Chrome Downpipes

[chas]

Hi All

I thinking of getting my exhaust downpipes on my m900ie chrome plated,
So before I remove them I would like to hear all of your comments good or bad.

Cheers all

Charlie

[A Yerbury]

obviously would look fine n dandy but keeping on top of the cleaning?! moving to texas may help!

[Paranoid Dave]

obviously would look fine n dandy but keeping on top of the cleaning?! moving to texas may help!

or just don't ride it, it'll spoil the look.

[Nigel C]

you could get them polished at a reasonable price for the same effect there is another post on here with a good example can't find it right now .
or good old elbow grease and do it yourself for free

[A Yerbury]

thinking of plating how about nickel -if that can be done? or a chrome look powdercoat may be more practical. m900dom had his downs polished and..well, looked like chrome I spose! a belly pan may help as they cover the underside which u dont see but leave the front exposed that u do?

[slob]

What about teflon...for that nice wipe clean finish? although I've never seen anyone offering the service.

[Duncan]

Right then.

Chrome will go blue very rapidly for the first 6" from the head and you'll end up asking if vinegars OK to clean off blueing on chrome. This is why many chrome pipes are twin skinned. Black chrome?? not sure about this stuff.

Nickels a nice yellow but polished stainless is more pleasant. This will also go blue as nickel is used in the chroming process anyhow.

Stainless is great and if you get the pipes polished then it takes progrssively less work to keep them nice. They do go straw brown and get **** burnt on them too but so will other finishes, at least you can go back to bare metal without damage.

Powder coat is stoved at 200c and extended operation at over 180c is no good for the stuff, your downpipes will get hotter than this. I have some thermocouples and a data logger and I'll attach them to my downpipes in the next day or two. I reckon it would last till the end of the road before falling off.

Wet sprayed heat resistant paint - manages to look ****e in about 5 minutes flat. On stainless you will also have a problem with the acidic etch prime constituent in the paint even keying to the metal and it may just peel off.

What about cow ****. Once that bakes on its impossible to shift due to the magic ingredients of grass, buttercups, stomach juices and e-coli. Maybe Didge has opinion on this.

[Duncan]

What about teflon...for that nice wipe clean finish? although I've never seen anyone offering the service.


Theres a place in Hinckley and several in Northampton. I'm playing around with Teflon on some heaters but its heat resistance is only moderate (about 250c) the food in the pan dispersing the heat and preventing it vanishing. It does fume a bit from new if you get it very hot, containing PTFE(this is poisonous to budgies)

Theres also vitreous enamel which is stoved at 800c. Normally its coated onto special steel (vitrosteel) and thats hard to get in small quantities. Its what they put on grille pans etc. Theres only a few cooker manufacturers use it in their own machines and about 3 subcontract coaters left in the UK. Its pricey and being glass based is hard but brittle.

[A Yerbury]

wow!!!! there u have it, toss up between a good polishing or a resilient layer of buttercups and bull****! I think I'll leave mine au naturel, how did Bryon do his?
Alex.

[spacemonkey]

What about Blueing or Parkerising? I don't know much about heat and metallurgy, but we do this to guns and they sure pack some heat. Well??

[A Yerbury]

we do this to guns? what? u have your own A team as well as day job?!

[Duncan]

Blueing is a heat treatment process where yu heat something in an oven to about 600c and it oxidises naturally. Parkerisisation is a chemical blacking process based on Manganese or zinc, its most suited to carbon steels and is good for about 200c continuous with occasional forays a bit hotter. Its OK for guns but done properly is expensive. You are actually putting an inferior finish onto stainless, why when you can get it polished.???

Theres a firm called rigidised metals over London way that do coloured stainless and its really impressive stuff. But a lot of the finishes are glorified lacquers that give the impression of colour and under heat it doesnt last.

The issue of heat resisting finishes is the bain of my life in heating appliances. I wish someone would bring out a water based heat resisting paint, but they cant do it....yet...

[Nigel C]

Anodising???

[spacemonkey]

The issue of heat resisting finishes is the bain of my life in heating appliances. I wish someone would bring out a water based heat resisting paint, but they cant do it....yet...


Oh, I'm sure there's a Boffin somewhere in a shed in England somewhere working on this...

[A Yerbury]

yup, and he will miss neptune by 2 furlongs. god bless brits in sheds. seriously dunc u sound like you know a scary amount about this is there another metal or substance that would do a better job than stainless? and what would the inevitable costs be?
Alex-good at art but **** at chemistry.

[spacemonkey]

I bet you wished you'd paid more attention now instead of staring out the window at the playground instead, eh?

[Duncan]

Stainless is great, I love the stuff, it has great properties and can be a thing of great beauty. There are various grades that are better than the boiler plate stuff that Ducati use, its a question of cost and application. Many aftermarket headers are much better quality and you get a performance improvement too.
Go and look at a Jap bike sometime and marvel at how lucky you are compared to the rusty mild steel crap they send over here. They must have some of the shoddiest exhausts on anything and when the fairing comes off they look ****e. (or buy a Jap import cos they come with stainless as standard)
You could go to more exotic materials such as Titanium but that brings with it high price, limited availability of certain sizes, and mechanical issues with the fabrication and its resistance to stresses such as vibration. There are people will fabricate in this for you and its become popular for silencers. If you know someone works for an aerospace firm then you may get some real exotic alloys but we are talking the real world here.

[Pedro]

Just get a bellypan, they hide all manner of nasty sights......

[Byron Kauffman]

I removed and cleaned my pipes with scotchbright pads and lacquer thinner then painted them with PJ1 header paint. Seems to hold up fine as it has been done since the beginning of the year. I am on the road now riding the monster and did 700 miles day one and 300 the second day. The paint still looks good after many heat cycles and rain and slop from the road. They stay one color and the dirt cleans off easier than the factory finish of the stainless.
My hands dont work well right now from the numbness after that long ride. I will post a update and pics when I get home next week.

[spacemonkey]

I used a scourer-pad-on-stick that has mortuary degreaser in the handle (you know, those washing up thiniges you get in Tescos) and it came up reasonable. It now looks like metal instead of rust. Quick and easy...

[M900Dom]

you could get them polished at a reasonable price for the same effect there is another post on here with a good example can't find it right now .
or good old elbow grease and do it yourself for free

What like these Babies !!!

You want shiny.....
We can do very shiny;)

http://pic5.picturetrail.com/VOL93/2039551/3951420/48795564.jpg

John At www.jppolishing.co.uk did them for me, along with the link pipes for the silencers, side stand and a few other bits and pieces

Give him a call, a very helpful chap, very reasonable prices too

HTH
Dom:D

[DesmoDog]

thinking of plating how about nickel -if that can be done? or a chrome look powdercoat may be more practical. m900dom had his downs polished and..well, looked like chrome I spose! a belly pan may help as they cover the underside which u dont see but leave the front exposed that u do?

Or even better, I saw a 998 with gold plate!!

[A Yerbury]

the rickmans had nickel didnt they? very nice colour, we have pj at work so Ill do that I think.

[Mr Cake]

I had the link pipes to my "Cliffs" polished up. Looked great!

Dave

[Nickj]

Ceramics!! Space shuttle uses tiled ceramics so they'll handle the temperature ... I just need a teapot with a big diameter spout, a few yards of gaffer tape and a pot of exhaust goop... retires to shed to consider the possibilities

As I ride all year round (bar two days last year due to too much snow and one to flooding) I'd love some headers that shrug off the elements. So I'm watching with interest

[Shandy]

I had the link pipes to my "Cliffs" polished up. Looked great!

Dave

Crickey is it post on two year old threads day...lol

Polished my pipes myself and they came up great, just takes a bloody long time.

[jerry]

I got the pipes polished on both my bikes looks nice and yellows slightly once heated aesy to clean.

[Nickj]

http://www.camcoat.u-net.com/Exhausts.htm

[Blah blah]

http://www.camcoat.u-net.com/Exhausts.htm

Bling, bling, they do coloured coatings !! mmm nice... I was gong to polish mine up, but now, dunno.

[Black Ferret]

Bling, bling, they do coloured coatings !! mmm nice... I was gong to polish mine up, but now, dunno.

Mr Blah did you take this any further? Are they still trading? Website hasen't been updated for a while.