Crucial Racing Systems' Exhaust Coating

The Crucial Racing Systems' Uppipes and Downpipes are coated on the inside and outside with the highest quality metallic-ceramic thermal protective barrier available today. It is rated at 2000 F, but at 2400 F the coating still retains its integrity. This coating keeps underhood and intercooler temperatures dramatically lower and maintains higher exhaust gas velocity, since hotter gasses move faster. Additionally, the coating protects the metal from the corrosive elements in the exhaust gas, from the weather elements, and from the exhaust heat itself. A bare steel downpipe radiates heat like crazy, right below your intercooler! The difference in intercooler temps and resistance to heatsoak is literally like night and day. Many cylinder #3 failures have been blamed on screaming hot, bare steel uppipes running right next to the cylinder head and heating it up to dangerous levels. The Crucial coating performs on every level from safety, to noticeably quicker spool-up (with the uppipe coating), to lower underhood and intercooler temps, to higher power output. Extreme care is taken during the coating application process to ensure that the coating is applied consistently and will never fail. One of our coated pipes should outlast your car... even at the bottom of the ocean. Our process has 7 basic steps to it:

• The exhaust is baked to extract resins left over in the welds and pipe from the welding process. This helps reduce the internal stresses in the metal. The baking also burns off any lube from the mandrel bending machine.
• The pipe is blasted on the inside and outside with Virgin Aluminum Oxide**. This makes the coating adhere to the pipes significantly better, as well as further smoothing the pipe. This is considered an "extra" step to many companies, but is one that Crucial would never skimp on considering how truly important it is to the proper and permanent adhesion of the coating.
• A chemical bath is done to clean the pipes of any aluminum oxide dust and to clean the surface in preparation for the coating.
• The pipe is then base coated externally with our 2000 F high performance base-coat-specific coating. This coating provides the highest possible level of adhesion for the top coat. On the interior of the pipe, a thermally reflective coating specially designed for the inside of exhaust parts is used. This coating employs metallic elements like 24k gold to actually reflect heat, keeping it inside of the exhaust where it belongs!
• The pipe is baked at 500 degrees for about one hour to cure the coating.
• A top coat of our 2000F extreme thermal barrier coat is applied externally. This coating prevents thermal transfer, keeping the heat and exhaust energy inside of the pipes and out of your engine bay.
• The pipe hits the oven again at ~ 700 degrees for around an hour to cure and harden the coating.

Blasting Media Information:

**Aluminium Oxide is a sharp angular abrasive. This product performs fast cutting and matt surface finishing. It is commonly used in surface preparation for coating, removal of rust, surface cleaning, removal of paint, glass etching, deburing, descaling, etc.