Any truly effective DIY coating for headers?

VHT brand paint

In one hot rod magazine's test it performed almost as well as some specialty coatings that had to be factory applied.

I havent tried VHT in this application for years. The old stuff was a bit disappointing to me

You may remember that some of the old Jaguars had enamel or porcelain coatings on their headers. These were a bit prone to chip, but were beautiful. ( Sauereisen made some products that could be applied and baked onto metal and it looked and acted much like porcelain. Havent looked into them, either, in a long time.)

For my part, I liked to try to keep the heat going out the exhaust and not into my engine compartment. Paint wont help here. Coatings will help some, but the high temperature tape wraps would, I think, top them all in ease of application and heat retention.

The problem with the wraps are that they trap so much heat that the engine runs HOT and they destroy headers in short order due to the higher temperatures.

If they are NEW then Jet Hot is about the best you can get. Because they coat inside and out it helps prevent rusting and helps lower the underhood temps as well.

I would think that the factory ceramic coatings are best, and that might be just what Jet Hot IS.

Rusting is a different matter. If the inside of the header stays dry, it does not rust. It may have other forms of corrosion, however. I dont know about the engine running hot. I yield to your experience. I do not see how wraps would make an engine run hotter, but maybe you can educate me.

Yup, Jet Hot is a ceramic (or they also do metal sprays now as well) and it coats the interior and exterior of the pipes.

The wraps trap heat in the headers instead of allowing it to radiate out. Because the headers are made out of thin steel all the trapped heat causes problems. The constant temperature actually works to erode the steel (kind of like a rifle in a hot caliber will burn out the bore) and the wraps also collect moisture and hold it near the pipes.