I haven't found any HT paint that survives on headers. Ceramic coating is great but expensive. Chrome is an option but very expensive if done right - used pipes are rarely accepted for chroming and the cost for them is astronomical if you can even find a place that will do them. Pollution regulations have shut down most chrome shops, to follow the regulations costs a bundle and that goes into the price of work from the remaining ones.
Wrap looks like sh1te as a rule: there are bikes that it looks good on but they're few and far between, the wrap was expertly applied with perfect overlap and invisible retention. And none of them are SOHC4s - the 4-4 ones look like someone's hiding rusted out pipes and there's just no way to wrap a 4-2 or 4-1 header that doesn't look like ass.
My personal bike's headers (ancient Kerker 4-1) are, after many failed HT paint efforts burned off (I used to fall for the marketing BS), just bare steel. They rust to dark red if the bike is left in the rain but turn to very dark brown once up to running temperature. After 10+ years of this they are still mechanically sound.
Corrosion is a weird beast. Paint and particularly chrome can accelerate corrosion: once there's any damage the tiny area of exposed steel will be rapidly attacked... with chrome, the electrochemical potential between the chrome and steel causes extreme corrosion of exposed steel - this is why cheap chrome plating goes spidery then flakes off rather quickly. Really good chrome is very expensive and needs thick layers of different metal plating before the top chromium layer mostly for mechanical protection so a ding that cracks the very brittle chromium layer doesn't expose bare steel. Honda, to their credit, did exceptionally good chroming on their headers and often used double tubes to reduce surface temperature. Aftermarket headers, not so great.
