how many coats of VHT?

I bought the 1500f VHT and first primed it with their gray primer than painted it black. The black paint flaked from the gray primer almost immediately. The header was first professionally sand blasted but that apparently did not help. I plan on taking the header to have it ceramic coated in the spring. This crap in the can is just that. The POR 15 stuff is even worse. The reason it MAY stick on longer is because it always stays soft. That may be OK on a car, but not on a bike where the pipes are in the front and always exposed. The POR-15 black seams to harden fine but I do not like the DEAD FLAT finish.

Once I get the bike a little further along I will go get a nice chrome kerker pipe, this is just temporary, and even if it flakes and whatnot it will look better than what i had!

this was an old dumpster dive special chrome header i scuffed up and shot with some cheap black bbq grill paint ,held up pretty good considering. :laugh:

9am53 wrote:

Once I get the bike a little further along I will go get a nice chrome kerker pipe, this is just temporary, and even if it flakes and whatnot it will look better than what i had!

It will not flake off as long as you:

1) strip the header very clean. I water sanded mine with 400 paper until it was very smooth and then cleaned it with acetone.

2) Apply black directly to header, do NOT prime as this will fall off. Put on one decent coat, enough to get good coverage and a smooth appearance then STOP.

3) let dry overnight.

4) CURE THE PAINT. This is an absolute must. If not, the paint will peel off the first time you fire it up. I have cured mine by setting them right in front of a very hot fire in a small room stove. This will smell up the house, make sure the wife is not home.

The BEST way I found was to hang the pipes from a coat hangar in the garage and then heat with a 1500W industrial heat gun. Do it gradually, shoot heat inside the pipe then on the outside and gradually rais the temp of the thing (go into both ends). Keep at it and it will cure it very well.

5) Protect the header when installing: wrap some newspaper around it and duct tape it on to keep from bashing it up as you put it on. Saves a lot of swearing.

I sandblasted and cleaned it with brake cleaner. I didnt sand it before spraying, and applied a good couple coats. Then I "cured" it with a 14000BTU/hour heater for a few hours. Then a week later (it says on the can that it's ok once the first coat is cured) I put on another coupe coats along with spraying the inside of the headers, and subsequestly cured again. We will see how she turns out in sthe spring