Ceramic Coating with NitroPlate

Everybody and their brother knows about the benefits of ceramic coating headers. The ceramic coating  enables performance gains through heat control, creates a chemical and corrosion resistant barrier, and generally looks really good for a long time. Many aftermarket header companies offer a ceramic coating as an option when you buy the headers.  You as the consumer, get the bright and shiny header out of the box and bolt it on to your “bad to the bone” engine, but there is a small effort you have to invest to keep them reliable. Basically, you have to “Break in” the headers.  Different manufactures have different procedures for this “Break in” period, but all are a certain amount of heat over a certain amount of time. After this duration of time, heat cycling the ceramic coating “Cures” it.   I have some concerns with this though. Is the coating completely cured? How do I know the coating cured correctly with no damage? Does carbon and other exhaust contaminants embed themselves in the uncured ceramic coating? If so, will that affect the lifespan of the ceramic coating? Is the exhaust heat at the primary tube curing the header the same as it does at the collector end? Hmmm, where can I find these answers?  Enter NitroPlate. I found NitroPlate for high temp coatings and they fully cure the coating before you get your parts back. This solves all my concerns with ceramic coatings.

During my research and interviewing friends with ceramic coated headers, some common problematic trends were found. Some ceramic coated headers got hazy and dull. Other headers were worse off with peeling coatings and some with rust showing through! How can this be if the directions were followed to the letter?Either the cure was improper, damaged, or the engine wasn’t running right.

“Caution: Do not run new ceramic coated headers on a new engine until it has been properly tuned and a full break in procedure performed”. When I read these directions, it was clear to me there is a possibility the consumer could damage the new ceramic coating since they are responsible for the ceramic coating “Break in” procedure. This just wont work for someone with a car project like mine. These procedures were not a good fit for me. With these questions and our quest for superior products for the Hot Rod Regal project, we found a GREAT ceramic coating company that addressed all my concerns with viable solutions.

Ceramic Coating with Nitroplate

NitroPlate is located in Nashville TN.  They are ISO/TS 16949:2009 and ISO 9001:2008 registered, which means they follow technical specs. set in place as controls for design, development, testing and cataloging of automotive industry products. As seen in the next video, NitroPlate offers a variety of coatings. If it is metal, they can coat it!

It was our idea to not only ceramic coat the Ultimate Headers on the Hot Rod Regal, but to ceramic coat the entire Flowmaster exhaust systems.

Seen here is complete Flowmaster 3" stainless steel exhaust system and the stainless steel Ultimate Headers before being NitroPlated.
Seen here is project: Hot Rod Regal’s complete Flowmaster 3″ stainless steel exhaust system and the stainless steel Ultimate Headers before being NitroPlated.
3/4 view of the Flowmaster / Ultimate Headers exhaust system before ceramic coating.
3/4 view of the Flowmaster / Ultimate Headers exhaust system before ceramic coating.

Our goal was heat control, optimal performance, continual good looks and reliability; but most importantly, a fully cured ceramic coating. Many ceramic coating facilities could have met our needs for most of these requirements, but no one could meet the final requirement except NitroPlate. The NitroPlate high temp. ceramic coating with the fully cured, zero “Break in” attribute completely answered and relieved my concerns. Take a behind the scenes look at how NitroPlate accomplishes their worry free, high quality ceramic coating on customers’ parts.

Our Ultimate Headers and the all stainless steel 3″ Flowmaster exhaust systems (X-pipes, Y-pipes, Mufflers, and Tail pipes) were now completely NitroPlate ceramic coated and fully cured. We decided to physically pick up our parts from NitroPlate, but as Cody Jones stated, they can ship your parts back to you.

This was a Great experience! I am very pleased with the level of customer service and friendliness of the staff at NitroPlate. After our own personal inspection of the parts, we were very pleased with the quality and finish. They are 100% cured and ready to bolt on to the Hot Rod Regal. The Regal will be running a Holley EFI system that I will cover in a later article, but will not have any initial start up issues that would potentially damage the cured ceramic coating. Check out these shots of the finished NitroPlate Bright ceramic coating!

The Ultimate Headers were beautiful to begin with, but now they are the best of the best with the NitroPlate bright ceramic coating added to them!
The Ultimate Headers were beautiful to begin with, but now they are the best of the best with the NitroPlate bright ceramic coating added to them! Check out the reflection on the black background!
The Flowmaster X-pipe looks amazing with the NitroPlate bright ceramic coating!
The Flowmaster X-pipe looks amazing with the NitroPlate bright ceramic coating!
Thanks to NitroPlate, my stainless steel exhaust system will look great for a very long time. There should be very little heat transfer from the engine exhaust to the floor pans of the Hot Rod Regal
Thanks to NitroPlate my stainless steel exhaust system will look great for a very long time. There should be very little heat transfer from the engine exhaust to the floor pans of the Hot Rod Regal.

So, if you were wondering what led us to NitroPlate in our research, it was our personal experience with the Quick Fuel Technologies Black Diamond series carb. It was with this carb. on this Mast Motorsports LSX 440 that we saw amazing results. This carb. helped make over 700hp on this engine! It was ceramic coated by NitroPlate! Quick Fuel Technologies and NitroPlate were a match made in car heaven.

NitroPlate can be reached at (615)826-4914 or check out their website at www.nitroplate.com . The other option is go visit them like we did! You can find them at 550 Brick Church Park Drive, Nashville TN 37207. Depending on which direction you are traveling from (we were traveling from St. Louis) you can make it a road trip like we enjoy doing. Metropolis, Illinois was along our way, so we had to stop and see the earth birthplace of Kal El – SUPERMAN.

Truth - Justice - The American Way. Need I say more?
Truth – Justice – The American Way. Need I say more?

How about stopping at the museum too.

SuperMan Museum on the town square.
SuperMan Museum on the town square.

Be sure to click on the highlighted text throughout the article for more details. Come back next time to see the final result of the exhaust systems installed in the Hot Rod Regal.  Thanks for following www.HotRodRegal.com

-Matt

Leave a Comment