It was a beautiful sunny day when Ron from Hi-Tech Mechanical and Coatings called to say the ceramic coating was done on the headers. At three weeks it took a little longer than expected, but it's a busy shop and there were a few challenges to coating and polishing my bundle of snakes. It was worth the wait:
The process involved heating the pipes to 600 degrees (if I recall correctly) to burn off residual oils and other contaminants. Then, they're meticulously cleaned, re-heated to 150 degrees, and painted with the ceramic coating:
The headers are placed in the oven one final time and the coating is baked on. Once done, they're placed in a vibrating vat filled with small beads and a polishing fluid. Once it comes out of the polisher, they're shiny like chrome and ready to handle 1200 degree exhaust temps.
Once I got them home, I mocked up the entire exhaust system, less the quad outlet pipes and tips. I figured it will be impossible to capture the whole system once installed:
Here's the rear view with the Magnaflow converters and Spin Tech mufflers:
And finally a close up of the beautiful finish on the rear header: