Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Caughlin
Done this a bunch of times over the years for customers and all of my experiments with getting the coating off is less than ideal: flapper wheels just gum up and don't thoroughly remove the coating, wire wheels don't remove the coating, any sort of grinder wheel removes the already too thin used header material. The only saving grace is that the coating on a used header has already deteriorated to some extent so sometimes comes off, a brand new header tube with new coating is virtually impossible to remove. Also bear in mind that if a header tube is cracked (which is why it is being repaired in the first place), the tubing is majorly fatigued and thin so the worst of everything for welding.
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When I welded on my headers I use the flapper wheel not a hard grinding wheel so i didn't remove too much metal. I did not have the issues with the wheel clogging up. Not sure what brand of coating was on them. It was factory applied from Hooker and has held up really well over the past ten years that I have had the headers. If the headers are rusted out from the inside there is not much you can do with them.
One of my buddies had a set of coated headers that were badly rusted from the inside. We had to cut some of the tube away and replace it with a new piece. I used the same technique. His was an oddball combo so new headers had to be custom made.The repair lasted several years after that. Like you say its not always easy but it is doable