Painting chrome headers

Te chrome on my headers on my Maxum are pretty shoddy. 3 of them have no chrome left the last 1 has most still on.

Has anyone had any luck scuffing them up & using a high heat paint.

I just want to clean them up.

 

i have, but rust comes through in a few months and have to touch em up

 

go 'jet hot ceramic' sterling.

 

The headers should actually be stainless steel, not chrome. If they were chrome, none of us would have originals. They'd be eaten through in a few years at most. The mufflers themselves are chrome though... With sanding or buffing you'll never get those to look right because chrome is simply plating so you can't get back to bare chrome metal.

Had some rough spots on a couple of tubes and the other two were better than the others. You should be able to sand through back to bare metal then gradually use finer grains to make it smooth and then buff to get the shine back in them if they aren't too far gone. Will take quite a bit of work though. Will help if you have a drill with some sanding/polishing/buffing discs.

 

And how much does something like that cost?

 

you should get sorted for about us$ 150

 

Stainless, that's funny, then why are they rusted? I'm going to stick a magnet on it & check,,,,

NOT stainless, magnet stick to them, just chrome plated.

 

Stainless rusts, too. REALLY good, expensive stainless maybe not. Sub-par, 1980's, Japanese stainless...yea, it's going to rust, eventually.

 

im sanding the rust off of mine this weekend. painting them with BBQ paint and wrapping them with black header tape. ill probably get the muffler powder coated in flat black.

 

"Stainless rusts, too. REALLY good, expensive stainless maybe not. Sub-par, 1980's, Japanese stainless...yea, it's going to rust, eventually"

It actually will pit, not rust, plus it is not magnetic, the iron ore is what makes it rust & magnetic.

 

Heh, I wish I still had some of the 304 Stainless Steel plate I bought from a "discount" metal warehouse. Figured it could sit outside since it was stainless, right? It started to develop some rust spots here and there and it was completely non-magnetic. I dunno, you tell me?

 

They're *not* chrome plated. Sand, buff and polish them and see what happens. They will shine back up. Then try that same method on something that you *know* is chrome plated such as the side pieces of the air box or even the stock muffler... you cannot sand chrome and ever get that mirror finish back. You'll sand through the plating before you see the shine.

Additionally, chrome doesn't rust. It's what is beneath it that does. Chrome is actually "chromium" and is an element with no iron content. Iron rusts, chrome does not. Problem that causes chrome to "rust" is small imperfections that get through to metal beneath it, which causes chrome to flake, pit, etc.

 

then why are they rusted?

STAINLESS CORRODES ... ADD THE HEAT, THE CORROSION OXIDISES... LOOKS LIKE RUST... TASTES LIKE RUST... ITS CHROMIUM OXIDE ...

SAME STUFF AS RUST, JUST DIFFERENT...


PEHAPS HAVE THE PIPES BEAD BLASTED, THEN POWDER COATED
MATTE BLACK...

 

I would suggest to go to your local plating shop and have them just remove the chrome. (Easy dip process in one of their tanks) My shop did it for free. It took just seconds. You will find pits in the metal where the rust was. Thats the problem with chrome plating all those pits need to get filled with copper and lots of buffing before the nickel chrome process. Its very expensive to get done. If you want to look original you will need to spend the cash as for me. I'm with Wizard send them out to get Jet Hot Coated. Its nice and clean looking at less than half the cost of plating and you won't have to worry about those pits, the jet hot fills them in nicely. Good Luck

 

I've never heard of "jet hot coating" is it similar to powder-coating but made to withstand higher heat? Who does it, the same type of places that powder-coat?

 

Get a Car Craft or Hot Rod Magizine and look in the back there in the ads you'll find it.

 

some stainless is magnetic some will corrode, some do both
i have a bmw with stainless pipes and the difference is obvious
if your going to paint the pipes, use muratic acid to get all the rust out of the pits wipe the chrome down with it an there's no need for sanding, leave it on till the shine is gone and it's very paintable

 

Chromium oxide is actually greenish in color, but not obvious to the casual eye. Here's a good write up on it.

"Chrome plating is essentially really, really, really tenacious paint. Rust is a generic term used to generally describe the oxides of iron, which form at the temperatures, pressures, and humidity levels found on earth. But really, rusting is the same as oxidizing. Just about all metals "rust", including chromium (gold is one of the few that really doesn't rust). The neat things about chromium oxide or chromium "rust" (which is actually a greenish color), is that (1) it is chemically very stable; not much reacts with it. Once it forms it does not change over time. (2) It is very thin. So thin that its greenish color cannot be detected with your eyes. The chromium plating may be a variety of thicknesses, but relative to fletcher's diagram, the thickness of the oxide is totally insignificant. (3) Chromium alloyed in steels can give the same basic effect as chromium plating, and thus we have stainless steels. The more chromium that is alloyed in the steel, the more stainless the steel becomes. Any chromium content in steel above 12%, makes that steel a stainless steel. Above 18% chromium, the corrosion resistance is very, very good, but the mechanical properties of the steel suffer. Stainless steel with 12-18% chromium (used for gun components) can still have good corrosion resistance and they can have very good mechanical properties. This is why you'll sometime hear stainless steels used for guns are "not 'real' stainless".... This is really a matter of degrees. The stainless steels used for gun components are a trade off between corrosion resistance and mechanical properties.

Stainless steel silverware is an example of a stainless steel containing 20-25% chromium. Silverware has excellent corrosion resistance, but at a cost. You can take your average spoon and bend it easily. So the mechanical properties of these types of steels would not work well for guns.

Also mentioned was chrome plating showing signs of iron rust. The only way the iron rust can show through the chrome plating is if there has been some wear on the chrome plate and it has been physically removed (allowing air and humidity to reach the steel surface) or there can be some manufacturing issues such as less than optimal adhesion of the plate to the steel or something like significant porosity in the chrome plate which allows oxygen and humidity to reach the steel surface. This rusting is accelerated by something called "small anode-large cathode", but the best analogy is a small scratch through the paint of your car, exposing the metal underneath. The exposed metal will rust very quickly because the area that can rust (steel exposed by the scratch) is very small relative the area of steel that cannot rust (the whole rest of the painted door)."

 

http://tinyurl.com/3lc3km
Here is where to get the JET HOT coating.

 

Jet-Hot is a great finishing product. It is similar to sintering, where a stream of literally molten metal (Jet-Hot is a ceramic base) is sprayed on the prepared surface of the exhaust. Then it is brought up to temperature to allow the material to flow out and bond with itself and the base metal. Slick stuff and harder by far than powder coating. It will withstand increadible amounts of heat. It also offers some heat insulating properties. Check out their website. http://www.jet-hot.com/
Good advice there and hang on to your shorts, its expensive!