A little project I've been working on recently was smoothing out the ugly ridges on my IC horns. Heres what it looked like half way:



Last night, I finished smoothing them, and sent the horms and my intake manifold off to my powdercoater to get a nice glossy red coat on them. I should get them back next week and I will post pics.

 

Who's doing your powdercoating, and if I may ask, how much?

Look forward to finished pictures.

Thanks!

 

Cramer Tech Coating in Ann Arbor, MI. Its going to be around $200 because of all the masking they have to do... if I didn;t have to worry about getting the coating inside the parts, it would have been less than $50....

I'm thinking of offering this service (smoothing and coating) but it wont be cheep. Its close to 8 hours of labor....

 

i cant see pics.....idk if im the only one

 

I sort of like the ridges

 

wait now the pics work.....i to like the ridges better, but nice work on em

 

Call is that candy apple red paint or powdercoat?

 

I like it better w/o them... Not like it will matter much soon though, as I'm getting the Rotex and doing a FMIC....

 

the ridges are there for ridgity. I wonder how smoothing them affects integrity of the piece. I know that's a ton of work....it took me a few hours to smooth out the 'Alta' logo on the 1st gen TMIC and prep it for paint.

 

And I had to do the entire thing with a hand file because of the wonderful low melting properties of aluminum

The integrity should be fine.... The material is still quite thick. If it isn't, only the passenger side horn would fail... Not too bad a mistake...

 

I used a small rotary detail sander with 60 grit, always at low speed. Hand files as well. I respect the amount of work needed to get those horns looking like that. I had a spare pair and painted them red.....quite a bit of work taping them off to preserve the mounting surfaces.

 

Thus the high cost from my powdercoater... Its alot of work bur the end result is worth it to me....

 

Powder coating.

 

Looking good. I'm more into function with my mods though.

I was all concerned when my Aeroquip hose started to wear into the IC horn. Now I can see there is no cause for alarm because there is more than enough material for it to eat into untill I get poly engine mounts.

 

The ridges assist in heat dispensation as does the bare metal finish.

 

That's a great price on the powder coating!! Mine going to cost $450 for the same parts. I guess thats the difference between MICH. and CALIF.

 

I'm sure the difference was mostly because of the black chrome.

 

here's what black chome looks like

 

There aren't nearly enough ridges to increase the surface area to enhance cooling that much. The ridges aren't very high and spaced pretty far apart....i bet you lose very little surface by shaving them down...

 

I'll have more later when they get installed.

 

How hard is it to remove the air horns?