Ceramic pipe coating

[Jgspahn]

I was looking into getting my exhaust ceramic coated black. I keep finding mixed things online. Some folks say it's the tits, but others say it hurts performance, like this guy.....

 

 

Blazin-Banshee - I recently went through this process and feel I should warn you. If you are planning on doing this to a 2 stoke, please use caution. Here is why..

 

I recently purchased a pipe for my 250R. I did not get it chromed because for a little bit less, I could have it coated inside and out with ceramic coating. Everything I have heard spelled benefits, such as less heat on the outside, better wear, no rust etc. But one thing that I did realize is this. It will affect the performance of your pipe! How do I know…when I installed the pipe it blew off the motor, hit the frame and put a large whole in the exhaust pipe. I call it my $290 (pipe and coating) mistake.

 

Here is what happened and why…

 

A 2 stroke exhaust is made to send a shock wave back to the cylinder to stop the flow of fresh fuel/air from coming out, until the piston moves past the exhaust port. The timing of this wave is how a pipe differs between a “low end” pipe and a “high end” pipe. Now here is where the ceramic coating comes into play. Since the ceramic coating is used to keep the heat inside the pipe, where is CAN (not always) do some good. You see hot gases move faster than cooler ones. So when I installed the ceramic pipe, the exhaust gases where moving a lot faster than before. This caused unburned fuel/air to enter the pipe and exploding inside the pipe itself.

 

Basically, unless the pipe (and somewhat of the motor) is set up to handle this extra heat – faster moving exhaust, you could be hurting the performance more than helping.

 

Now if it is a 4 stroke, then by all means go ahead. You see a 4 stroke motor has valves to close off the cylinder / intake. The only function (most important at least) of a 4 stroke exhaust is to remove the spent gases. And a ceramic coating will help in that area.

 

Let ask you this…how many dirt bike (in other words BIG DOLLAR) professional teams ceramic coat their 2 stroke exhaust?

 

 

 

 

 

Any truth to what this dude says?

[trickedcarbine]

Yes very much so! There are a few pipes that it works well on but there are also a lot of pipes that lose performance when coating. I had a short discussion with Mat Shearer a long time ago about this. Not so much the exploding in the pipe thing but the way the heat moves. I have only heard of inner pipe exploding that bad one time and it was in a shifter kart with a CR500 motor. It's all about the design, and a properly designed pipe would not benefit the coating. In fact it would effectively ruin a well built set of pipes.

[Jgspahn]

Well shit...

[trickedcarbine]

 

 

Let ask you this…how many dirt bike (in other words BIG DOLLAR) professional teams ceramic coat their 2 stroke pipes

Kind of a bad example since not many pros run 2 strokes anymore. The coating really wasn't to widely used when they were running 2 strokes. They are putting a lot of coatings on the thumpers though. And I mean ALot!

[J-Madd]

 

Both coated. The first is the Prosand record 650 cc bike. Not recommending it after reading above information, just adding to the discussion. I wasn't aware of the issue of coating 2 stroke pipes when I had it done.

[Jgspahn]

I'm really torn now. The powder coating guy told me powder would just be shitty and flake off. Then, he mentioned the ceramic coating and that I should look into it. My bike is/will be black and blue so I thought to have them coated would be awesome.. But The post I found is really troubling me.

[J-Madd]

Mine are ceramic.

[Jgspahn]

Mine are ceramic.

Do you ride around on yours, or is it mostly drag racing?

Edited August 17, 2013 by Jgspahn

[J-Madd]

Drag only. Doubt you'd notice any difference riding.

[Jgspahn]

I figured you would have more throttle variation, start and stop, that kinda stuff if you were riding around.

[jbooker82]

It also depends on the coating weather or not it is true ceramic or a ceramic base paint. True ceramic only comes in white and is applied in molten form (3000+ deg F). It is rough in texture almost like a pumice stone. Jet Hot is more of a ceramic base paint. It goes on as a liquid then its cured. Real ceramics insulate better than ceramic based paint.

[BeeCanBanshee]

Just use black engine paint or BBQ grill paint. It would be just on the outside and looks damn good. And it only costs a few bucks compared to 300$ or whatever ceramic coating costs. Here's some I painted..

 

[Jgspahn]

That's looks good and shiny beecanbanshee . How does it hold up?

[Nightmare]

That's looks good and shiny beecanbanshee . How does it hold up?

I'd like to know this also.

[WINDYCITYJOHN400]

That's looks good and shiny beecanbanshee . How does it hold up?

It doesn't hold up to sand. I have a dune bike and I ceramic coated all the polished pieces. Axle, hubs and sprocket spider frosted first trip.

Only thing that removes ceramic coating is sandblasting.

 

As for the performance debate.......doesn't matter....this guy is asking beauty questions.