Header Wrap or High Temp paint on scruffy looking long tubes?

Any experience on this?   Long tubes on a 5.0 Fox Mustang are looking scruffy.  There -may- be some benefit found in heat retention as well...

Stainless or mild steel?  I have been quite impressed with the generic Amazon heat wrap.  

I have heard wrapping mild steel headers is a death sentence.  

93gsxturbo said:

Stainless or mild steel?  I have been quite impressed with the generic Amazon heat wrap.  

I have heard wrapping mild steel headers is a death sentence.  

 

 

I've also seen that, the theory is that the wrapping holds moisture, accelerating corrosion.

I've wrapped some headers and they actually burned through. Corrosion didn't seem to be a factor.

High temp paint only works up to a certain level of "high temp", but it's certainly easy enough to do. If I was just interested in appearance, I'd probably do that.

My daily driver truck has the Eastwood manifold paint on the long tube headers. Been on there for a few years now and has very few burned off spots. I use that manifold paint on a lot of exhaust parts and very fair results on all of them. At least here in the south. The poor 15 is also a good stuff as far as their cast iron manifold paint goes when used on Rusty mild steelheaders

The header on my Datsun has been wrapped for the last 15 years. When I swapped out the motor 5 years a go I checked and they were fine.

EDIT: keep in ind I live I the Mojave Desert

I have wrapped headers and never had a problem.  Then, I did.  Alot.  2 different exhausts basically deteriorated to nothing within a year.  The wrap was actually holding the tubing together.

So, ymmv.  I have had great luck and horrible luck with header wrap.

Why not both?

My AE92's header has no paint and volcanic wrap, I had one spot that seemed to burn through but no problems otherwise.