I was in the right place at the right time for a change, and scored a set of Doug's ceramic coated headers for my small block off of Summit's scratch and dent tables. They are pretty scraped and scuffed, but for a third the price of a new pair I snatched them up and dragged them through the rest of the store for the two hours I was there along with a pair of almost perfect looking Mopar Performance torsion bars from another discount table. On the headers none of the scrapes are into bare metal.
It was a good day at Summit. I also got a good workout for my arms and shoulders in the process of carrying all that stuff through the store.
Right, so... I hate shiny stuff under them hood anyway, and had been planning to buy a raw pair of the same headers and send them to Jet Hot for black coating. I'm wondering if I can scuff up the silver ceramic coating on these and paint them with black VHT Flame Proof paint to get the same look for a few years. If they start looking rough I can eventually send them to Jet Hot and have them strip and recoat the way I want them. My old cheap wrap around the suspension headers are looking rough and I'm going through the suspension this winter, so it seems like the perfect time to swap these new ones in if I can get them looking the way I want.
You can certainly paint over the existing polished ceramic coating if you choose. Ideally you'd want to remove as little of the existing coating as possible to retain it's thermal and corrosion effectiveness. Once you bust through the thin aluminum outer layer you'll only have approx 2-3 mils of insulating material which is fairly porous before you hit bare metal. If the gouges don't require "feathering" you're better off not bothering them.
A medium scotch bright would be better than nothing but a LIGHT blast with a fine aluminum oxide (90-120) would be best.
