It's not cheap like paint but Cerakote is the real deal ceramic coating. It's an ambient-cure finish meaning it requires no oven for curing. It's good to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 Celsius for the logical rest of the world). The best part is that it's available in tons of colors. No, I take that back: the best part is that it doesn't require oven curing and it
works.
Cerakote also makes an oven-cure ceramic coating. It cures at 500F (260C) for an hour so any powder shop can cure it for you. The rep at the SEMA show assured me that there's no durability difference between the air-cured and oven-cured coatings. The primary difference is that the oven-cured coating is available in a high-gloss finish, to which I say big deal.
It goes on as a liquid. As I understand it the material is self catalyzing. Water isolates the catalyst from the resins so as it evaporates the catalyst and resin bind and react. The rep maintains that there's no reason to pay anyone to ceramic coat anything unless you want to have someone else do it. And it costs a hell of a lot less than having someone ceramic coat parts by the conventional way.
I know one person who's run it. It's been on for probably two years. The car doesn't see that much use (a few thousand miles a year) and the manifolds are even perfectly gray still. The only caveat is that the surface has to be absolutely clean and free of rust. But that's the case with any coating.
The rep told me that a quart would do a pair of V-8 headers and then some--maybe even a whole exhaust system. I would imagine that a pint would do a Volkswagen header and muffler. A quart is $130 and a pint is $70.
It also ships worldwide.
www.cerakotehightemp.com