4L60Guru

I bought a pacesetter header for my old car, (1995 Honda Prelude SI) and the paint flaked off within an hour of driving it. I read the mod guide, and the headers for my T/A looked great, but I was wondering if they would flake and have that crappy ruined metal look. Site claimed the 'Lude's header was ceramic coated, but with the flaking, I doubt it. Since Long tubes are long tubes, the deciding factor is whether or not the pacesetters would make my car look like a masterpiece of backwoods engineering after a mere hour to two. I was lookin at SLP, but at grab-your-ankles pricing, (for me, anyway) I was hoping for some opinions. I was never dissatisfied with the actual durability of pacesetter, and since I was just replacing a cracked stock manifold that was messing with my O2 sensor readings and causing a rough-idle condition, I didn't care about perf. gains. (somewhere around 4hp I think... Gawd it's nice to have two banks of four cylinders on my '98) Thanks in advance.

SouthFL.02.SS

Why look at SLP LT's? They're dyno proven to be inferior to all the others, are a bitch to install, hang low and scrape, and (are a bitch to take off again when you're fed up with them ).
In LT's, Stainless Steel is the only way maintain durability over the long haul.
Most of the S.S. options are in the 1 G range in terms of pricing.
You get what you pay for in this case.

Coated Pacesetters and Jet Hots are the most decent bargain LT's.

FatZ28

iTrader: (1)

I heard pacesetters' for the imports were not near the quality that the fbod pacesetters' are.

4L60Guru

I figgered as much. Even paying for two of the imp's headers I'd be lookin at $280, I guess that extra $120 does go somewhere. I know S/S is the better material, but I'm going old school here. Just a guy on a tight budget gonna do what I can with what I gotm which banishes Ligenfelter or anything in that range from my vocaulary... until I open my hot rod shop and take over the world. You know how it goes.

SouthFL.02.SS

@ $385, coated, you can't beat the price of Pacesetters.

4L60Guru

Brain dyno tells me I'll be look somewhere in the 30hp gain range with LT's, right?

SouthFL.02.SS

Depends. Most full bolt-on cars (Lid, Ported TB, UD pulley, LT's, Y-pipe, free flowing exhaust) will dyno in the 325-350rwhp range. LT's being the crucial component in that list. LT's are the foundation to further mods.

Wicked_Hugger99

iTrader: (1)

The coated pace LTs on my TA are looking good so far.
On a bolt-on car ud prolly see 15rwhp+ w/ LTs and a tune.
more so on a cammed car or more heavily modded car.

4L60Guru

Amen to that. If you dun uncork it from the exhaust ports, you're wasting your time until you do.

kenkaru

I got the painted ones (which Pacesetter clearly states are NOT high temp painted). I tried to strip them and paint with POR15 hi temp but I don't think I stripped them well enough since it's flaking.
HOWEVER, the rest of my exhaust, which I also painted, still looks great after 10 months of daily driving and outside parking so I think if you properly stripped the paint off of an uncoated set of pacesetters and POR15'ed them, you'd be set.

I'm very happy with the quality of the headers in general but I was skeptical of the coating so that's why I didn't get the ceramic.