DEI titanium exhaust wrap! Keeping the heat inside the headers!
Welcome to #modmonday! Where we look a installed part or modification on one of my Subarus. This week we will look at @Design inc Titanium exhaust wrap (2” x 50 foot) which is installed on my @maperformance headers that have been Cerakote'd.
While the boxer engine has many benefits one of the softer points is that the exhaust lives directly below the engine and thus the heat rises and soaks everything above it. Instead of that heat staying put in the exhaust helping spin that turbo up it heats up the oil, block, coolant, etc.. When you go to a set of aftermarket headers you will find that they hold less heat that the good old cast manifold and heat shields. How do we deal with this?
Looking below from above… Anyways, this is where all the heat comes from and seeps into everything under the hood.
There are many coatings out there to help with this like Swaintech, Cerakote, etc, but in my mind these alone don't do as well as the factory manifold did and I wanted to decrease the what in the engine bay. After seeing how impressive my Lava rock turbo blanket was I decided to give DEI's titanium wrap which is made pulverized lava rock which is stranded into a fiber and woven into a proprietary weave, seems legit to me.
Ooo, pretty.
Unlike most fiberglass wraps this is highly resistant to oil, abrasions, temperatures and vibration breakdown which were all worries to me from prior experiences with fiberglass wrap on cars I had worked on. Unlike fiberglass wrap you do not need to wet it or add any coating to help protect it, dry it lays down tight and easily after watching their how to videos.
Measuring to length and cutting before wrapping makes your life much easier.
This was my first attempt with any type of header wrap but overall it came out very well. Trouble areas I found were likely specific to my header design, my large issue came from the very large 4-1 collector on the headers. I found that it was best to use one piece just for it, making sure to the start with the stitched side away from the largest portion of the collector downward.
First attempt, I was a bit rushed and was not happy on the collector area. It was redone later.
Once you install it you will need to get your car outside and let it run for awhile as there will be plenty of smoke and burn off to come. For me this lasted for around 15 miles, I am still only a 100 miles and on hot days after a highway run I can still smell it slightly and I assume it will be gone very soon.
Make sure your car is in a well ventilated area before starting it up and burning off all the nasty stuff on the headers.
After a few spirited drives with the hood open to check that everything is running fine and have found temps have dropped significantly. Whenever I would align my car I could always feel the heat beating down on me after even the shortest of drives, with the wrap on it is no longer unbearable hot below the car. I look forward to putting more miles on the car and seeing how well it lasts but so far I have been very happy with it. This 2 inch by 50 foot sized set easily fit the headers even with a few redo’s. If you have these headers I would recommend this size.
Looking good.