How does that work when you have a flex coupling though?

 

on mine they taped off the coupling and coated everything else. hasnt seemed to be an issue all i have on the firewall is the stock insualation and my feet a have only gotten slightly warm on very very long trips like the one from colorado back to washington were i didnt shut the truck off for 16hours. its a hell of alot better then how warm they got when the other pipe completely failed and started pumping exhaust gas directly into the floorboard and cocked the ebrake cable and speedo cable and melted the insuation on the INSIDE of the cab.

 

My cross-over is completely coated inside and out, flex coupling included. The coating doesn't chip, flake, or crack off and it doesn't affect the flex coupling.

 

Interesting, did you flex the coupling some to make sure it flexed ok?

BTW I noticed when the muffler shop made my exhaust they flexed my coupling real good in all directions, I guess to kind of loosen it up.

 

Yep. I was curious when I got it back and it flexed like it did before the coating.

 

Well that sounds like the way to go then.

 

just out of curiosity Cadman how much did that run you.

 

Off the top of my head I don't remember, but I'll look up the receipt when I get home tonight.

 

I just had my xover ceramic coated locally here in Vancouver for $60 CDN. He originally qouted me $80 but I wanted it shiny and they did it black so he dropped the price. In any case it was a lot less than I thought it would be.

 

Apparently I don't have that receipt anymore which was for Jet Hot's sterling Silver coating on the cross-over and both exhaust manifolds. However, I do have a receipt for that coating on a set of '01 3.4 manifolds and that was $160.

$225 - $240 sounds like what I paid for coating the cross-over and other set of manifolds, so about $80ish for the cross-over alone is probably right. They also give a first time order discount of 10%.

 

I had mine ceramic coated as well. No issues. It was pretty cheap too. Atleast I thought it was. IIRC i think it came out to just about the same price to buy the header wrap. Maybe less

 

well guys unless i dont get a good offer for my swap, im out of the swap business. I Had a little misshap Friday evening and i think its time to sell my truck and get a full size. Now that i have a family and business my truck just isnt big enough and i cant justify fixing it right now.

 

I got the crossover welded up and ready to go to the ceramic coater today. The left bank tubing was damaged worse than I had though. It was pretty thin after getting too hot, scaling over and flaking off, both inside and out. So I ended up laying down a 2nd layer of tubing over that whole side. I used .078" thick strips about 3/4" wide and 4" long. TIG was used to weld. Some strips were lapped over to the good side to provide support and help prevent future cracking.



I just bent the strips to roughly the shape I needed and tacked in one spot. Then used a hammer to form the strips more like needed. They form real nicely near a tack, so it was tack and hammer, tack and hammer.

 

Are you going to add any bracing to the lower portion of your cross-over?

 

I did that about 6 months ago: https://www.yotatech.com/50863540-post700.html

 

Dropped off the crossover at Performance Coatings (OKC) today. They had 3 different options for ceramic coatings.

The standard silver color coating which they said was good to 1400* F. I didn't ask the price since I often run higher than that temp.

A black coating which is goes a little higher (IIRC it was 1600* F) $50

A titanium coating (darkish gray color) good to 2000* F for $65, I went with this one.

They said it may take 10 days.

 

Got some new exhaust gaskets and lock nuts form the dealer.



The old gaskets looked pretty good and I was tempted to reused them but they are such a PITA to get to I didn't want to risk a failure. I'm glad I did after getting them home I measured the thickness of the new versus the once used and the new ones were about .025" thicker. They are compressed or crushed as the nuts are tighten down, forming a seal. The .025" difference was not visible by eyeballing them.

The nuts were in pretty good shape too, but the locking tabs weren't working too good on a few of them and a couple were rounded a little. If one was to round off too much I'd probably have to remove the whole engine to get it off.

The part numbers seen in the pic are for a 2001, costs were $9 each for the gaskets and $1.50 each for the nuts.

 

Finally got the crossover back from Performance Coatings in OKC. Looks like it was worth the wait, they did a great job:











Here's some more info on titanium exhaust coating:
http://www.electrotechcoatings.com/e...ptitanium.html

The standard aluminum ceramic coating:
http://www.electrotechcoatings.com/e...ramiccoat.html

Black Velvet exhaust coating:
http://www.electrotechcoatings.com/e...htcoating.html

 

Well hopefully that takes care of the cracking issue. Looks good.

 

The crossover going back on, I put on the new gaskets, cleaned up the studs with a wire brush and coated them good with anti-seize:





A few bloody knuckles later its back on: