Engine paint/laquer

This is another interesting topic.
Paints or maybe better put "coatings" come in a variety of different types. There's heat dissipating paints which have the ability to transfer heat rapidly and there are also heat insulating paints or coatings which minimize the transfer of heat. I remember a few years back when I had decided to strip and recoat the intake runners and plenums on my Porsche928, I removed all of the parts and started mediablasting in my blasting cabinet. The topcoat came of in seconds, but the lower coating primer or what?? wouldn't lift at all. Wondering what this stuff was, I turned to a forum dedicated to the 928. What I learned was the primer was infused with titanium oxide to insulate the intake runners and plenums from the surrounding heat dissipating from the engine. Crappers, don't want to remove this stuff. End result was I left the insulating coating and applied a heat resisant topcoat to "pretty them up"
If your serious about refinishing parts and you know what your end result goal is then your really looking for a "system" for your refinishing. I like working with www.eastwood.com . They specialize in "Systems" and when your not quite sure of what you need, they have an engineering department which will answer emails and advise you with your next project.
Most people who dabble in performance engines are familar with ceramic coatings for headers like Jet Hot Performance Coatings www.jet-hot.com/ This is a thermally insulating coating which keeps the heat in the part being coated. When Jet Hot is applied to headers, the heat stays in the exhaust gasses until exiting the exhaust system thus keeping the heat out of the engine compartment. Jet Hot also has a process for coating the piston crowns to keep the heat in the combustion gasses and reduce the transfer of heat to the piston tops. It can also be applied to the engine valve faces and combustion chamber roof to do the same thing. It's not cheap but if you're building really expensive race engines, you will spend the money on products like this.
Eastwood has a product which I have bought but not yet applied and tested. It's an internal coating for header pipes to keep the heat in the headers. The advantage here would be not allowing the headers to dissipate heat in front of the engine. Best part, it comes in an aerosol and it's a DIY product. At $24.95 a can, it's also cheap compared to Jet-Hot at $600 for a set of headers to be coated. It will be an interesting test although I plan to coat a set of new DG pipes so I won't have any initial heat temp readings from a set of DG's before coating.
If your interested in this product check out www.eastwood.com/eastwood-hi-temp-intern...oating-w-nozzle.html

I could take heat readings from my DG if it helps.

Ledkz1300 wrote: I could take heat readings from my DG if it helps.

Would appreciate it. I'll keep that info for reference and once I get this machine up and running, will do a post on the product.

The Jet- Hot can be somewhat of a mixed blessing . If it's going to be applied to a single wall pipe like the DG, I can see it doing something.
I had the stock header pipes done 7 or 8 years ago, mainly because it was a lot cheaper than re-chroming .-less than $300 back then. But with double walled header pipes , the coating obviously goes on the outside , then on one surface of the two inside pipes- no doubt the inner most pipe carrying the gases. All surfaces have to be sand blasted before coating -which is somewhat like powder coating- then it's into the oven. The finished product is a somewhat dull aluminum look.
The collector boxes do have some surface rust on them- probably more an application issue than a fault of the coating.
It still doesn't look as nice as chrome and with the double wall header pipes, wouldn't they do nearly the same thing as the coating on a single wall. If you do it yourself , how do clean the inside of the pipe - unless its' brand new as in Kawboys case.

I took the whole disassembled exhaust system to a diy shop where I bead blasted them inside. Just stuck the nozzle inside the pipes and blasted. Same with the 3 to 1 collectors. Lot's of black and brown came out and the very high pressure of sand blasted blow all the other side. Looked like it's coming from a running engine!
Then cleaned with compressed air. At home I am going to rinse it with very hot water to remove any left beads. Then dry it with a hair dryer and put them against the electric heater at home.
When all is nice and dry, I am going to spray some high heat paint from both ends, not worrying about the most inner area. Then, when all is dry, I will spray all from all ends with aircraft anti corrosion formula - ACF-50. I bought mine HERE . When time comes to fire up the bike, it will cure the paint and I am sure the combination of these two plus heat will keep everything in shape.

Oh, I forgot to add that I am also in the process of choosing the engine paint. I can't heat treat any paint because I don't have the oven. I want be starting the bike anytime soon. But I want to paint everything while it's all in parts.

I can't see anything about heat curing on PlastiKote high heat spray paint, but it says good up to 250 C. I think this should be enough for the engine case, cylinder and the head. Of course the pipes will get a sprayed with one of the very high temperature paints. Probably VHT.

I chose a satin black paint scheme rather than what I first wanted gloss black. I think it will make all the chrome stand out more. The oil pan will be painted silver.