Crack in My ofh
 

So this happened on the weekend. My ofh which was ceramic coated black by jet hot in Connecticut has got a crack. I love my header with OFT, I need a new one and can't get a hold of anyone at open flash. I've called non-stop and emailed. I want to know if they have any in stock. As my car is my daily driver I need her running asap. My fuel trims r out of wack because of this leak. Little help? Feeling frustrated. Want to speak to them before I buy another. I don't think my header should've alrdy have a crack and a hole in the seam.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5...psw8mtprdo.jpg


http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5...psrxkhtsqw.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5...pswwycaxxs.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5...psvirhhjl2.jpg

As much as it sucks, I'd go and give my money to a vendor who isn't too busy trying to get new platforms off the ground to deal with existing customers.

@Shiv@Openflash

I just tagged him in this thread for you but you should take heed what @Cole said

He is a bit overtaxed I think I haven't been on in a long time, but I haven't seen any updates to any of the tunes in over a year either.

I should also probably mention personally that I have had 0 issues with there OFT or OFH when i had it. It's just shiv sometimes doesn't respond. Also ceramic coating the header may or may not have voided it's warranty I'm not sure how long ago it was purchased. But from what I've seen shiv always does his part in the end i think

Have you tried to contact them via their web site or their facebook page .......??

That appears to be a manufacturing defect. Are they under warranty .. ??

Good luck.


humfrz

They're not going to help you since it was coated. Once you coat or wrap an exhaust pipe, any coverage of it from a warranty is gone.

They can (and likely will) say it was coated improperly and it is the cause of the damage.

Yea that's upsetting since it was done by jet hot. If I'm not mistaken they are one of the best in the industry if not the best. And honestly this is from the first batch. I think the coating allowed it to last longer if not it would've cracked a long time ago.

Very sad since I really liked the product and never had any other issues. Just frustrating I can't get a response at least.

I may just get a tomei UEL and call it a day

Well fuck me, bad customer service from OFT/OFH

Who would have thought??

Several threads indicate this is the case..

Was considering biting my tongue, if you ain't got nothing nice to say, don't say it at all gist but stuff it...

Personal experience indicates to me they don't know what customer service actually is, e.g. responding to queries/ concerns/ questions promptly and adequately..

But I tell you what, they respond to purchase requests damn quick..

Flame away

Use a wire brush and scrape off the coating from around the crack and take it to a welding shop or a muffler place and have them weld that crack.

Oft dudes mat replace it if you can get hold of them


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...4&postcount=22


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...7&postcount=25

If you do re weld it might be worth drilling each end of crack to relieve stress points then weld

Seriously thinking of just welding it. I should still a tiny hole with a drillbit?

Yea I'm think g this is my best option.. well least expensive route.. and I get to keep my tune as I had it all dialed in.

Yes. Drill a hole to stop the crack. I would weld a sleeve over the whole thing as well to give it more strength. Not sure how hard it will be to remove that ceramic coating but you will need to make sure you get every little bit off or it well mess with the weld.

If you're entertaining the idea of getting another, I'd recommend a JDL header. They come with a ceramic coating option and lifetime warranty for the original owner. I was going to get an OFH but the posts about them cracking seem a bit too frequent for my comfort, which is why I went with JDL.


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WELL SAID

Finally heard from shiv. Not speaking one bad word of open flash as they have not done anything wrong. I did void my warranty by getting it ceramic coated. Another thing, we modify our cars and expect to get first hand treatment. We are responsible for our actions. If this cracked I can't blame anyone but "shit happens "..i don't think it should have broke but it did. yes they are slow to respond. But I finally received a response. It is all I wanted.

I voided the warranty by ceramic coating. Will not be replaced. I will not make a fight or a fuss. Shit happens. Time now to get this fixed. I will clean this header up and weld it. Then sell it so stay on the lookout for a cheap header...

Considering I might as well get a new header I'm opting for the JDL. I have OFT so I will have to dial her up all over again. Just wanting to know if there is a dyno comparison with their UEL and EL header.

I'm opting for JDL for quality,warranty,customer service, ceramic coating, andproven power based on the reviews on this site...

Just wondering if also there are maps for JDL on OFT, if hate to go to ecutec and spend more money.

The OTS tunes will work for the JDL header.

I'm not sure how fair this assessment is. This time of year it's normal for us to operate on a 2-3 wait time. Orders are processed immediately because they are automatically through the website. Whereas I have to answer each email manually while simultaneously working on a dozen custom e-tuning jobs at any give time and still finding time to tune a few GT86s on the dyno every week. In this case, FISHBURGLAR emailed us two days ago. His email was read and replied to this morning. Here is my response to him and hopefully it will help others when thinking about ceramic coating:

"Hi Umar,
That explains it. Without coating the inside, the heat gets into the metal but then can't be shed. So operating temps for the metal are much higher than they would be with no coating. For cases where coating must be applied, it is absolutely necessary to do both inside and outside to prevent this situation. And even then, you risk the issue of the coating being applied unevenly inside and out. I have been experimenting with various coating options for over 15yrs now and the ironic thing is that the better the coating gets (better heat barrier), the worse they potentially are for the exhaust material.

Most of the headers that come with "ceramic coating" from the manufacturer is nothing more than glorified paint which has little to no hear barrier properties. But Jethot 2800 is the real deal so it needs to be applied evenly everywhere, on BOTH interior and exterior surfaces. Frankly, I'm surprised the header lasted two years with only exterior coating.

Unfortunately, I can't warranty your OFH2 given the circumstances. The best I can do is extend a $100 courtesy discount to you. I know it's not much but our margin on these headers isn't very deep. Currently we are sold out of all OFH2 and OFH3 but we have another shipment arriving next week. I believe we have a couple OFH2s that are unspoken for.

Another option would be to repair your header. But I suspect it will just crack again in another location before too long :("

Like i said once i will repeat again... open flash did nothing wrong and offered me a courtesy 100$....


PLEASE CLOSE THREAD... I DO NOT WANT OPENFLASH TO GET HURT IN THE BUSINESS. I HAVE NOT ARGUED OR SPOKE BAD OF OPENFLASH. SHIV IS PROFESSIONAL AND DID EVERYTHING HE CAN! I give open flash a round of applause.

I want to repeat OPENFLASH did nothing wrong and I give my thanks to shiv. All I wanted was a response and I got it. I was nervous I wasn't going to repeat one. After 3 days I got it. That is all I wanted. Shiv thanks for doing the best you can.. I am not here to hurt your business, nor flame your product...

Please close and delete THREAD thank you.

No worries. And there is no reason to delete this thread. If anything, it may help people when they consider ceramic coating. It's important to know that all ceramic coating and its application is not created equally.

So is wrapping the best way to go about heat protection?

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I wouldn't think so because it can trap moisture. Best bet would be to sandblast it first, then have a quality ceramic coating applied.

The sandblasting can be iffy as well. Just a little too much and you can weaken welds, thin out walls and actually even encourage rust in any little break in the ceramic. Anybody sandblasting them really needs to know their stuff.
There are pluses and minuses to any heat control on headers.

Crack in My ofh
 

There's VVT tables for the OTS maps to tailor them to the JDL UEL. It's really easy to edit them on your computer. Look here: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74754

Headers do not crack because of ceramic coatings. That's all I'm going to say, not trying to start shit.


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Headers fail because of heat, metal that is constantly heated and cooled wears and can eventually wear out. Changing the way heat transfer happens in the engine bay means you're garage engineering your car's thermal management system, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

The OE headers will fail if you put more heat into them then stock, I wouldn't be surprised if we see *more NA OE headers fail down the road, it will just take longer for them to hit that fatigue point.
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...&postcount=364
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93200


Not trying to start shit either, but promote understanding of why parts fail. Can sub-par welds be the cause? Absolutely. Poor materials? Yes. Altering the thermal environment the part operates in? Just as logical.

So many people get worried about trapped moisture. 304 Stainless will take a long time to degrade, wrapped or unwrapped. When you're driving, you will burn off all said moisture regardless.

Modern wrap technology is crazy good. Hot rods, motor bikes, etc abuse the hell out of it. The REAL concern of wrap is if oil gets on it - it can potentially become a fire hazard.

Either way, wrapping or coating a header nukes its warranty. Period.

Not a flame but I disagree with this completely (our first disagreement I think). Yes, there are a handful of threads where people complained that they had not heard something back quickly but they did receive replies. Of course I have no clue what your personal issue was so can't comment on that but since they are not a huge company with a massive staff I would expect delays if I was trying to deal with them. When you do get a response it is at least personal and right from the horses mouth not some customer service lackey that does nothing but relay info. For every single person that has claimed to have an issue on here there are probably a hundred or more with nothing but praise. People need to cut the guy some slack and have patience when dealing with any small but very popular and busy business. If this was a huge company I would agree in a heart beat but it isn't it is almost a one man show that is one of the leaders in the industry on this platform.

THIS ^ is customer service no matter how you look at it!

Hope all delays also is becuse you are working on OTS vol 3.

A properly designed and manufactured header will not fail because of thermal stresses. A ceramic coating will reduce the max temperature delta and thus stress/strain due to differences in CTE between components.

Every header I've seen crack on here has been due to bad welds. Each OFH that cracked and was documented here showed a crack propagating from a fisheye in the weld. The OEM one looks to have cracked in the heat affected zone as well. Coatings have nothing to do with it as long as they're applied correctly. That's why is recommend getting the header coated from the manufacturer. OF doesn't offer that, so I went with JDL


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If you want a header to last a long time with a good quality (read: effective) thermal coating, you need to do both the interior and exterior surface. Doing just the exterior will subject it to more thermal stress than if it were uncoated. You are basically creating a thermal barrier that prevents the header to dissipate heat.

As for reported OFH failures, I can count all of them on one hand. And we have sold close to 1000 of them in the past 4 years. And most of those failures were seen on units that were stolen and sold before they even went through the QA process which means they should not have even been sold in the first place. In this case, the unit lasted 2 years despite an improper implementation of a 2800F ceramic coating.

Years ago, we sold ceramic coated headers for the Subaru 2.5RS. The only thing was that the ceramic coating wasn't very effective. it looked nice but didn't do much in the way of thermal shielding. As a result, it was a pretty benign option. These days, there are ceramic coating options that work very well. And care must be taken in using them.

Crack in My ofh
 

Thanks for your insight shiv. I don't have any numbers to back up my gut feeling, but wouldn't tracking the car cause much higher header temps than the ceramic coating alone would? I might have to borrow an IR camera and compare external temp at the header and EGT temps between mine (coated) and my friend's car (uncoated) to see the how much of a difference we're talking about.


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Bingo. The resolution of this thread is that OP didn't properly apply the ceramic coating in a way that would prolong the life of his header and looking at it objectively it makes sense that it shortened the life of the header.

I don't think there is anybody in this thread saying coatings are bad.

If you draw a resistor network to calculate the heat transfer rates you will see that coating just the outside traps heat in the metal, you don't even have to know any equations or plug in numbers, it just doesn't allow the metal to reject heat to the engine bay, which is typically the goal, but as a consequence the header saw increased temperatures.

It's more common to see coating of the inside of the header for a reason, that's what will reduce not only engine bay temps but the temp of the metal as well lowering the thermal stresses.

https://www.centuryperformance.com/e...o-not-use.html
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...1&postcount=10

Oh absolutely! No question about the mechanism at work, but depending of the coating performance, how much are we really talking about? If the delta is 50F, that won't do a thing considering running the car hard for long will bring the header temps up hundreds of degrees anyway. If it's 150F it might be a different story. It'd be nice to see come data for us engineering pedants. :P



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Exhaust gas temps exiting the cylinder head (under load) are going to be around 1300-1600F. Temps will drop to 700-900F as exhaust leaves the tailpipe. Much of that missing heat gets transferred to the header and radiated off the outer surface of the header. If you have the outside surface of the header ceramic coated, maybe only a fraction of that heat will get radiated. So that means that *inner* surface temps will be much higher. You won't be able to measure that with a IR gun. I don't have any data but I would expect inner surface temps to easily be 200F more on a header that is ceramic coated. And the surface temps will also rise faster and reach heat saturation more frequently. This is where the extra stress comes from.

Makes sense. The IR data compared to the egt might tell a story, but I agree, the IR data itself is useless.


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Alternative to thermal coating header is to adjust radiator fan activation temps and vehicle speed setting in tune.

You biggest problem is bunderbonnet heat at low speeds in traffic, once your doing say ,60kmh plus there enough air flow to keep things cool.

Ive run uncoated header with adjusted fan settings no issues for three years

No problem, debate is a healthy part of democracy and freedom of speech, I respect that and you.


I won't go in to the sordid details of my bad customer service experience with OFT but I promise you, it wasn't good at all.
I now go to other sources(on the forum) for tuning help and advise. Seems strange that this needs to happen, going to somebody other than the vendor for help with their product?

Respect Shiv and his busy times however if you can't support your customers adequately, you need more staff to do so. It may cut in to your profit margin but will ensure positive feedback(and more sales) in the future.


Peace out

Just to add this in here. I did make a mistake making the claim that it was just coated externally to shiv as that is what I thought and remember. I called jet hot and had them pull my receipt. They had me coated inside and out.. btw not looking for a change in his response I'm past it. Just for reference

Btw car strictly daily driver. 0 track time.

Dont bother repairing it. Cut bait.

At this point, ACE, JDL and PTuning have (in my opinion) the best exhaust manifolds for the twins. Sounds like you'll want to re-invest.