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POLISHED STEEL & CERAMIC COATING
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Before my headers I polished and coated the stock exhaust manifolds... Figured I would leave the info here as someone might find the info useful!

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Smoothing the metal
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This is required on most factory metal parts, unless they are powder coated. Most are cast steel. Examples are Brake calipers & exhaust manifolds. Cast pieces have a rough gravely texture and are ridiculous to try to hand sand.

So for a little power assistance in this department, we started with sanding disks.

For tight nooks & crannies, a dremel sanding stone was required.

We then followed it up with the Scotchlock sanding disks.

They were not screwed into the base unit in these pics like the above sanding disks...

Steel is not something you can ever leave bare. It will rust. So smoothing is usually done w/o polishing. Though if you have good clear coat it is possible to polish steel & then clear it.

But in my case we only polished steel pieces that were going to be painted, or ceramic coated.

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Exhaust Manifolds
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Steel is something I never ever want to polish again. At the time, I had not found any headers that were acceptable for my car. In fact, at that time there were none being produced. So we polished my stock exhaust manifolds.

I dremeled with a stone, the cast steels rough burred surface down smooth. Then I hit all the bumps and casting ridges inside the manifolds.
I got daring and smoothed and ported as far as I could reach into the manifolds. I really could have used the flex shaft Dremel then.

Then the final smoothing was done with Scotchlock sanding disks in a die grinder. Then we planned to have them coated.

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Story along the way for your ammusement & learning
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I had quite a scare the first night. I working on one, Joe the other. I was wearing goggles, but where Joe was sanding, it was coming in the side of the goggles. I found out when I got upstairs and I saw tiny specks all over my eyeballs. I washed out what I could and tried to gently lift out the others with a dry finger. By the time I gave up, I had only one in one eye and 3 in the other. My eyes hurt, but I needed to leave them alone.

By morning, I had only 1 speck left and man did that eye bother me. Finally half way through the day it was just gone. So thank god I didn�t have to get metal removed from my eye.
Now I wear goggles and a full-face shield. Those specs could ahve easily rusted adn could have had to be lanced out by and eye Dr.

Here is what they looked like when we finished up, before coating.

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READY FOR COATING
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A few days later they were ready to be coated. We gathered up all the parts that got too hot for regular paint. The whole batch went to Performance Coatings in Jonesboro. I got them done in chrome-like Ceramic Header Coating.
5 days later I had the parts and they looked awesome.

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Ceramic Coating
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There are some brackets that mount to the exhaust manifold. They sustain such high temps that paint can't withstand it and usually disolors or sluffs of. Leaving you with a rust bracket. Chrome plating on hig heat items, will tend to blue and eventually sluff off as well, from what I hear!

Well I decided to do something about these tie in brackets when the manifolds were coated. I got some spares & sent them with the manifolds.

They received the same ceramic coating as on the manifolds...all designed to withstand high temps and not rust. Since then I have eliminated all but one. Here is some pics of it...

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HOME PAGE

Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S ENGINE DETAILING SITE
01 Site Overview
02 Wire Looms: Version I (Pre 2006) & Version II (Post 2006)
03 Silicone Hoses: Version I (Pre 2006) & Version II (Post 2006)
04 Coolflex
05 Aftermarket Aluminum Pieces
06 Polishing Aluminum
07 Polished Stock Aluminum Pieces
08 Polished Accent Pieces
09 Fiero Valve Covers
10 Polishing Steel & Ceramic Coating It <<<
11 Aftermarket Chrome Pieces
12 Professionally Chromed Stock Pieces
13 Miscellaneous Touches
14 Final Pics of the Engine W/ Stock 2.8 Plenum & runners
15 Truleo Custom Intake
16 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Overview
17 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Battery Relocation: Installing the Battery Box
18 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Battery Relocation: Running Wiring Under Chassis
19 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Hiding the wiring: MSD Box Mounting
20 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Hiding the wiring: Part I
21 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Hiding the wiring: Part II
22 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Engine & Tranny: Stripping & Prepping
23 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Engine & Trannny: Painting Candy Apple Red
24 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Accessories: Candy Apple Red: Prep, Prime, & Base
25 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Accessories: Candy Apple Red: Clear Coat
26 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Accessories: Black
27 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Engine Bay: Welding, Stripping, & Filling
28 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Engine Bay: Prepping & Priming
29 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Painting: Engine Bay: Clear Coat
30 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Engine Installation
31 2006: Engine Compartment Makeover: Engine Installation: Accessories

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