Please subscribe to the YouTube channel if you have not already.  Also, find us on Facebook and Instagram as Purist Motorsports.  Don’t forget to like and share our content.

I’ve always struggled with putting a new part on an old car.  The OCD in me just hits hard I guess.  The new part sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when it comes to mechanical parts. The old and the new just don’t mix well when it comes to looks.  The greasy, dirty, road grimy, oxidized parts start bothering me. 

In our most recent video we are replacing the old Flowmaster exhaust with a now discontinued cat back that we pieced together with new and used parts.  So I’ve entered the same dilemma I described above.  Take a look at the video to see what we’re doing. 

As you can see in the video we have worked on the exhaust pipes to “take some mileage” off of them.  However, it takes a mixture of a couple different paints to get the look I think is more natural.

Prior to paint I took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the tailpipes to get as much rust and grime off as possible.  You could go a step further and use some Evaporust or similar to completely get rid of every morsel.  These weren’t too bad so the Brillo pad took care of 90% of it.  

You can see in the pictures below of the “before” and “mid stream” process. The issue I have is that the tailpipe is just a little too bright and shiny.  This is a chrome based paint that emulates aluminum.  There are several brands that look similar to this.  Other brands can be too dull or dark.  So I mixture of a couple brands seems to suit me.  It’s kind of like a recipe in paint.

The paint above is just a high temp engine paint in chrome.  Duplicolor was the brand. Rustoleum makes a high temp and Think Krylon does as well.  Either way, this is a basic “chrome” emulating paint. Which honestly doesn’t even come close to looking like chrome.  With it being so shiny, I want to dull it down a little.  The product I used on that was Eastwood’s Aluma Blast paint.  It’s darker and has more of a cast look when sprayed on cast parts.  All I did was dust this as a layer over the chrome paint I put down. Just enough to take off that brightness but not enough to remove it all either.  

Below you can see the pipe on the left as the finished product and the one on the right was a mid stream piece.  

You can see a full comparison of old and new in the video above. There’s a part that shows the whole exhaust we’re putting on the car.