[Hal Copple]

for the first 10,000 miles i had painted headers and side-pipe exhausts on my SPF Windsor Stroker, then had the headers ceramic coated inside and out, and the side-pipes outside coated. I immediately noted a change in the character of the exhaust sound. Since my inner muffler packing, stainless steel wool, in my car was not affected, i could only attribute the change to the inner coating of the headers.

The sound became less "mellow" and more "hard", but not necessarily louder. My reasoning is that the inner hard ceramic coating of the headers reflects the sound wave impulses on down the exhaust pipes in a different way than when the headers were uncoated. My guess is that uncoated headers absorb a little of the sound wave impact, and reflect it back in a more attenuated wave pattern.

It is hard to explain the change in sound, but the firing impulses and exhaust sounds with the ceramic headers are a bit more "crisp", more of a crackle. The sound from the "soft" steel uncoated headers was noticably less "crisp".

As my mufflers now have over 45,000 miles on them, and the packing has become dense from all the exhaust impulses, my car is fairly loud, and sounds absolutely fantastic. I love to run along a liine of cars or pedestrians at about 2500 rpm in a low gear, causing all their carbonated drinks to fizz over.

I never heard a car sound as intimidating as mine does.

My SPF is no Latte car, no Sir!!