I have a freshly built engine (less than 2 hours). In the past, I had oem exhaust manifolds. Now I have Hedman headers. The factory painted the headers and said the paint was temporary.
Lately, I noticed quite a bit of smoke that seems to come off the headers. There is no visible oil on the headers. Does header paint burning off make significantly visible smoke?
Header paint is sacrificial unless it is a special coating (like ceramic). It is designed to keep them from rusting between when they are manufactured and when you install them. It will all burn off in a short period of time and the smoke will stop. There is currently no known paint technology that will withstand header heat... at least none that wouldn't cost 5 times the headers themselves.
Even ceramic-coated headers can smoke for a bit. The first few heat cycles are critical to cure the ceramic.
Yeah, unless you swing for ceramic or chrome eventually the natural header color in rust will develop.
Bogie
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