, this can allow you to run more boost or more compression, because of the detonation reduction. We have run over 12.0:1 compression on our coated heads on LS1 powered cars (GTO, Camaro, etc..) on PUMP GAS without detonation. We normally advise 11.0-11.6:1 compression on LS powered cars seeking naturally aspirated power without detonation risk.

Another benefit of the coating is that the coated valve face prevents heat from traveling up the backside and the stem. This allows for cooler incoming air on the intake side and longer lifespan for exhaust valves as they run cooler. Coating the oil valley area with our thermally lubricated thermal dispersant allows the oil to drain back more quickly (as the coating is slippery) and allows the oil to pick up the heat from the head more easily and dissipate it faster. This is especially important for engines that tend to trap the oil up top and not drain back fast enough. Road racing and even drag racing cars can benefit from this coating.

The typical price for coating a chamber and 2 valve faces together is $20 per chamber and 2 valve face. Therefore, 8 chambers and 16 valve faces would typically run you $160. Our Stage 3 cylinder heads come with coated chambers and valve faces as part of the cost.

Piston Coatings

We use the same coating on piston tops that we use on combustion chambers. All of the benefits the coated combustion chamber enjoys are applied to the coated piston top. By coating both the chamber and piston top you create a single chamber where the heat is retained, and used in full to press down on the piston top instead of soaking through the piston. This makes for more horsepower and even further reduced detonation. Coating the piston skirt with our permanent anti-friction coating gives you “free horsepower” by picking up lost horsepower from friction. Our coating is embedded in the piston skirt’s pores, so it does not wear off as time progresses.

The typical price for coating a piston top is $15 per piston top. The typical price for coating a piston skirt is $10 per piston skirt.

Intake Manifolds

Aluminum intake manifolds are notorious for their soaking of heat from the underside. They readily absorb all the heat, thus making your incoming air charge much hotter than it needs to be. We use our thermally lubricated thermal barrier coating (specially made for intake underside) to shed the oil that is splashed up, and make a heat barrier as well. The topside can be coated in our thermal dispersant (a nice, shiny black coating) that will disperse any heat the intake does absorb.

Typical pricing for coating the underside of an intake manifold is $99. Typical pricing for coating the topside of an intake manifold is $129.