Discolored Pipes

Both my pipes are a bluish/purple color that I can only assume is from being too hot. I bought the bike used but it doesn't have a power commander or aftermarket performance additions from what I can tell. This weekend after riding for several hours the temp gauge was only in the middle. Any ideas of what I need to do? Several people have said it is probably too lean but wouldn't the temp gauge be showing it is hot if that is the case? The mufflers are just starting to become discolored as well.

motoquest said:

Both my pipes are a bluish/purple color that I can only assume is from being too hot. I bought the bike used but it doesn't have a power commander or aftermarket performance additions from what I can tell. This weekend after riding for several hours the temp gauge was only in the middle. Any ideas of what I need to do? Several people have said it is probably too lean but wouldn't the temp gauge be showing it is hot if that is the case? The mufflers are just starting to become discolored as well.

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Goto Wal-Mart or your store of choice and buy BarKeepers Friend. Its a stainless steal polish. Should be in the household cleaning supplies. Use a little water and a scrotch-brite type pad. They will come as clean and beautiful as new with very little scrubbing!!! I have not used this on the cans but it cleans my pipes right up. I have titanium cans. Click HERE for a picture!!!

Temperature gauge measures water temp, not exhaust temp, so it'll tell you absolutely nothing about hot exhaust. But if you do a few consecutive drag-race starts, you'll see some coolant temp increase.

Hot exhaust doesn't necessarily mean overheating, and as long as the cooling system has the heat capacity to handle whatever gets thrown at it, it'll read normally.

If a bike is run hard, lots of time at full throttle and hard acceleration, I'd expect more than average heat exposure at the exhaust. If the bike is run mostly just holding speed, there's nothing much really going on there.

I'm going to say (just guessing, mind you) that the previous owner enjoyed the reaction to input from his right wrist. Enjoyed it a lot!

Moto,

Check the following thread where I picked up some feedback from the forum on the same problem...

https://www.fjrforum.com/forum//index.php?showtopic=133012&st=0&p=793340&hl=+pipes%20+are%20+blue&fromsearch=1entry793340

Note: on page 2 of the thread, toward the end, I also supplied a pic of my bike. Does yours look as bad? I've put 4000 miles on the bike since that pic was taken, and she seems to run just fine.

By the way, what year is your Feej and what maintenance has been done to it thus far?

Gary

darksider #44

Thanks Gary. Mine actually looks worse than yours. It is blued all the way to the can and the can is starting to turn from silver to gold color. I will try and take a picture in the next couple of days. Mine is a 2007 with 7200 miles on it of which I have put 1200. I saw the recommendation from haulinash which I think is a good one. When I did a meetup with two other FJR riders this past weekend, one had 50k and the other had 38k and neither had any discoloration so SOMETHING is going on. I need to get the state inspection done so I will ask them if they have any ideas as well.

garyahouse,

Don't mean to hijack this thread away from motoquest, BUT,

I went riding with him this weekend and "YES" his pipes look a lot worse than yours!

His are entirely deep blue/purple from the cat to the muffler. I didn't look forward from the cat though.

The coloring of his mufflers is definetly excessive heating of the outer stainless steel, hate to see what the insides look like.

He lives across town from me,we both have 07's, so i'll do what jeff ashe said to do in your thread and compare the two exhaust temps with the bikes side by side after a little ride.

Will report back after this weekend. If anybody else has any other ideas on what to check feel free.

(hey todd, good timing, you must have posted yours as I was typing mine)

Looked at the pic in the other thread. That ain't right. On my '05 the headers might have been blued at one time (they are a nice gray patina now) but the intermediate pipes back after the cats have never discolored at all. And I'm close to 50k miles on mine.

For that amount of exhaust heat to be generated that far back I'd expect there to be some kind of a fueling problem that is dumping raw fuel in the exhaust to be combusted in the cats. What has your fuel mileage been? Do you have a PCIII installed? Is the O2 sensor still connected and functioning?

Note that, unlike many fuel injected engines, the O2 sensors can be disconnected completely and the ECU will not throw any check engine codes. When the ECU senses the missing O2 data it just falls back into an "open loop" mode, just like it does on warm up before the sensor comes up to temp. MAny folks (like me) intentionally disconnect the O2 sensor and use a PCIII. THe PCIII map actually considerably leans out the mixture from the base open loop map in a good portion of the section of higher rpm, higher throttle position operation.

If your O2 sensor was (intentionally or unintentionally) disconnected and you do not have a PCIII to lean out those cells of the map, I could see that causing a too rich mixture that would have the cats working overtime. Could the PO have had a PCIII and removed it before sale, but forgot to rehook up the O2 sensor?

Fred W said:

Could the PO have had a PCIII and removed it before sale, but forgot to rehook up the O2 sensor?

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That is an excellent point. It could be the original owner sold the PCIII or the dealer took it out before they put it up for sale. I will have to check if the O2 sensors are hooked up. If they are hooked up, my question is if I were to use a PCIII, what map would I use since to my knowledge my configuration is all stock?

jet mechanic said:

He lives across town from me,we both have 07's, so i'll do what jeff ashe said to do in your thread and compare the two exhaust temps with the bikes side by side after a little ride.

Will report back after this weekend. If anybody else has any other ideas on what to check feel free.

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Kevin, YOU DA MAN! This will help me greatly.

motoquest said:

Fred W said:

Could the PO have had a PCIII and removed it before sale, but forgot to rehook up the O2 sensor?

Click to expand...

That is an excellent point. It could be the original owner sold the PCIII or the dealer took it out before they put it up for sale. I will have to check if the O2 sensors are hooked up. If they are hooked up, my question is if I were to use a PCIII, what map would I use since to my knowledge my configuration is all stock?

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The PCIII comes with a bunch of canned maps, one of which is for a bike in stock configuration. The best map is a custom one generated on a dyno. I am using a map that was custom made on a dyno for another '05 w/ stock exhaust and air filter. I then tweaked a few cells, adding fuel, via seat-of-the-pants to improve the low throttle opening smoothness (snatchiness).

If this problem is due to what I proposed, the over-heating of your pipes may only occur when you are at road speed (higher rpms and/or higher throttle openings. IOW, you may not be able to tell anything at idle. Not sure if measuring the pipes will tell you anything you don't already know: The blueing is telling you that your pipes are getting too hot!

PS - first check would be to follow the O2 sensor wire up under the tank and ensure the connector is mated (properly).

Fred W said:

Looked at the pic in the other thread. That ain't right. On my '05 the headers might have been blued at one time (they are a nice gray patina now) but the intermediate pipes back after the cats have never discolored at all. And I'm close to 50k miles on mine.

For that amount of exhaust heat to be generated that far back I'd expect there to be some kind of a fueling problem that is dumping raw fuel in the exhaust to be combusted in the cats. What has your fuel mileage been? Do you have a PCIII installed? Is the O2 sensor still connected and functioning?

Note that, unlike many fuel injected engines, the O2 sensors can be disconnected completely and the ECU will not throw any check engine codes. When the ECU senses the missing O2 data it just falls back into an "open loop" mode, just like it does on warm up before the sensor comes up to temp. MAny folks (like me) intentionally disconnect the O2 sensor and use a PCIII. THe PCIII map actually considerably leans out the mixture from the base open loop map in a good portion of the section of higher rpm, higher throttle position operation.

If your O2 sensor was (intentionally or unintentionally) disconnected and you do not have a PCIII to lean out those cells of the map, I could see that causing a too rich mixture that would have the cats working overtime. Could the PO have had a PCIII and removed it before sale, but forgot to rehook up the O2 sensor?

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Fred, I don't mean to hijack the OP's thread, but I've been running HaulinAshe's setup with very good results: PCIII with the O2 Sensor Re-connected. The premise is that you get better fuel economy when slabbing and all the benefits of the PCIII and the map you're running when you start "riding" again. The only caveat is an occasional blip of the engine warning light when slabbing at a very constant RPM/Speed for an extended period of time (simply because the ECU gets "confused" about the inputs), which disappears once you start doing any kind of accel/decel...just thought I'd mention it...no discoloration in the pipes either.

JamesK said:

Fred, I don't mean to hijack the OP's thread, but I've been running HaulinAshe's setup with very good results: PCIII with the O2 Sensor Re-connected.

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It may work differently on a second gen. I suspect that this must be true if Jeff Ashe says it works for him.

It most definitely did NOT work well when I tried that on my 1st gen. The O2 sensor and the PCIII were fighting each other in the ECU and the O2 sensor won, re-creating the dreaded lean surge. Getting rid of that surging was the primary reason I installed the PCIII.

...and this concludes this thread hijack. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blue pipes thread.

For what it's worth, the picture (see link that I provided in post #4 above) was taken AFTER I spent a couple hours working on them with steel wool and bar keepers friend. They were purple and dark blue right to the cans and the cans were seriously gold. Not sure what was done to the bike before I got it w/3800 miles on it, but it did have the sensor recall done just before I bought it. The pipes looked like that when I got it. I didn't clean them up until January or so this year (4 months after I got the bike). Have not seen any significant color change since I scrubbed them about 2k miles ago. It's not had any dealer service done that Yammie's records show except the recall. Perhaps you could retrace the thread, "Pipes are blue and so am I" to see my journey.

Gary

darksider #44

garyahouse said:

The pipes looked like that when I got it. I didn't clean them up until January or so this year (4 months after I got the bike). Have not seen any significant color change since I scrubbed them about 2k miles ago. It's not had any dealer service done that Yammie's records show except the recall. Perhaps you could retrace the thread, "Pipes are blue and so am I" to see my journey.

Gary

darksider #44

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I read through that thread previously.

Based on the two statements bolded above, I'd say that the PO ran the bike really rich for some period of time and turned the pipes blue. The damage was already done when you bought the bike. Whatever he was doing at that time may not be still happening anymore.

FWIW, don't ever scrub stainless steel with (ferrous) steel wool or it will allow the stainless to rust. Use only plastic svrubbers (like scotchbrite) if you must use an abrasive pad.

"Back in the day" almost all motorcycle pipes would turn blue. Simichrome was the polish of choice then, and it worked to remove bluing from chrome. Don't know if that stuff is still around or how successful it would be on stainless. You could always ask a Harley guy.