The header also came up pretty good after blasting. I then painted it with high temp (690C) black spray paint. I laid on 3 coats and after each coat, heated the pipes with the hot air gun shooting into each header pipe. This helps the paint go off - according to the instructions you are supposed to bring it up to 100-200C for a few minutes then let it cool to cure the paint before you allow the temperatures to get too high.

Then, as per David’s request, I wrapped it in 1.5’’ black header wrap. I have done this a few times now and seem to have got it down pretty good. If you’re going to do this yourself on your build I recommend doing some of your own research and watch some installation clips perhaps. But I can give a couple of tips…

First, I always have full overalls on when doing this, I hate the small glass fibres that are embedded in this stuff and it is a skin irritant. Then on top of that I wear some rubber gloves (again, this stuff is not good for the skin), and as an extra precaution, I wear a dust mask, I don't want to be breathing any of these glass fibers if they get loose. I then completely wet the entire length of the wrap (submerse it in water). This makes it less dusty/messy to deal with and perhaps better from a health perspective. But the main reason is that it lets the wrap stretch a little and it makes installation a lot easier - you can get a much tighter wrap. Plus, the first time the bike is running, the wrap will dry out and ‘shrink’ a bit to make the wrap even tighter. The last tip I can give is to use SS hose clamps (if you don't mind the look). The crappy metal cable ties that come with the wrap are absolutely useless for getting a tight tie off (I find anyway). To make sure everything holds in place, I use these worm gear drive hose clamps at each end. The nice thing with these is that after a few heat cycles of the exhaust and they expand and contract and the wrap dries and thins, you can simply tighten them! :) They come in a whole bunch of sizes so you can just buy the ones that fit your header dimensions.