Triumphrat

hobbes80

I'm a big fan of the look of wrapped headers. From what I've learned in the car world, wrapping your headers can reduce the heat in the engine bay and preserve the life of your headers by being a barrier to surface rust.

I've been reading my brains off the last 4 days on this forum and there are a folks that are passionately for wrapping headers and those who are passionately against it.

I would like to hear all the pros and cons both ways of what is good about them vs what is bad about them.

Thanks in advance-
-Hobbes

MAR

From my point of view, there is very little to gain from wrapping them. I have not actually seen a dyno comparison indicating any increase in HP. I suspect that the big draw is the look.
I had them on a race Ducati that was fully faired. I wrapped them to protect the fiberglass as the pipes were truning the glass black. What I noticed was that the wrapping held oil and took a long time to burn off. When they got wet it smoked. They never looked clean. Although now they come in black so they should hide oil and dirt.

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zs-cafe

I also love the look of wrapped headers. However I have heard that by wrapping the headers you are also retaining heat that would otherwise be dissipated just out side the combustion chamber. In turn raising combustion chamber temp. Which may possibly cause damage to the exhaust valve seat. Now I don't know if this is true, it does sound plausible.
I hope that some of our more knowledgeable members will chime in.

dirtydutch

it's for looks. any gains are minute to nonexistent. definitely keeps things cooler but performance gains do not exist much if any.

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wolverine

Legs stay cooler.

Header and Engine stay hotter.

Which one is more important depends on the driver

p.s. consider also that when you remove the wrapping the headers are really not good-looking, lot of elbow grease to turn them as before.

bnugent

I've wrapped mine and love the look, especially as the black cloth becomes faded. I agree w/DirtyDutch - it's all aesthetic. (in a good way)

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hobbes80

The pipe's i'd wrap wouldn't be the stocker chrome pipes, but a set of powder coated black pipes. I suppose it would accomplish the same look that the powder coating does and if there is the potential to damage the valves then I'd obviously steer away from it.
most folks that recommend wrapping say that the radiant heat reduction also keeps heat away from the motor but I don't know how much impact that will have at 50+mph when the wind is doing good job of just that.

roxythruxton

I wrapped mine . After so my bike dues tend to run smoother . Tan's the best way to go . It gets all icky and all but it still looks cool. Black and gray fades.
It's all on you really . Ceramic is another good way to go as well.

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BillTheCat

I like the look but be warned I wrapped a set on a Honda one time and the wrapping held water enough to rust the pipes if you live and ride in a humid part of the world you may prefer Ceramic coating.

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hobbes80

I like the D&D 2:1 exhaust (though I'd prefer 2:2), which is already ceramic black coated. I'd wrap the headers and not the silencers, so it'd look like wrapped, then flat black, with the chrome tip..

Makes me wonder if the wrapping may be bad for the ceramic.... hrm.. i just love the look.