TTI Rust

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matthon

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Bought/installed in July 2018, showing rust 5 months later.
Rust on the tubes, not even in the joints. 2 year warranty on coating, have to pack up and pay shipping there and back.

TTI doesn't even coat their own headers. No guarantees Engineered Applications will re-coat them.

I won't be removing and sending back.
Not pleased.

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That's why I'll be getting mine done at a local shop, that is total B.S. for how much you pay.
 
Dang, not good, sorry to hear that.

They do sell 304 stainless steel headers.
 
I scratched and gouged mine when I installed them, but they haven't rusted, nothing like yours. And my car sees everything but snow.
 
TTI doesn't even coat their own headers. No guarantees Engineered Applications will re-coat them.

TTI does ceramic coat the headers for an additional charge.


Did you have someone else coat them?
 
looks about right. every set of headers i ever had coated rusted.. jet hot, dgm, headman... froends have had the same results as me..
 
Bought them from TTI coated. Too bad, nice pipes.

On another car bought raw headers and had those coated at the only place even close to me that does it, they rusted sooner than the TTIs.

They're not rusting from the inside, and I doubt moisture can get under it unless the prep was shotty.

What's the point in paying for this high tech bs.

I'd send them back, but r&r, down time of car, packing, paying for shipping both ways, and their warranty disclaimer is chock full of ways they can deny it, only to have the same shotty work done again. Plus you're not dealing with the people you paid.

Here, buy this thing from us, send us a boat load of money, and if there are any issues call somebody else who has no vested interest in helping you.

Some warranty.

For the $59 extra, I'd do it again, then spray Rustoleum grill paint over it and cross my fingers.

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buy bare headers then paint them with the eastwood stuff. when it rusts in spots scuff it and recoat section..:)
 
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Aluminized seem to stand up to the elements really well if stainless isn't an option.
 
My Hooker headers in the mid seventies didn’t start rusting until they were a year old uncoated.
 
Why don't they offer aluminized headers?
The exhaust is aluminized.

I spent years thinking I skimped on ceramic every time to save a few bucks.

To find out it's baloney and I still have to pull them regularly to fix rust is really annoying.
 
I bought Bare TTI headers, took to local coating shop, 4 years ago. They installed their high heat thermal matt black. Still look like new.

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looks about right. every set of headers i ever had coated rusted.. jet hot, dgm, headman... froends have had the same results as me..

Yup. It's a DAMN TOUGH environment alright. I've never seen anybody's header coating that didn't eventually rust. But for what those cost, 5 months is way early.
 
I see it's a Poly engine. TTI only game in town. Like Abodyjoe said not fair but some hold up and some don't. I bought bare and had a local coat mine.They were fine until the car stayed in Pa for a summer. Moisture played hell on them.Don't know where you are from.Even though that is no excuse for a shabby job.
 
I have TTI headers on the Dart for over 10 years. The only rust I see is inside of the collector welds. I polish them regularly and in the PA winter months, I lay 3 mil plastic on the garage floor to minimize the moisture from the concrete. That is TTI's recommendation in their instructions.
 
I get it, you want nice stuff then take care of it. Other than the scratches on the driver top tube from install, these are close to clean as new.

They also state to spray WD40 where the tubes are welded to the flanges and where tubes are in close proximity because rust can start there and get under the coating, adding:

"These areas are prone to rusting, as the coating is unable to get between the tubes in the unexposed areas of the headers."

At first I thought this made sense, then I thought if you can't coat the entire header, then they are not coated.

Also, if I spray WD40 in these areas how am I expected to clean said WD40 off these seemingly impossible to access areas before starting again?

Ok, I think I'm done ranting now, thank you all.
 
Why don't they offer aluminized headers?
The exhaust is aluminized.

I spent years thinking I skimped on ceramic every time to save a few bucks.

To find out it's baloney and I still have to pull them regularly to fix rust is really annoying.


Headers can be aluminized afterwards,used to have a set of Hookers that where aluminum coated way back in time by some previous owner and they looked great,except for the usual smashed bottom of 3 tubes on the driver side.however i dont think i would like to have them bent from aluminized tubing due to how the tooling affect aluminized tubing while bending.
I used to work with exhaust manufacturing and among many things i did work with a mandrelbender and they can be pretty hard on the surface of the tubing and from my point of view a much bigger isue working with headertubes than on a catback or headerback system due to many big shortradius bends close to each other. regular exhaust parts is bigger in diameter,runs mostly on bigger diameter radiuses,bends are not stacked efter each other half as bad and bigger diameter tubing means much bigger affected surfaceareas supported by the wiperdie and clampingdies. Not to forget the abuse the headertubing sees being fited to the flanges.

Regarding the rust isues on such a new set of headers,that not accetable and should not happen,i would guess on bad prepwork.
 
No time to call today so I sent an email with a few questions, including:

To ceramic coat the Poly headers it's an additional $60. For # TTi 383440-134C4 it's an additional $185 and it's listed differently as ceramic with a thermal barrier. Is this a better coating than what is applied to the Poly headers?
 
No time to call today so I sent an email with a few questions, including:

To ceramic coat the Poly headers it's an additional $60. For # TTi 383440-134C4 it's an additional $185 and it's listed differently as ceramic with a thermal barrier. Is this a better coating than what is applied to the Poly headers?

I would guess that it depends on if there is a difference in preppwork and such if the quality gets better, its two different options so to speak,just coated is for looks and if done right durability, thermal barrier also traps heat inside the tubes wich adds performance(if its worth it is a different question) and should help the steel in the tubes get less abused by the heatcykles it also helps everything in the enginecompartment that dont like heat by not releasing as much heat.

Reason for less options on the Poly headers might just be that TTI may already have a batch of those headers with just standard coating and wants to sell those before they make another batch with possibly more options if at all,i suspect the polyheaders being a kind of slowmower compared to the abody stepheaders that must move quite well.
 
HOLY MOLY TTI!!

I just received a reply and I couldn't be happier.
To clarify, I was professional and I didn't ask for a warranty, new headers, only information. In fact, I stated I wouldn't send them back because it was to much trouble.

Wow, restored my faith.

We apologize for the header coating defect and for the inconvenience this will cause. We have sent a new set of headers to our coaters for ceramic coating and they will be adding a thermal barrier inside for additional protection. We estimate them to be back and ready to ship within 2-3 weeks. Upon our arrival of the newly coated headers, we will ship them to you via UPS. Attached to the outside of the box will be a pouch with a prepaid UPS return label, documents & instructions for the return of the defective headers.
 
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