I have had the good fortune to have had several wise ones directly and indirectly involved in the development of my MINI.

I have a ceramic-coated OBX header with an OEM cat, from Helix, hooked up to a Milltek cat-back, which sound just awesome to me. Earlier this week I heard a clear exhaust leak, however, which I took to a second MINI genius, Steve, of Steve's Auto Clinic in San Fernando Valley just yesterday to have it taken care of.

Taking it to Steve was a great move, as he and his guys had it fixed in less than an hour on a very busy Saturday morning and only charged me $35. Perfect. (new gasket and tighten down the bolts connecting the header to the cat-back).

Steve found, however, that the ceramic coating in the area where the header and catback are joined together is getting VERY HOT, causing the ceramic coat to come of the header surface!! He says that is ONLY due to running VERY HOT (not any defect in the coating, etc.) According to Steve, the springs holding the header joint together have even been damaged from the extreme heat.

I do not have an AFR gauge or EGT, so I have never been able to monitor these. Although I am sure that Steve is right, Iam not sure what to do about it. Here are some ideas:
> Get the OEM flash back to stock from the Fireballed flash I got abut 5,000 miles ago? (Which has been running great though)
> Remove the M7 aerogel blanket that covers the exhaust heat shield? could this be holding in excessive heat on my really HORRIBLE commute, which has been bumper-to-bumper both ways for 1 hr.+15 min. each way ever since Labor Day!!!
> Get Perrin water and meth injection?
> All of the above + get a Jesus head and tune from RMW?
Other? (all suggestions are welcome)
> Hood vent? (I know exactly how and where I want it - totally custom and -- I think anyway -- very cool!!)

Really short term I want to reduce the heat and save the header and other hardware. The h2o/meth injection and the J-head are just joking, though ... someday I wantum both

Suggestions?

Thanks.

 

I say none of the above.

So the ceramic coating is pealing a bit - no big deal, don't worry about it. Heat might be the cause but it could have been a stone or someting hit it causing a chip and the heat took it from there. Or perhaps during install it got nicked or perhaps the ceramic coating was defective. No one is going to back-up the later options I reference.

Now if you need an excuse to buy another mod, well then yes this is a severe problem you have here and requires immediate attention.

 

unless you are monitoring wideband air fuel ratios or EGT you are just wasting your money looking for a "fix" to a problem that might not exist.

 

Thanks for your input.

I guess even if I don't do or change any other mods, now I need a AFR wideband setup, huh?

Alright!! I knew I could legitimize SOME more mods with this!!

 

actually, the other thing is that depending on the ceramic coating company, the failure may be covered and they'll re-do it... and you can get your AFR wide-band set-up...

 

Question, was your header coated on the inside and outside?

 

You could also try a local dyno shop that offers wideband results. They usually charge $75-100 an hour. Much cheaper than buying all that yourself. Run it in whatever gear provides a close to 1:1 ratio. Do as many runs as you can fit into your alloted time or makes sense given repeated results.

Get print outs of each run showing RPM and AFR and post here.

 

Ceramic coatings will peel/flake if they're put on too thick and used in high-temp exhaust applications. Ask any professional ceramic coater and he'll tell you that. It doesn't automatically mean you're running too-hot EGT's.

 

yes, mine was coated inside and out. The coating was flaking right at the collector where the primary tubes joined. The re-coating is done but I haven't re-installed the header yet so no follow-up report yet.

 

Outside only.

 

A sticky should be created - "best reasons (excuse) to buy this mod" - this way we could all get our stories straight .

An AFR guage will be a nice add on because it will provide you with critical & necessary data for daily driving (my contribution to the sticky ).

I had bought a AFR guage for my son's birthday (Sept.) but then he wanted a RC boat so now he will get it for Christmas so install will have to wait !

 

Interesting idea. Thanks.

 

Ah-HA! The plot thickens! Good info. There is almost ALWAYS more than one reason for stuff to happen.

Thanks, Rye.

 

Hmmm.

rl, what is the inside coating purported to do?

 

I have two places for 52mm gauges (Craven double pod I haven't installed yet) and I just got the Auterra OBDII monitoring SW and adapter cables along with a Palm device, which I plan to connect permanently and mount somewhere (undecided as yet). I have been leaning toward Oil temp and Oil press gauges, but now I am thinking maybe the wideband AFR. However, I think that the Auterra and Plam can proviede numbers that indicate the "health" of one's fuel mixture? I am still sorting out the Palm and the software. Haven't had very much time to play with it yet. NitroMiniS (Lynn) recommended the Auterra.

 

+1 Just in time for the Christmas shopping season! Brilliant!

 

yeah, we need a Why we need it list. for example, i bent a couple of bits on my car, to replace the stock stuff i got madness front control arms (an easy sell considering repairs required), r compounds (another easy sell), and an aero front bumper (when 100 would have fixed the old one, haha, that was a con and a half in itself). Now, do to the control arms tho, im going to need a strut tower brace to help with increased stress relocated to the top of the mounts, and stainless brake lines due to the tires being able to handle alot more stopping power now).

hahah, feel free to use any of those excuses

Beecher

 

Best idea in this forum!!! (I knew reading this stuff would pay off eventually )

 

YOU are GOOD!!