Discussion
MarkWebb said:
http://www.woof-tmt.com/what-is-it
Try these guys. Same tech but apparently cheaper.
We were recently quoted around £800 for our manifolds (£100 each)Try these guys. Same tech but apparently cheaper.
Hi, sorry to resurrect a year old thread, and my very first posting on the site too.....
I work with Zircotec and wanted to explain a little bit about why ceramic coating might seem a little expensive at first...no matter who does it for you. In a nutshell the process is incredibly labour intensive.
When you supply Zircotec with your metal engine part new or used for us to coat, we first have to strip it right back down to a spotlessly clean metal surface removing all corrosion, dirt grease and grime. We do this by a typical blasting process as you might find in an electroplaters shop. This involves setting the part securely within a blasting booth and cleaning it off manually with a hand held gun. It is necessary to do this manually because of the huge variety of shapes we are dealing with. Every manifold or pipe or turbo housing is a different size, shape, length etc.
If the part is a new one it will still need to go through the chemical de-greasing and cleaning process that finalises the preparation work. All the parts are held only in gloved hands from this point forwards since even some natural grease from fingers and palms of hands can effect the quality of the finish.
As is frequently the case, the preparation work is what takes the time but is also what results in the best possible final results.
After the part has been inspected to ensure it is completely clean and prepared fully, it is ready for the coating process itself.
The coating process takes place in a specially constructed booth that is sealed to prevent most of the noise and all of the particles from escaping. There is a powerful venting system that extracts the air and gases from the chamber and that can cope with large volumes of air.
Like the blasting process your part has again to be securely fixed within the booth and a technician will then use a hand held gun to coat your part. The gun combines the ceramic powder formulation with the Plasma flame (which is incredibly bright so the booth is darkened like a welder's visor to prevent damage to the technicians eyes)this combined molten coating is them sprayed onto your part. The part has to be physically moved, rotated and sprayed to ensure an even and complete coating all over it all whilst not touching the surface until the coating is stable.
The part is then inspected post spraying and if not up to our standards the job is redone except that the preparation work is much harder now since the Zircotec ceramic coating is incredibly tough. To give you an idea of how tough, if you wanted to drill a hole in a manifold to fit say...a Lambda sensor we recommend you use an angle grinder to take the coating off the area where you wish to drill or you will find you are ruining your drill bit.
I hope that gives you an idea of how much work goes into coating the parts you send us and also an idea of how importantly we take the quality of the work and our service levels. To give you an idea of how good our reputation within the industry is, Zircotec coatings are used as standard by Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Koenigsegg, Pagani to name but a few.....also I would be surprised if you could identify an F1 team that does not come to Zircotec.
It is also why we can confidently provide road customers with a three year warranty and race/trackday customers with a 12 month warranty
I will be happy to try and answer any questions about what we do and even try to offer some advice if I can. We do find quite a few race teams do consult us on how best to cope with heat management on their cars. And you can be sure I will always try and be as impartial as possible.
Please feel free to get in contact with me through this site.
Mark
I work with Zircotec and wanted to explain a little bit about why ceramic coating might seem a little expensive at first...no matter who does it for you. In a nutshell the process is incredibly labour intensive.
When you supply Zircotec with your metal engine part new or used for us to coat, we first have to strip it right back down to a spotlessly clean metal surface removing all corrosion, dirt grease and grime. We do this by a typical blasting process as you might find in an electroplaters shop. This involves setting the part securely within a blasting booth and cleaning it off manually with a hand held gun. It is necessary to do this manually because of the huge variety of shapes we are dealing with. Every manifold or pipe or turbo housing is a different size, shape, length etc.
If the part is a new one it will still need to go through the chemical de-greasing and cleaning process that finalises the preparation work. All the parts are held only in gloved hands from this point forwards since even some natural grease from fingers and palms of hands can effect the quality of the finish.
As is frequently the case, the preparation work is what takes the time but is also what results in the best possible final results.
After the part has been inspected to ensure it is completely clean and prepared fully, it is ready for the coating process itself.
The coating process takes place in a specially constructed booth that is sealed to prevent most of the noise and all of the particles from escaping. There is a powerful venting system that extracts the air and gases from the chamber and that can cope with large volumes of air.
Like the blasting process your part has again to be securely fixed within the booth and a technician will then use a hand held gun to coat your part. The gun combines the ceramic powder formulation with the Plasma flame (which is incredibly bright so the booth is darkened like a welder's visor to prevent damage to the technicians eyes)this combined molten coating is them sprayed onto your part. The part has to be physically moved, rotated and sprayed to ensure an even and complete coating all over it all whilst not touching the surface until the coating is stable.
The part is then inspected post spraying and if not up to our standards the job is redone except that the preparation work is much harder now since the Zircotec ceramic coating is incredibly tough. To give you an idea of how tough, if you wanted to drill a hole in a manifold to fit say...a Lambda sensor we recommend you use an angle grinder to take the coating off the area where you wish to drill or you will find you are ruining your drill bit.
I hope that gives you an idea of how much work goes into coating the parts you send us and also an idea of how importantly we take the quality of the work and our service levels. To give you an idea of how good our reputation within the industry is, Zircotec coatings are used as standard by Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Koenigsegg, Pagani to name but a few.....also I would be surprised if you could identify an F1 team that does not come to Zircotec.
It is also why we can confidently provide road customers with a three year warranty and race/trackday customers with a 12 month warranty
I will be happy to try and answer any questions about what we do and even try to offer some advice if I can. We do find quite a few race teams do consult us on how best to cope with heat management on their cars. And you can be sure I will always try and be as impartial as possible.
Please feel free to get in contact with me through this site.
Mark
Just a quick question in my ignorance but if wrapping the exhaust system causes cracking because of the xtra heat in the metal then how will ceramic coating them make any difference......if the ceramic is holding the heat in the pipes then surely that will also reduce the metals life......
Well....
I did both... Yep! Both! Silly me!
First it was Zircotec... but found that heat build up around the airbox was still rather too high for my liking.. and it marked so damn easily..
so for better or worse - I then wrapped the coated headers and the rest of the exhaust with titanium lava-wrap - looks ok to me and 1000 miles later so.
No idea if lava-wrap is a better bet than the usual stuff... No metal sweating cos its coated...
And the temps are well down in the engine bay now... I could sleep in there all comfy-like!
- time will tell...
I have another complete exhaust ready just in case the headers disintegrate!
I did both... Yep! Both! Silly me!
First it was Zircotec... but found that heat build up around the airbox was still rather too high for my liking.. and it marked so damn easily..
so for better or worse - I then wrapped the coated headers and the rest of the exhaust with titanium lava-wrap - looks ok to me and 1000 miles later so.
No idea if lava-wrap is a better bet than the usual stuff... No metal sweating cos its coated...
And the temps are well down in the engine bay now... I could sleep in there all comfy-like!
- time will tell...
I have another complete exhaust ready just in case the headers disintegrate!
Edited by 3Dee on Thursday 10th October 17:18
XASLTD said:
Just a quick question in my ignorance but if wrapping the exhaust system causes cracking because of the xtra heat in the metal then how will ceramic coating them make any difference......if the ceramic is holding the heat in the pipes then surely that will also reduce the metals life......
Hi there, The main reason why wrapping is bad is the adhesives used, it is not the actual heat in real terms, although this would be a factor in low grade metals and pipework.
Most of the adhesives are chloride based or have some chloride in them. Stainless steel is especially susceptible to attack by chloride and it causes what is called intergranular corrosion. It is such a serious issue that in some industries eg nuclear where the integrity of the stainless steel is vitally important they simply do not allow even sticky tape near stainless pipework. Even in small quantities it effects the stainless. We often have wrapped pipework arrive and as we unwrap it we start to uncover corroded metal caused by the adhesive. I am considering asking if we can start to take some pictures and post them on our Facebook page to demonstrate this as items arrive that are corroded in this way.
The second factor is that shrinkage occurs over time and wear and tear can leave minute exposed areas. These cause sudden variations in temperature along the length of the pipework no matter the materials used. These are points that the heat tries to escape through...it WILL find them just like water or gas would find an escape route. These are hot spots and the intense heat that builds in these areas eventually causes the metal to fail partially through differential expansion and contraction...ie one bit is expanding faster/slower than the bit right next to it...which is not good for the integrity of the metal.
This is a big factor in exhaust manifolds because of the extreme temperatures there and less so where perhaps something just needs protected from radiated heat such as protecting a shock absorber from having its oil and gas overheated or as in the case of a client in Canada his oversize oil tank was wrapped to prevent its heat radiating out into the cockpit area of his 1000 rwbhp Mazda (you can see how it was used here https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.66483254... ). So as a rule of thumb wrapping is something to be employed away from the most extreme temps.
Use of a coating ensures an even visible covering of a metal and thus avoids both of the problems above.
Hope that helps.
Mark
MarkofZircotec said:
Hi there,
The main reason why wrapping is bad is the adhesives used, it is not the actual heat in real terms, although this would be a factor in low grade metals and pipework.
Most of the adhesives are chloride based or have some chloride in them. Stainless steel is especially susceptible to attack by chloride and it causes what is called intergranular corrosion. It is such a serious issue that in some industries eg nuclear where the integrity of the stainless steel is vitally important they simply do not allow even sticky tape near stainless pipework. Even in small quantities it effects the stainless. We often have wrapped pipework arrive and as we unwrap it we start to uncover corroded metal caused by the adhesive. I am considering asking if we can start to take some pictures and post them on our Facebook page to demonstrate this as items arrive that are corroded in this way.
The second factor is that shrinkage occurs over time and wear and tear can leave minute exposed areas. These cause sudden variations in temperature along the length of the pipework no matter the materials used. These are points that the heat tries to escape through...it WILL find them just like water or gas would find an escape route. These are hot spots and the intense heat that builds in these areas eventually causes the metal to fail partially through differential expansion and contraction...ie one bit is expanding faster/slower than the bit right next to it...which is not good for the integrity of the metal.
This is a big factor in exhaust manifolds because of the extreme temperatures there and less so where perhaps something just needs protected from radiated heat such as protecting a shock absorber from having its oil and gas overheated or as in the case of a client in Canada his oversize oil tank was wrapped to prevent its heat radiating out into the cockpit area of his 1000 rwbhp Mazda (you can see how it was used here https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.66483254... ). So as a rule of thumb wrapping is something to be employed away from the most extreme temps.
Use of a coating ensures an even visible covering of a metal and thus avoids both of the problems above.
Hope that helps.
Mark
What kind of temp drop can one expect on a coated manifold rather than a wrapped one?The main reason why wrapping is bad is the adhesives used, it is not the actual heat in real terms, although this would be a factor in low grade metals and pipework.
Most of the adhesives are chloride based or have some chloride in them. Stainless steel is especially susceptible to attack by chloride and it causes what is called intergranular corrosion. It is such a serious issue that in some industries eg nuclear where the integrity of the stainless steel is vitally important they simply do not allow even sticky tape near stainless pipework. Even in small quantities it effects the stainless. We often have wrapped pipework arrive and as we unwrap it we start to uncover corroded metal caused by the adhesive. I am considering asking if we can start to take some pictures and post them on our Facebook page to demonstrate this as items arrive that are corroded in this way.
The second factor is that shrinkage occurs over time and wear and tear can leave minute exposed areas. These cause sudden variations in temperature along the length of the pipework no matter the materials used. These are points that the heat tries to escape through...it WILL find them just like water or gas would find an escape route. These are hot spots and the intense heat that builds in these areas eventually causes the metal to fail partially through differential expansion and contraction...ie one bit is expanding faster/slower than the bit right next to it...which is not good for the integrity of the metal.
This is a big factor in exhaust manifolds because of the extreme temperatures there and less so where perhaps something just needs protected from radiated heat such as protecting a shock absorber from having its oil and gas overheated or as in the case of a client in Canada his oversize oil tank was wrapped to prevent its heat radiating out into the cockpit area of his 1000 rwbhp Mazda (you can see how it was used here https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.66483254... ). So as a rule of thumb wrapping is something to be employed away from the most extreme temps.
Use of a coating ensures an even visible covering of a metal and thus avoids both of the problems above.
Hope that helps.
Mark
XASLTD said:
What kind of temp drop can one expect on a coated manifold rather than a wrapped one?
We reprinted sections of a Performance Ford Magazine article on our Website that addresses that very question.You can see it here http://www.zircotec.com/page/--performance-of-exha...
Storer said:
I had my manifolds and exhaust pipe to the boxes coated in a matt slate grey by Zircotec over 6ooo miles ago and they still look as good as they did when new.
Heat is not an issue in my engine bay, but then I only have 577hp!
Paul
Hi Paul, ONLY 577 hp ??? lol...clearly not trying hard enough then Heat is not an issue in my engine bay, but then I only have 577hp!
Paul
Glad to hear you are pleased with the manifold and pipe. Would love to see a couple of pix of them in situ. Do you think you could take a few at some point and drop us a line telling us about your car along with the pix?
We are starting a series of little pieces about our customers on the Facebook page and would love to see if we can do a little bit on your car.
M.
BogBeast said:
Hello Mark,
would it be possible to clean and coat some well used (and previously coated with another coating) exhaust manifolds ?
Paul
Hi there Paul, in most cases the answer is yes, the grit blasting we do on all uses parts not only helps key the coating to the part's surface but normally scours all corrosion and anything else off.would it be possible to clean and coat some well used (and previously coated with another coating) exhaust manifolds ?
Paul
Of course there are sometimes difficulties and we cannot be 100% certain before seeing the part but I am fairly confident it will be a yes.
Gassing Station | Ultima | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff