Good luck getting in there to get at much of the rust with a cordless drill.

We did something like that on my friends 1970 nova couple years ago.

We lined the engine comparment with old blankets, then cardboard and finally some blue tarps.

Disconnected all plugs off the motornear the headers and put them on intake. Got some plastic wrapped around the top of the motor to pertect everything from the valve covers and up..

Had two cheapy dremel hand drill and used a combination of wire wheels and sand paper rolls to clean up the corners and medium grit sandpaper to clean up the long tubes.

Cleaned up as much surfact of rust, scale, paint and dust so the VHT had a better contact surface. Placed cardboard and masking tape behind the headers as to not get overspray on the motor. Added paint as needed and kept even coats going. Removing battery and altornator will allow you to have more room for spraying those hard to get angles.

Do about one coat every hours as directed (we did 3 coats) and was fairly warm that day. Let it cure overnite and let the paint adhere better. Next day we removed everything covering the engine, started the car, let it slowly get warmed up with the hood open to let it breath and cured better. About 15 min, we shut off the engine and did a inspection of the tubes. Everything was looking good so we started it for a couple more tries and let the paint cure nicely. Still looks decent after all the driving.

On another note, that was alot of work and my buddy earned an atomic charlie horse punch to his hind leg from me for being to hard headed about pulling headers off and having everything done off the engine which would have been easier and probably done in 1/2 the time it took us.

Ya, seems like a lot of work. You must have a lot of time on your hands.

Either do it right (remove them, blast, re-coat), get new headers, or just leave 'em as-is.

Sux that TTIs get like that. Seems ridiculous for how expensive they are.

Wish they made stainless steel ones.

Get a couple of the coarse Scotch Brite pads. Scuff them then paint them with the BBQ paint.

doesn't matter who coats them they will look the same as you have now in time.

the bbq paint is an option and i have a few friends using the stuff from eastwood. they put it on with a foam brush. if a spot pops up then they scotch brite the area and brush it up again. one of those two ways are probably best for a car that gets driven.


pretty sure this is the stuff..
http://www.eastwood.com/tlc-colorgard-black-4-oz.html

Don't remove the rust. Wire brush off the thick stuff and paint with your favorite, either barbecue black or the VHT. I favor the dull barbecue black because it is not reflective so doesn't show the rough surface as much.

I have also used Ospho on rusty things but didn't have luck getting paint to stick, maybe I did something wrong.

R.

Thanks for all the good advice!!!

best advice? pay your daughters boyfriend to remove them so you can send them off to be re-coated.

or, threaten him with a bluff, and tell him that he needs to do it for free, or you'll behead him for what you saw him doing to your daughter last weekend, and when he looks at you funny, you repeat what you said, then add that you're not talking about the head on his shoulders, and that he may not have seen you, but you sure saw him, thanks to the GPS tracker you have in your daughters phone.

Good ideas but the youngest daughter's boyfriend is so "sensitive" that he can only play video games. The oldest daughter's boyfriend is back home in NE on leave and she's on her way out to see him on Wednesday and the middle daughter likes books more than boys. So no soap on all fronts!

Not to play devil's advocate here, but, how old are those tubes???

Really strange...

I'm gonna say I think you'll have adhesion problems unless you get that old 'ceramic' off...

Unless you're OK with having to touch 'em up every now and again...

What does TTI say???

Stu - my suggestion is to create a couple really good oil leaks on your engine that constantly coat the headers in motor oil.. it'll keep them looking nice and black and shiny. Works for me.

Although, the oil spraying all over the underside of the car is kind of a bummer.. oh, and the smoke... oh yeah, and the mess on the garage floor too ...