There is also a 1200 degree paint available in a rattle can for grills that would work or header paint if you wanted to attempt it yourself.
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There is also a 1200 degree paint available in a rattle can for grills that would work or header paint if you wanted to attempt it yourself.
[QUOTE=coffee_weasle;23861]I have considerable experience with painting exhaust and suggest VHT 1500+ not 1200 barbeque paint. It will hold up very well and touch-ups are easy. Best if you can bead blast the chrome or at least use scotch-brite to give a little bite but it sticks well to chrome. You can even tape them off and two-tone if you want.
Which scotch brite would you recommend? I have black chrome but I'm pretty sure I want to paint it a matte black to go with my paint better.
Use the most coarse pad you can get and buy a bunch of them. Chrome is quite hard and it takes the edge right off the pad pretty quick. Black chrome is softer but I expect you will use 6 pads scuffing it up. I scuffed mine and leave them like that because I like that satin look and it matches my Rivco highway pegs, stock brake lever and pegs.
I'm pretty nervous about scuffing up a brand new (not even installed yet) set of $700 black chrome pipes but I guess worse case I bring them to a powder coater and let them do their thing if I don't like the result. I am going to do my heat shields first and see how well they come out before tackling the pipes. I can always just get new heat shields if I have to. I think with my new paint the matte black exhaust will look killer.....time will tell. Thanks for the help!
Hey 1951vbs another question for ya.....If I do the VHT high temp exhaust paint and follow the instructions for the application is the paint washable? I would hate to have an exhaust I couldn't wash and keep looking purty......
You...were the one that wants to paint your black chrome pipes! If they were mine I would sell them to someone who wants black chrome and paint a stock set of pipes otherwise you wasted $700. A take off set of stock pipes should be reasonable $$.
As far as powdercoat...like I posted above, I don't think it will hold up to the heat of the exhaust.
I fail to see how the heat shields could reach 400* without softening or melting the adjacent plastic body panels.
The exhaust gasses are cooling during their passage through the system and the only way to get excessive heat to the back would be to ride at full throttle for an extended period of time, which would also provide significant cooling from air flow over the pipes.
The drawback to chrome or any shiny surface is that it tends to retain heat while dull finishes and dark (black) finishes radiate heat more efficiently.
(The Harley flat black engines run cooler than the ones with a polished finish. It also works on the oil bag.)