Home-built Header finish-ATF!

Just to wrap up the header I built for my car (Pikesan’s garage) I thought I’d post a few pics and the video of the car running.. you can hear what it sounds like!

I build the header with help from Schoenfeld Headers and my friends at Nissan with the TIG welding skills. When I finally got it assembled, the next question was what do to for a coating? I media blasted the header and it was a shining clean silver color that looked really cool but I knew it wouldn’t last. So I took the advice I got from Schoenfeld and used ATF, yea, Automatic Transmission Fluid! I’d never heard of that, but they said it would turn the header a really cool BLUE color. Hmmm… Here’s how everything turned out.

Here’s the header I had on it before… I tried to paint this one red… I didn’t do a very good job and it turned black then white, quickly until it looked like this (Click on any image to see it full size):

Custom header coating hot rod pinto atf

Here’s the 1st video of me running the car for the first time with ATF generously rubbed on with a red rag (use something else, the rag rubbed off a little) Yea, it’s smoking! Didn’t smell too badly though…


Here’s the second video. Note that the color is starting to appear as I applied more ATF (while it was still kinda hot) and the header got hot. I was afraid it would be unevenly blue, but it’s not.

Then, here’s a couple pics of the finished header with the cool blue color… its a little darker now like a blue titanium color… I love it.Custom header coating hot rod pinto atf Custom header coating hot rod pinto atf

I reapplied the ATF about 3 times, then I haven’t done it since. I’ll do it again when I start driving it more… it’s a little cold here in AZ!I think this is a GREAT, cheap alternative to other coatings and looks better than I expected. I couldn’t have ordered that color if I had to. Let me know if you have any questions.