I would see about either fabbing out some sort of heatshield or at the very least heatwrapping as much of the surrounding underhood components as you can Az3ar because you are nuking everything around that manifold without protection. This is an incredible bang for your buck but it doesn't mean you can take short cuts with it.

what is the ballpark price for coating?

I am not taking any short cuts. its not going to burn anything plus when its not coated or wrapped it will let the heat escape so it wont crack. both sides have there own advantages and I am trying something else now

Can you elaborate more on this?

Az3ar,

Cool, are you heat wrapping surrounding lines and components? I think Thermotec products would be well suited for this.

You say this almost like letting heat out of the system is a good thing... it is not (notice I didn't used my usual "opinion" catch phrase). I still believe most tubular manifolds will crack eventually. If your cracking early on, there is a material/design issue.

From experience I'd say your going to bake components pretty quickly uncoated if they don't receive additional protection.

While I do not know this for a fact, I think that you are much better off keeping the heat in the tubes. You will not be radiating heat to other components, and yop will be keeping the heat, which is energy, in the exhaust stream. It helps to keep things flowing. While I did coat the header, I wrapped the DP. I just did not want to spend the extrat money at this time to coat it, and the price I was quoted to coat it was pretty high.

I have one sitting in my garage that doesn't have a divorced wastegate path... that in and of itself displeases me, but is livable. However, the outlet is too small to hold the donut gasket properly. There also is not enough length on the outlet flange to support the gasket properly under load. This could/would cause sealing issues sooner or later. Most importantly, it seems that the O2 bung location is interfering with the A/C lines according to some reports. I, myself, never fitted the part after the second issue. However, several have approached me with this problem. Of course I've notified SSAutoChrome of this problem also... they seem to be addressing this issue, but I've heard nothing about whether anything is going to be done about the parts already sold.

It's a give and take situation...

Less heat in the manifold= less exhaust gas energy. One advantage the factory iron manifold has is it acts like a big heat sink.

More heat via thermal wraps and such increases exhaust gas energy, but accelerates heat-related stress (e.g. oxidation) to the metal.

I am one of the people who talked with you about it, and I decided to go ahead and use it. My downpipe does not use the doghnut gasket anyway, so that isn't an issue for me. I looked at the stock O2 housing when I was putting in my new turbo and the exhaust stream is only seperated from the wastegate stream for about an inch, 1.5 inches at the most.... so it isn't that much different than the stocker that way. What I would love to see is how the new turbo outlet on the 05 compares to the 03 and 04 in the wastegate area.

Later,

Keith

same here

*******CAUTION*******
You guys who are using this manifold go out and check the bolts that hold the turbo to the manifold. I heard an exhaust leak today and when I popped the hood TWO of the bolts were missing, and I had torqued them to spec. My guess is that the heat cycling had loosened them up, so you might want to check yours as well.

I forget, were you using the OE bolts?

I am using the OE studs and new different nuts in the back and the stock in the front. I think I have an air leak from the front I saw it when i reved my engine at 7K . I did tight it again will see today. What are you using?

I'm using all OE hardware less one Acura secondary header flange nut where the #3 tube is too close to the stud. However, I was wondering about joeycoates, as his backed off.