Exhaust Insulating Wrap
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Champion
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 3,164
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Exhaust Insulating Wrap
2000 Dodge Neon ES
I was told that the exhaust insulating wrap would make my header rot quicker because of trapping humidity. I was also told it would be ok if I drove my car on a daily basis. I was told this under the Neon forum. I figured I would come on the Exhaust forum and get more opinions on that. It only costed me 20 something dollars, should I put it on? The package said it would help the performance by trapping the heat in the exhaust which creates more energy. It wont really effect my intake because I have AEM cold air intake which is located in front of my front tire going towards the ground. I have a Pacesetter header and exhaust, so it isn't stainless steel. What do you all think of that?
I was told that the exhaust insulating wrap would make my header rot quicker because of trapping humidity. I was also told it would be ok if I drove my car on a daily basis. I was told this under the Neon forum. I figured I would come on the Exhaust forum and get more opinions on that. It only costed me 20 something dollars, should I put it on? The package said it would help the performance by trapping the heat in the exhaust which creates more energy. It wont really effect my intake because I have AEM cold air intake which is located in front of my front tire going towards the ground. I have a Pacesetter header and exhaust, so it isn't stainless steel. What do you all think of that?
Legend
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 9,543
Likes: 2
From: United States
RE: Exhaust Insulating Wrap
I stick to what I said in the Neon forum, it will be fine. Now if you had a ceramic coated header and were going to wrap it, I would say your crazy, but since it is just painted steel wraping it will insulate it as well as possibly making it last longer. It would also be odd if you wanted to wrap a chromed header. If the car was going to set around for long periods of time outside in the elements without being driven, then I would highly suggest that you didn't wrap the header since moisture that gets into the wrap would set against the header promoting rust. Being a daily driver any moisture build up will be evaporated away from the heat.
There has always been a big myth that header wrap causes the header to rust. Painted headers will flake the paint off within a week or two depending on the useage and once the paint has flaked it will immediately start to rust. Even my Mopar Performance chrome header that was on my R/T started to rust slightly after 3-4 years, but chrome holds up far better than paint and no coatings hold up as well or last as long as ceramic coating. If you were to have identical cars daily driven the same in the same conditions, one with painted headers and one with painted headers that were wrapped, the wrapped headers would last as long as if not longer than the regular painted headers. I believe the reason most think that the wrapping causes the rust is simply because they forgot how fast regular painted headers rust away and you won't notice it with the wrapped header until it has rusted a hole through the header itself.
There has always been a big myth that header wrap causes the header to rust. Painted headers will flake the paint off within a week or two depending on the useage and once the paint has flaked it will immediately start to rust. Even my Mopar Performance chrome header that was on my R/T started to rust slightly after 3-4 years, but chrome holds up far better than paint and no coatings hold up as well or last as long as ceramic coating. If you were to have identical cars daily driven the same in the same conditions, one with painted headers and one with painted headers that were wrapped, the wrapped headers would last as long as if not longer than the regular painted headers. I believe the reason most think that the wrapping causes the rust is simply because they forgot how fast regular painted headers rust away and you won't notice it with the wrapped header until it has rusted a hole through the header itself.
