Welcome to Bamford Rose, and it’s forum chat time. This week, it’s a chat that I’ve picked up on where someone is asking about upgraded manifolds and asks, “I’ve heard a ceramic coating is recommended, otherwise the engine bay could overheat.” Within the last week someone has phoned here and asked pretty much the same question. And in both cases, I think I can identify where the question is stemming from, which means, where I previously wouldn’t have really spoken about this, I will speak about it now in a forum chat, because some other vendor, some other people’s kit is suffering problems and my kit is being tarred with the same brush, when clearly our kit is leaps and bounds ahead.

So, as we can see in this video here, unfortunately, as someone has completely frazzled their starter motor because the right-side exhaust manifold, which the standard factory exhaust manifold did have heat shielding on for a reason, this particular exhaust manifold has 0 heat shielding on.

We have got the starter out. The starter is now out. Let’s go in here so you can see where the starter used to be. It’s up in this space, and the exhaust manifold was also up in the space as well. So, the issue that I had with my original starter was that it got burnt up. I mean, even 2 hours after the car had been sitting when the engine was bone cold, the starter was still actually radiating heat. That’s definitely a bad sign.

So, let’s try and find out why this starting motor is becoming hotter than the sun. So, here’s a still picture from another part of the video. And you can see that there is a Rizla paper which separates the exhaust manifold from the start motor. Whoever supplied that manifold without a heat shield and whoever fitted that exhaust manifold are so close to the starter without a heat shield, both of them either have their intellects measured by Rizla papers, or they were smoking the contents of the Rizla papers.

Here’s what a properly-engineered kit looks like. The Bamford Rose kit has substantial heat shielding on the right-side exhaust manifold. And this goes beyond the heat shielding that the factory put on in the first place.

So, in answer to this question on the particular forum there, no, the manifolds do not need ceramic coating. I think ceramic coating is quite an expensive process, and although being quite exotic, it just isn’t called for here.

The other left side of the engine needs no heat shielding whatsoever because there are no ancillaries on that side. It is just the ancillaries on the right side of the engine that do need protecting from heat.

I just don’t get this. It’s not for customers to ask the question, “Oh, do I buy this upgraded exhaust manifold, and then should I ceramic coating or apply a heat shielding?” This is down to the vendor of the equipment. How can you release an exhaust manifold which will fry ancillaries, which is only separated by the thinnest slither of Rizla papers of an air gap between the manifold and this particular ancillary, the starter motor?

It is a defect in the product not to come with a heat shield. And for anybody that’s ever had one of these products fitted that does not have a heat shield on the exhaust manifold, I would suggest you get back in touch with whoever you bought that kit from. Whoever installed it for you as part of a contract of supply and fit, that they take your car back in, remove the exhaust manifold, and fit a heat shield. If not, as was the case with this poor chap, Rich, in the video here, it means running without a heat shield is inevitably going to end up in start motor failure, or worse other ancillaries which are fried.

A starter motor for these cars is about £350. And if you watch that video there with Rich, you can see the change, and it’s probably going to be about a 4 or 5-hour job, which in the UK, at least, with taxes means that you’re not going to escape a £1000 bill.

This is a conversation I have with quite a few of owners which have this product. For some reason, whoever fits this kit to their car, or if the car was passed to another owner, I always see the car back here for an ECU remap, because it seems that the industry is incapable of remapping the ECU on these cars properly to give fault-free and smooth drivability and actually deliver more spark fueling, get more power, the purpose of an ECU remap. Hope you enjoyed that forum chat. As ever, it really helps us if you can like, comment, and subscribe, and we’ll see you on the next one.