Randy V

KBlair (Kevin?):

$125 for the whole sheebang. Check your local yellow pages for specialty coating shops. Ceramic coatings are available in a myriad of colours.

Mike Schmidt

Depending on the color availability, the ceramic coatings would be the way to go in my opinion. The magnesium intakes on the later cars can't be ceramic coated though, because of the high temperature required to cure the ceramic coating.

KBlair

Mike, can you defin "later cars" 32v vs. 16v or what?

Randy, yes it's Kevin or Kblair or just K or "Hey stupid!", I answer to just about anything these days.

I'm thinking red ceramic intake now......

Mike Schmidt

The S4 and later ones are magnesium. The "spider" type intakes are aluminum. I've never really heard what the big, wide, early 32 valve intakes were made of.

The ceramic coatings are durable and are also very good insulators. A ceramic coated intake will help reduce intake air temperatures, which means more power and less chance of detonation. Don't expect any sort of huge power gain, just more like driving your car on a little cooler day.

Aluminum is a good bit more thermally conductive than magnesium, so those intakes would heat up the incoming air more than magnesium ones would. Maybe at least part of the reason Porsche went to magnesium?