Who Uses Coatings On Their Cars And Which Ones?

[Abo Bob]

I have been talking to Stuart at Pro Coat on the central coast as he is sponsoring the show n shine and he said 50% of his work is coating turbo exhaust housings and manifolds so we decided to put on a group buy. Haven't had much interest so far but I've been thinking about it a bit as well as talking to him about other coatings.

He has done an evo where he coated pretty much everything in the engine, ie bearings, pistons, combustion chambers, manifolds, oil pump gear , etc etc. I think he said they got 30 more hp with no other mods which he put down to less friction among other things.

Anyway, I find the whole thing pretty interesting and don't recall seeing much discussion on it here so I thought I'd post up and ask what coatings people on here use and if they've managed to prove their effectiveness or if it was too hard to measure properly?

I know two06l has some bits done, I think the rear housing and manifold?? Stuart was telling me that he has this graphite coating I think that draws heat away so that is being used on the inlet side of things including intercoolers. I've got teflon coated piston skirts. Bit hard for me to tell how much use it is though.

Anyone know their stuff here or have some good links?

Cheers.

[Abo Bob]

Moved to FI. I thought the drag guys would be interested in this but I've heard that they and the rally guys are quite secretive about the coatings they use.

[Devils_Advocate21]

Ive heard of people coating there cooling pipes, im after what sort of result does it give on IT temps, does it actually lower the IT temp down a fair whack or minimal to what it is worth, After possible individual results HP vs IT before and after if possible, But the manifold one and front/dump and turbine housing would be the idealistic way to go to reduce Under bonnet temps for sure not only minimising any occurance and chance of rusts or deterioration of these items

Cheers

A

[Ronin 09]

I would consider coating the manifolds and rear housings, but only the outsides. It doesn't sit well with me if the coating inside the exhaust manifold delaminates, and gets shot through the exhaust wheel...

The exhaust I would do in and out though.

[MANWHORE]

About 6 months ago, i got fairly interested in coating, and did a lot of research on it. What I found was that there are quantifiable gains, but it is quite expensive. Unless if you're chasing efficiency, spending money elsewhere seems to get much more noticeable gains.

Another one of these examples is if you took your whole exhaust off, including the manifold. Got everything port matched, extrusion honed, die grinded all of the openings so that they matched etc, you'd notice power/response gains etc, but the expense outweighs the gain AT THAT POWER LEVEL.

I found examples simialr to the one mentioned where they coated everything inside and outside the engine on race cars. Very very expensive, but they're chasing the last pooftenth of power.

[ULOOOK]

About 6 months ago, i got fairly interested in coating, and did a lot of research on it. What I found was that there are quantifiable gains, but it is quite expensive. Unless if you're chasing efficiency, spending money elsewhere seems to get much more noticeable gains.

Very true about the gains, especially on larger turbo setups, as the exhaust air in the manifold will slow down as it cools and keeping the heat it will prove more efficient. As for the price, I think is is extremely cheap in the bigger picture of things.

[Abo Bob]

Well one example I was given was 30 hp for the $1200 cost of coating bearings and all other internal moving parts to reduce friction. I've seen people pay more for that kind of gain. In this case it was because the class of racing used restrictors and they already had cams etc etc.

[shanef]

Whats the durability/longetivity on these bearing/piston etc coatings? is it something u would do at a rebuild and not worry about it? or would u need to keep recoating it all?

[tridentt150v]

I was warned off coating my manifold by a quite well known tuning shop in Sydney. they reckoned it was a waste of $$$$ and it always flaked off.

[Abo Bob]

I was told by a well known tuning shop in sydney that a highflow turbo wasn't capable of more than 220rwkw.

[tridentt150v]

It probably isn't on its own!!!!

[Abo Bob]

Even with cams they said. I have a highflow turbo and lots more power than that.

I have my dump and front pipes HPC coated but they were like that from new so no idea if it works.

[Ronin 09]

Did two06l have the insides of the exh manifold coated as well as the inside of the exhaust housing?

[mambastu]

I was warned off coating my manifold by a quite well known tuning shop in Sydney. they reckoned it was a waste of $$$$ and it always flaked off.

I think you'll find this is very dependent on the material of the manifold, the coating type and how the manifold is prepared prior to treatment. I have seen stainless steel manifolds that haven't been prepared correctly have issues with flaking.

I have used Techline black satin exhaust coatings on my GTR cast manifolds, turbine housings and stainless steel dump pipes and it didn't flake at all even after 3 years of use.

The pipework still emits a shed-load of heat so on my new build I will lag the stainless manifolds and dump pipes and ceramic coat the turbin housings. I think I'll also probably also use a coating on the inlet pipework to reduce maintenance (i.e polishing !) and help reduce inlet temperatures.

Theres quite a lot of info on http://www.techlinecoatings.com/ about coating types, methods etc.