gluvnaa

All,

I recently had a shop restore 1969 L46 numbers correct exhaust manifolds, sandblasted and then POR15 them.

The POR15 looks great, but the application looks very thick and the numbers are no longer visible. The numbers are completely covered and you cant even see where they are supposed to be.

I'm upset as I wasn't expecting this as a end result and I'm trying to manage my expectations.

The restoration shop is locally respectable but how do I know that I have the correct parts back? I don't.

I asked the shop mgr about it, and he pretty much said 'it happens.' I was so angry that I couldn't even see straight when I saw the manifolds...

Any experience with this?
Thoughts?

Andrew

vettebuyer6369

When you brought the parts, did you say "I want to be able to see the numbers clearly when finished" or did you say, " I want my manifolds to be clean and painted and pretty?"

What seems obvious to some people (Corvette owners) is not necessarily obvious to a shop.

Some people get their engine blocks back from a shop and are horrified when they find the numbers are gone from the pad.

joewill

scrape the paint off the numbers, verify they are correct, then brush on fresh por15... simple solution... Hard to understand why it would be so traumatizing.

tfi racing

Your numbers are long gone.There is no way that shop would have used that much POR15 to cover the castings,they would use as little of the stuff as possible...

Mike Ward

If your going to paint the manifolds, why would you care about numbers?

vettebuyer6369

To be fair, though, coating your manifolds to make the car look cleaner doesn't preclude wanting to own the right numbered part.

LeMans Pete

I agree, I care about numbers but coated my exhaust manifolds. There are many that apply a clear coat so parts do nut rust.

boat196

I had a similar problem when I had manifolds ceramic coated. The manifolds looked smooth due to the thickness of the ceramic coating. I had the coating removed. I ended up having Jerry Mc Neish (sp?) restore the manifolds. Nothing like being unhappy and doing it twice.
Bob

gluvnaa

Thanks for the inputs. And, no - I didnt specify that I wanted to make sure the #'s are legible.

Lesson Learned.
I'm not sure if I'm going to scrap the POR and re-do or just move on.

Thanks again.

terry82

I would think that the por 15 will come off on its own .those manifolds get hot .

Indiancreek

Por 15 is self leveling. You should be able to see something of the numbers.

1974ta

My guess is they got overly aggressive with the abrasive blasting. If these manifolds were severely rusted that might explain the situation.

I Jet Hot coated my manifolds and yes I will take a hit from NCRS but the hit is worth it to eliminate rust IMHO. All numbers remained intact.

Now if I had a high dollar original I might have decided otherwise.

Bill

Danish Shark

Yeah, they make POR-20 for that application, but as far as I recall that's much thinner than POR-15 so it shouldn't be able to cover the casting numbers!