Swain Coating

Tbirdsc Colonel

Registered User
I just recently had my headers swain coated because I am very dissatisfied with Jet Hot. I have not been able to use them yet because well my motor is else where at the moment.

I am contemplating doing the heads, pistons and skirts. Any opinions on this? I have only heard opinions from there website, so they might be a little biased. I just know alot of us are having problems with engine bay heat and I believe this would help although Im not to sure. Its not like anyone realistically could do a before and after. I was just wondering on people opinions on this matter. They are saying 4-6% more power and more durability? but its about 500-600 dollars and I just dont know about it. Durablity is affected by everything, so it could just be conditional even comes down to luck in somecases (material quality) or just envirement. Anyway any opinions welcome
 
Tbirdsc Colonel said:
I just recently had my headers swain coated because I am very dissatisfied with Jet Hot. I have not been able to use them yet because well my motor is else where at the moment.

I am contemplating doing the heads, pistons and skirts. Any opinions on this? I have only heard opinions from there website, so they might be a little biased. I just know alot of us are having problems with engine bay heat and I believe this would help although Im not to sure. Its not like anyone realistically could do a before and after. I was just wondering on people opinions on this matter. They are saying 4-6% more power and more durability? but its about 500-600 dollars and I just dont know about it. Durablity is affected by everything, so it could just be conditional even comes down to luck in somecases (material quality) or just envirement. Anyway any opinions welcome

There is an excellent post on this from times past, do a search, or just wait a little while and the expert, Damon will jump in here with information

Ken
 
I have my combustion chambers, exhaust valves and ports swain coated. Not sure what I can add except that I did melt a piston by running lean and the heads were fine. I'm confident if the pistons were coated, I probably wouldn't have melted 2 of them. Take it for what it's worth.
 
I had the full arsenal of swain tech thermal barrier coatings on my motor. Everything from the pistons to valves to exhaust ports, I also used thier high flow coatings in my intake and intake ports of the heads. Then there is also the moly coatings for the skirts, you can coat the crank and so on...Oh also used the heat dispersant coating on the exterior of my intake and thermal barrier on the bottom side.

Anytime you can reduce hot spots (coating valve faces, combustion chambers and piston tops with a thermal barrier coating) reduce intake air temp (thermal barrier on lower side of intake, exhaust ports and thermal dispersant on top part of intake) and reduce friction (coating of bearings and crank to shed oil) you can make more power more efficiently..I dont have time now but I will post some pictures later.

More boost, more revs and more timing are benifits....

Also look into Evans waterless coolant for the ultimate in detonation reduction along with the swaintech coatings..I;m dead serious
 
There are too schools of thought on this, especially regarding forged pistons.

#1 - go fo the moly coating on the skirts. It's coming stock on some pistons now, so you know that means it's worth it.
#2 - I'm all about coating the piston crown with a heat reflective coating. I recently heard of one machine shop recommending not to coat the crowns of forged pistons.

Their thought is that by coating the crown, you reduce the heat the piston will see, and don't allow the top of the piston to fully expand as it's designed. Forged pistons are designed to grow at a specific rate and shape in the combustion chamber for a given heat and RPM. Decrease the heat and their theory is that you impact the ideal temp for the piston.

Now I don't see it that way. I can see that if a piston is made for high rpm and is run in a low rpm motor (like ours) then there could be an issue. But piston crown heat is going to be fairly constant regardless of the coating. The goal of the coating is to focus combustion pressures and heat into a tighter space improving combustion efficiency, as well as protecting the piston from detonation events.

So there are the two thoughts.

And if I had the money, I would have done exactly what DamonSlowpokeBaumann has done. There is simply nothing it can hurt, and everything it can help.
 
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