Yellowing Exhaust Pipes and Cans

Okay,

I did the requisite search, and other than a few references to bluing, I didn't find anything this specific on the forum.

I assume my 2007 FJR has stainless headers and cans.

They were all nice and silver when I bought the bike from the PO.

But maybe they were polished, because the headers and cans are slowly turning a nice shade of golden yellow.

This started on my trip to Maine and back from NC in June.

I don't do a lot of stop and go traffic, no long idle's, no hooliganism, fuel system Stock (as far as I know)

I've not tried any cleaners, other than the regular S100 spray and hose for the bike.

Anyone else getting this? Is this a simple matter of applying good ol' fashioned Simichrome?

Or should I be looking for something specific to Stainless?

Any good ole' fashioned metal polish will cut the yellowing.

I wouldn't bother with the headers (forward of the clamped slip joint). Just get the part you can see at the back.

Ride more, polish less.

Perfectly normal for polished stainless steel.

Polish away to your heart's content, but save the polish...it will color again. It's just what polished stainless steel does when exposed to heat over a long term.

Autosol seems to work best in my experience.

RaYzerman19 said:

Autosol seems to work best in my experience.

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Can I drop the cans from my new ride at your place to have polished up by my return in spring?

I've had great results from this stuff:



https://www.blue-job.com/html/blue-job.html

Howie an Steve r pricks.. Both gave bad advice in my opinion.

Might I suggest you park it on a trailer and only start it, to prove it infact runs when you show it to the neighbors??

Shit happens when hot gasses have to escape....

Deal with it.

You should lower your pegs. With those things scraping the ground all the time, yellow pipes will be the least of your worries.

Bustanut joker said:

Howie an Steve r pricks.. Both gave bad advice in my opinion.

Might I suggest you park it on a trailer and only start it, to prove it infact runs when you show it to the neighbors??

Shit happens when hot gasses have to escape....

Deal with it.

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HotRodZilla said:

You should lower your pegs. With those things scraping the ground all the time, yellow pipes will be the least of your worries.

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Twin sons...different mothers. :finger:

Yellow pipes are a problem?

I thought they turned gold when they ripened. :lol:

I've never see this happen before - any chance of ya posting a picture?

BikerGeek99 said:

I've never see this happen before - any chance of ya posting a picture?

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Here ya go, ya concrete corn cob:

Anybody can buy shiny, but patina is earned.

Bungie said:

Anybody can buy shiny, but patina is earned.

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DING-DING-DING!!! WINNAH!!!

RadioHowie said:

Bungie said:

Anybody can buy shiny, but patina is earned.

Click to expand...

DING-DING-DING!!! WINNAH!!!

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+1, Gunny; I agree with you 100% RadioHowie, Steve-O wins the prize for that perfect answer! This marks the very first time that I have ever given Bungie a +1, I will probably burn in Hell or get hit by a truck! BikerGeek99 get a +1 from me when Hell freezes over or if you ever see me riding a Gen2, ready or not here I come Hell!!

beemerdons said:

BikerGeek99 get a +1 from me when Hell freezes over or if you ever see me riding a Gen2, ready or not here I come Hell!!

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So does this mean your buying a Gen 2? me, I'm just gonna skip over the Gen 2's and considering a Gen 3.. but only if they've fixed the rolling toaster thing.

Oh by the way.. are my exhaust pipes shiny? I can't tell when I'm riding it.

My pipes were so bad when I got my FJR, I started a thread called "Pipes are blue and so am I." They were blue and purple leading up to the cans, and the cans were gold. I didn't know how to post pics at the time, so my pics didn't appear until later on in the thread after I cleaned them up. Here's a pic of the bike back then:



Here's the link to the original post: CLICKY

I tried the Barkeepers friend as recommended. Wow. What a difference. It got all the gold off the cans and helped a lot with the pipes. Unfortunately, they turned purple and blue again in no time, but at least I found a product that worked pretty well. Funny, now that I've had the bike for awhile, I don't really care. I have such a blast riding it, it's all I can do to park it long enough to do a little basic maintenance once in a while.

Let us know what you decided to do.

Gary

darksider #44

Thanks to those who really gave thoughtful feedback. And thoughtfully critical feedback is welcomed too.

While I was a bit concerned about appearance, I was more curious as to what might be going on, as I've seen plenty of high mileage FJRs with silver pipes that certainly weren't garage queens, wondering if I was doing something wrong as this is my first fuel injected bike.

And for you haters on the forum, none of my bikes have ever been trailered anywhere, or been accused of being garage queens, and I don't own a compliment of fancy polishes or cleaners, and I've got close to 200,000 miles ridden on 5 bikes now, and I still got 'em all. And as if it matters, I've put 6k on the FJR since June, although 3k of that was a NC to Madawaska/Quebec ride. I know this is no record or anything, but I'm not exactly sitting around the garage polishing stuff.

I got lots of (helpful) input from folks at JoeBioDiesel's Tech day over the weekend, along the lines of "too lean conditions and how to correct for it" via PCIII or Barbarian mod etc.

See? Helpful, non-judgemental, technical feedback that actually helped a newbie learn new things and allowed others to share their own experience and expertise.

So a big "thank you" to the feedback on this thread from those like garyahouse, radiohowie, cheesyrider,rayzrman19,fredw...good on you guys for helping those of us in the learning curve (is anyone ever really an expert?)

And as for bustanut joker and hotrodzilla - why are you douche bags even on the forum? Do you like riding at all? Do you even have a clue as to what being part of a motorcycling community means? Please, do all the regular folks here a favor: trade your FJR's in for some good ol' panheads and limit your future contributions to doing drunken burnouts in some sorry midwestern biker bar and leave the real motorcycling to the rest of us.

As for what I intend to do re: the yellow pipes? I like RadioHowie and garyahouse's feedback along the lines of "ride it, don't worry". But I'll also be looking into the Barbarian Mod as well.

I hope my questions and travails lend to help others who might ask the same questions, whether deemed stupid or not.