NitroPlate: Another Great Experience

The Bullitt has been a great car, and I've really enjoyed driving it. Probably the only area that needed a little aesthetic attention was the headers and h-pipe. When one of the headers and the h-pipe each developed a crack that needed welding off the car, I had a chance to enlist NitroPlate to refinish the headers. I tried to clean up and refinish the h-pipe myself.

Before: Yikes! Too ugly for the Bullitt. But they are JBA mid-lengths—so they are very good quality overall with a thick flange.

After: I'm digging the bling factor—not to mention the increased heat retention. The service to bead blast, bake-to-clean, and ceramic coat was $200. Shipping is tough at $80 round trip (and only NC to TN!), but NitroPlate can't help that.

The JBA h-pipe and SLP converters couldn't be NitroPlated (the extreme heat in the process would ruin the converters), so I cleaned the pipes by hand, and painted them with black exhaust paint. Not sure it will hold up, but they looked pretty good at that moment. :)

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Hot Stuff!

Here's an easy, inexpensive, and pretty quick project, that looks good IMO. The JBA 3" cat-back exhaust on the Bullitt sported a silver aluminized coating. This coating looks good for a while, but does rust over time. From the rear of the car, the pipes look just huge, and I'd prefer them to blend a bit more.

So, I decided to scuff down the cat-back pipes and paint them satin black. I used VHT Satin Black Engine Enamel over some Duplicolor Engine Enamel Primer (that I had on hand). I'd consider using the VHT without primer if I didn't have high-heat resistant primer.

In the foreground is the aluminized pipe after cleaning only.
In the background is a cleaned, primed, and painted pipe.

Within a couple hours I drove the car over 200 miles, in the rain at times, and the paint didn't flake or discolor.

The pipes blend in better under the car when they are black.

Update 11/06/2011: After 2,000 miles of driving, here are a couple pix of the painted cat-back exhaust pieces.

The tailpipes remain black (albeit dirty from driving in the rain).

But the mufflers and pipes before the mufflers are burning up the paint. A little disappointing.

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Out of this World

I received my JBA 1650 headers from NitroPlate in Nashville with a new Bright Silver ceramic coating. The headers were stainless steel, and had thick 3/8" flanges (requiring 1" header bolts instead of the usual 3/4"). They had been fitted to the car by the previous owner by denting two pipes, although a fresh set of motor mounts would have helped more. Over the past 5 years, the original stainless finish had discolored, as stainless does, so an aerospace-derived ceramic coating made sense to brighten things up permanently.

The finished pipes look great and ran $180, which seems like a good deal. The gaskets are Percy XX Carbon for square-port small block Fords. I've heard they work well, so figured I'd try them out. I'm also reusing the 1" Stage 8 locking header bolts.

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Exhausting, Yet Electrifying...

I picked the car up yesterday from the muffler shop. He did a great job getting the Magnaflow exhaust to fit. The fuel tank required some persuasion to get the tailpipe around it safely, which I was expecting to some extent. Sounds good too, much quieter but still a good rumble when I get on it.

I almost forgot: we start the car and after 5 seconds it starts to smoke, and I mean smoke out of the exhaust. We wait ten minutes and it's still smoking, maybe worse. I decide to pay and leave after we figure the pipes have some oil or grease in them from manufacturing and assembly and it should burn off. Maybe a quarter mile from the shop with a huge plume of smoke from the car, I get on it and see an object shoot out one of the tailpipes and roll along the highway with blue smoke all over it. I think a shop rag or something ended up in the pipes and burnt up before getting ejected out the back. Problem solved, and in spectacular fashion no less! No more smoke.

With the fresh battery in the car, I swung by Advanced Auto Parts and they tested the alternator on the car, just to see if I had figured out the electrical gremlin from the other day. Wasn't putting out enough voltage and actually dropped when I revved the engine. Hmm. I bought a new regulator for $15 (to replace the other new one) and swapped it on. Brought the car back to them, after the swap and after trickle charging the battery, to check the alternator. The battery has 12.5v at standstill with car off vs. 11.5v yesterday. With car running at idle the volts were still 12.5 vs. 11.5 yesterday. I decided to rev the engine to 2000rpm and sure enough the volts went past 14, unlike yesterday when they dropped with higher rpms. So partly, I had a bad regulator.

But also it appears that the March underdrive pullies don't charge the battery suffieciently at idle. Not sure what to do here yet. But definitely keeping the jumper cables in the trunk!

Chris' and James' Excellent Adventure

It was supposed to be simple. But just like Harold and Kumar on their way to White Castle, things aren't always so simple... I had a 9:30 appointment at RJs Muffler and Custom Piping shop in Raleigh this morning.

My buddy James was in his pickup and I was in the Mustang. The drive down the highway was great, kinda loud, but the car had great acceleration. A bit of vibration on hard acceleration, not sure if it is motor mount- or driveshaft- or rear pinion angle-related yet.

We get to the shop after 15 miles or so, but nothing, no shop. RJ moved--in the past two months. We call him but he's not answering.

So we drive home. As soon as I arrive I call RJ, and get a hold of him. He gives me the new address and James drives back to my house.

I hop in the Mustang, turn the key, and nothing. Hmm, maybe that's why the tach got all funky on the drive home? So we jumpstart the Mustang and I hit the road.

Ten minutes into the trip I see the Temp gauge climbing towards "H" with no electric fan running. Yikes! I pull over in a parking lot. No fan. Let it cool for a few minutes and try to start it. Nothing. We try to jumpstart it. Nothing! I figure the car has been driving on the alternator since the battery was so dead. The electric fan is hooked up to the battery and solenoid directly, so I think that's why it didn't come on the first time, but we'll see.

We pull the battery, leave the car open with no windows in some random office parking lot, we set off and find a NAPA four miles away on James' iPhone. Go there and exchange the sealed Orbital battery (free!) and drive back to reinstall. Goes right in, turn the key, and starts right up. Backing up, my shoe slips off the clutch and I catapult backwards before it stalls out. (Gotta get this thing insured!)

So we get to RJs at noon (!), and spend some time walking around the area to kill time. We drop off James' truck at Dent Wizards to get a door ding removed for $99. We buy (cheap) food at Cookout after standing in line for half an hour. We check out Priscilla's adult store next door to Cookout after driving by it for years and not stopping. (Seems to cater to the ladies mainly.) We drive go-karts at Adventure Landing. I get whiplash when some 80-pound kid barrels his kart into the back of my kart as I was parking in the staging lanes when we all were done. We go back to RJs, but he's gonna need more time... So RJ has the car tonight, and I am supposed to get it back tomorrow. Woo hoo!

Stainless Exhaust Preview

I bought an exhaust kit from Magnaflow (#15815). It's all stainless steel, with an x-pipe, 2.5" and semi-polished. I bought it from PerformancePeddler.com and it was $349 shipped, which seems like a steal of a deal.





I also bought some Magnaflow tailpipes that are 12" long and 3" in diameter (2.5" in) with a rolled edge, and a 15 degree angle for exiting the rear GT valance cleanly. Should look great with the underside of the car being detailed pretty well.





Here's the "before" pic of the hardware package with the Magnaflow kit.





I dropped off the clamps and brackets to be zinc plated at Surtronics, and here's what I received...





A set of JBA 1650 mid-length headers were already on the car and from the massaging required to get them to fit I'm probably not going to deal with replacing them any time soon.