I guess there are heat paints and heat paints, but before I had a new pipe made for my Suzy GS1000S, I sandblasted the rusty old pipe, lightly "etch primed" it with a "zinc heavy" etch primer called "Super etch", then painted it with Motospray 1500 F flat silver, let it air dry, fitted it to the bike, ran the engine for 30 minutes at idle in my driveway to "bake" it, (and to avoid baking bugs to the fresh paint) then switched it off and let it cool and cure for a day.
It looked like the ceramic silver coating that I've seen here, and stayed on the pipes for a couple of years until they were replaced, and never rusted, although the heat from some 140+ Mph runs baked a sort of "gold" tint into the pipes, which looked pretty cool. Like most paints though, heat paints are only as good as their preparation.
If you paint over dirty, rusty, or oily pipes, don't expect the paint to last very long. Also, the most critical area is the first 6 inches (no dirty pun intended) particularly the area around the 90 degree bend, maybe because that's where the headers are their thinnest, but after about a foot from your exhaust ports, you can pretty much paint them with house paint and it'll last pretty well.
If you want shiny pipes, then you'll either need to get them ceramic coated or re-chromed, if you can find a plater who'll do it, most won't want to risk your pipes internal carbon and oil etc contaminating their chrome baths. I don't like the look of heat wrap either, my choice would be the ceramic " brushed chrome" finish, it looks very nice inded! Cheers, Terry.
