[Franz E92]

Members, wanted to get benefit of collective experience / wisdom - I am thinking about purchasing AFE exhaust headers w/cat for my 2013 328i N52 with 37,xxx miles. Planning to keep car as I enjoy the heck out of it so looking to make some mods. Already have 3SIM, tune and euro box set up. Not expecting huge gains, but possible better throttle response and sound. My questions:

1. AFE says should not get a CEL or if occurs, should disappear once MAF and O2 sensors settle into new flow. Agree / disagree?

2. Thinking about getting jet-coat or cerakote to reduce heat in engine bay. Benefit / no benefit?

Thanking you in advance for your thoughts / input. Best!!!

[e90yyc]

Can’t actually answer your question because I don’t have this product, but I am curious why you want to go with catted headers? Asking solely because catless headers seem to be the more popular choice.

If there wasn’t such a difference in cost, I’d have looked at these. Ended up going with catless headers, which for my preferences are probably the inferior product.

This is kind of a non answer, but I would not expect a CEL. I’m not familiar with AFe’s claims, but would think this product is geared toward people who want to maintain emissions compliance while still gaining some power. If not, then I’m struggling to see what benefit they have, other than a reduction in harmful emissions relative to catless.

Regarding the coatings: You’d see some difference, but I’m not familiar with product-to-product differences. The magnitude of the reduction will depend on coating thickness, whether external only (assuming yes since they’re catted?) and obviously its thermal properties (particularly emissivity).

All that to say: You’d be swapping in a functionally equivalent part, so IMO you’re not introducing new heat-management issues. If it helps, my car has almost 250k miles, and I’ve had raw-dog catless headers for 35k miles of that. Other than some very minor deterioration of the corrugated plastic conduit in which the AC compressor wires run, I haven’t noted any obvious heat-related concerns. (And what I noticed was present before I installed the headers.)

If it was my car, the decision to coat would hinge mostly on cost…

[Franz E92]

Thanks for your response and sharing your experience. As you suspected, I am going with AFE catted headers primarily for emissions compliance and hopefully, some lift in performance. I agree with your logic that stock headers and AFE likely have same temperature profile and heat generating characteristics. I was asking about cerakote coating as means to keep temperature down, albeit likely imperceptible. I live in Scottsdale, AZ so summer time temperatures can get nadty and N52 already runs hot as normal operating condition. Much appreciated!!!!

[3DIRTY8]

I wanted to get the same high flow aFe’s but I can’t justify spending the 2k when there’s $200 catless headers or the same high flow 300cel headers on alibaba for $500