| Author | Message | ||
     Kowpow225 |
Ok. I'm ready to get the upper body workout. What's the best brand of blue removal you've used or are familiar with otherwise? Jet-Hot on the headers will have to wait a little longer. | ||
| Coolice |
I just spent a little time last week using Mothers aluminum/chrome polish and applied it with paper towels. Then used a soft cloth rag to polish it off. So far the pipes look great. Anybody else? | ||
| Glitch |
Scotch Brite. | ||
| Volkswagenfreaky |
tripoli compound applied with buffing wheel. Makes it shine like crazy.  | ||
| Blake |
Scotch brite pad. Should take you about 15 minutes total.  | ||
| BadS1 |
Scotch brite....no thanks.Try Eagle One medal polish.Not the wadding but the cream.Apply with paper toweling and remove and polish with Terry cloth.Coolice it works very,very well doesn't it that way. | ||
| Black9 |
I used Wheelbrite spray on cleaner for aluminum wheels when I wash the bike, on the block and the headers...spray on, rinse off! The cylinders look new and it takes the blue and gold off the pipes, although Iwould be careful of letting it sit on the plastic ...this pic is after a cleaning, and a couple hundred miles of running BTW the bike has over 2000 miles on it in this pic.  | ||
| Nedwreck |
The pipes on my CityX were blue when they rolled it out of the box and they got worse from there. Mothers polish wouldn't touch it. Neither would Scotch Brite. I'm thinking 400 grit sandpaper next. Man are they ugly compared to the others I've seen. Bob | ||
| Captainplanet |
You can make them very shiny and silver in color using polishing compound. The easist way is to use an old tube sock. Put the polish on the sock, wrap the sock around the pipe, then pull back and forth on both ends of the sock. This lets you get the back side of the pipe as well. The pipe will blue again after you ride though. | ||
| Daves |
Just leave them that pretty, I actually ride my bike, blue and gold. There, wasn't that easy,didn't cost anything. Gives you more time to ride! Dave | ||
| Whitetrashxb |
i'm still trying to get mine to turn blue  } | ||
| Gowindward |
The beautiful straw color of the headers was something I liked about the 12R when I looked at them on the showroom. I like it now that it has some miles on it and the different hues from the heat move down the pipes. I think it adds character to the bike and the colors just go with the 12's color scheme. | ||
| Bonesbuell |
Mothers polish and a kitchen pot scrubber. The type of scrubber with the rough green surface. Unless badly colored blue, it actually takes very little elbow grease and pipes come out silver. Remove and polish with Terry cloth. Then after a ride or two they'll go back to original gold. | ||
| Buellman39 |
I had the exhaust on my ducati coated from a company called HPC in semi-polished aluminum. I rode the bike two years and the exhaust looks the same as it did when I got it back from the coater. This winter I,m going to send my xb12r exhaust and have it done. It takes about two weeks to have done. They also have red, blue, yellow and black colors.  | ||
| Racertroy |
i actually use the blue/gold coloration to gage how good my ride was...if the color line has moved down the pipe...i certainly had more smiles per mile... | ||
| Lazyme21 |
Mine have been ceramic coated for a while now and not only does it look awesome, but it helps with the heat coming off the headers as well. | ||
| Edean |
You tell'em, Daves! Be blue, Be proud!  | ||
| Jeremyh |
For some reason i don't mind the heat or the color, even in 105 degree weather. Although i would like to get the 05 yellow plastic and have yellow headers. | ||
| Deerhunter17 |
I also like the stock appearance, but I don't like the blue. I accidently found a way to keep it new, stock looking. I used a light gage wire cup wheel and a variable speed drill. I "Lightly" brushed the pipes with the wire wheel, but inadvertly brushed too hard in one spot, and rubbed it to silver. Dissapointed, I brushed the remainder of the " visable area ) of the pipes to silver. I have this stuff called corrosion preventative oil, a golden oily spray, which I decided to spray on the pipes. I fired the Bike up to cook off the oil, and viola, they looked brand new! This was at 5000 miles. I have 6000 on now, and they look like they did after only a few hundred miles. I,m gonna be given it good detailing before long, and will try that trick again to verify it continues to work. | ||
| Steveford |
Does this blueing mean that it's running too lean?  | ||
| Stealthxb  |
sweet! Blue is better! And purple too! | ||
| Jerseyguy  |
This is Jet Hot Ceramic sterling. The pipes definitely run cooler and they haven't changed color.   | ||
| 04petes8k  |
If you want to keep them gold, rub them down once a week with Honda spray polish! Had mine for a little over a year and have done tons of riding and set aside one hour a week to clean the bike up! Every part on that bike still looks brand spankin' new and wont hurt if ever trying to re-sell the bike down the road! BTW, JerseyGuy, those pipes look great! I gotta do that! | ||
| Jerseyguy |
04petes - $117 including shipping. Took about a week to get it done. | ||
| Gentleman_jon  |
My pipes were looking very shabby, not only blue and gold, that's fine, but kinda rusty looking. yuck:-( So inspired by all these great looking pipes, I manfully got out my battery powered 1/4" drill, and attached a red scotchbrite pad which was glued to about a 4" rubber base. I just went over the pipes with it, and it about 5 minutes they were all bright and stainless looking. Then I finished off the hard to reach places with some 220 sand paper. Looks great, and now I guess it will start turning blue and gold again. Looks brand new now. No, it don't think it was that bright even when it was new:-)  PS. The astute observer will perhaps notice my custom finished timing cover with chrome plated button head allen screws:-) | ||
| Glitch  |
Good thing you pointed that out, me not being very astute  I know what you mean about shabby looking. I'd like my pipes to look all nice and gold and purple. But I think that's a one time thing, unless we can find out what they coat them with. I'm going to have mine powder coated black. | ||
| Steveford  |
Glitch, Don't use powder as it WON'T hold up despite what the powder manufacturers say. It'll burn off at the header bends and even delaminate when you get caught in rain storms. You have to go ceramic for this application if you want it to last. | ||
| Glitch |
Ops, sorry. You're right of course. The place I'm taking it is Miller Powder Coating. It'll be done with black ceramic. It's easy for me to mix things up like that. | ||
| Rigga  |
disliked the yellowing colouring of mine so took some 800 grit very fine wet and dry paper to my pipes and sanded them back.....then some autosol metal polish on a rag, worked around the pipes in a circular motion.then a quick buff up...very shiney better than new....trouble is will always turn a bronze colour again through use.....depends on how fastidious you are about the bike apperance i guess..  | ||
| Kowpow225  |
I finished cleaning up the pipes yesterday with Mothers mag and aluminum polish in the tin can. I found that a quick rub down with the polish immediately got rid of the blue and purple, but the bronze color stayed. The only way I found to get rid of the bronze to get back to silver was alot of elbow grease. Deerhunter You mentioned something about corrosion resistant oil. Where could I find something like that? | ||
| Deerhunter17 |
Kowpow, sorry I took so long to get back, The stuff I use is KEL 132, Corrosion Preventative Spray. It is made in Sandusky Ohio for Kellog ( Info from can ) It reminds me ( Odor ) of this stuff we used on the aircraft when I was in the Navy, called CPC, ( Corrosion Preventative Compound ) We used to wipe the helicopter down with it every night while at sea. Any how, this KEL stuff works real well, I used to get what looked like pitting or rust spots on my pipes, been over a thousand miles now since I used it, and the pipes show no sign of spotting or rust. (Message edited by deerhunter17 on November 24, 2004) |
