[rich6]

Brand new B5efi and this is what my exhaust looks like after 90miles. I expected the colour to change, but it looks like the chrome is burning off to me!

I've never owned a bike with a chrome exhaust so I'm not sure if this is normal or not.

[Grant Borden]

Mine looked similar to mine after a Wal-Mart bag flew onto it from a car I was following. It did clean up with the use of chrome polish and elbow grease from the wife...... I may have been dreaming on the wife part.

[bluesdaddy2]

Sure looks like something came in contact with the hot pipe and melted/burned on the pipe.

[ROVERMAN]

+1, i had the same issue and had to take a razor blade to it. I didn't see what kind of material it was but it was sure baked on!
Roverman.

[caricabasso]

The collector has come in contact with a plastic bag and merged.
You can remove the board using kerosene and a wooden or plastic scraper.

[rich6]

There is a suspicious looking patch missing out my dust cover...

Whoops. *Palm to forehead

[pmanaz1973]

Did that once as well    Ended up buying the kind of cover with a heat resistant/melt resistant bottom after that.  On the up note, it usually comes off.

[Ducati Scotty]

Get it hot and you should be able to scrape/slide most of it off.  Use something like a metal putty knife that won't melt but be careful on the chrome, it's easy to scratch.

Scott

[mattsz]

rich6 - I did that too, on my silencer.  I couldn't figure out where the heck the gunk came from... until a bit later when I happened to notice the black nylon liner along the inside of the bottom of my riding jacket had a melted hole.  I had my jacket open, and I crouched down for something or other - never noticed it happening at the time, though...     

[suitcasejefferson]

Mine blued badly near the 02 sensor. To me it is just another part of the bikes character. Japanese chrome stays bright and shiny. My '66 Triumph had badly blued pipes. It may very well be impossible to get that stuff off without doing more damage to the pipe. Mine developed a brown ring around the muffler (yours will too) and I tried to remove it with Simichrome polish. It removed the chrome instead. RE chrome is certainly not the best. I will be replacing the stock muffler at some point.

[Arizoni]

Anything that "removes the bluing" from a chromed surface, removes the chrome.

The color is due to oxidation and there are no simple ways of reconverting the oxide back to chrome without stripping it off and subjecting it to a number of chemical processes.

Chrome pipes and mufflers have very thin coatings of chrome on them.  It is expensive and a thin layer will do the job.
By thin coatings I'm talking about thicknesses of less than .003 inch.  That's the thickness of a typical brown human hair.

Once that coating is removed there is nothing to prevent rusting of the underlying steel part.

As I've mentioned before, the Japanese don't have some "magic chrome" that does not oxidize and change color.
Their exhaust system uses a pipe inside a pipe method with the inner pipe carrying the hot exhaust.

  This does two things.  It keeps the outer pipe much cooler so it never gets hot enough to blue and it increases the velocity of the hot exhaust gas, improving engine performance while giving the appearance   of "BIG PIPES to get all of the exhaust out of the engine."

[Ducati Scotty]

Our headers are a pipe within a pipe too, they just get really freakin' hot.

[Arizoni]

They aren't a pipe within a pipe where the O2 sensor is.
That area is just a single pipe thickness to give the exhaust gas room to move around the end of the sensor.

[Royal Stargazer]

I may have thrown a cover over my bike before it had cooled, and my pipe may have looked similar.

I may have thought the blemish was on there way better than it really was, and it may have come off when I brushed it with my thumb one day when the pipe was cool.

My own bluing was exacerbated when I installed the EFI silencer. I didn't mind it from an aesthetics point of view, but I thought something was wrong because of how quickly it bloomed. I did end up getting some of that "Blue Job" stuff, mostly just out of curiosity, and it kind of worked. I didn't get too invested in it because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't know how it was supposed to work and I didn't want to unknowingly damage something.

My EFI silencer ended up getting a little rusty following an episode where it fell off my bike. Cleaned that up with cola and foil. Looks as clean as the day I bought it.

[The Old Coot]

Not just Enfields you know, Both my Buell and Versys have SS header pipes and they turned brown, blue and double ugly! I ended up with metal polish and SS steel wool and Scotch brite pads to clean it up and least to the point of not looking like I'd been riding through the Cow Pats!

[Craig McClure]

Not just Enfields you know, Both my Buell and Versys have SS header pipes and they turned brown, blue and double ugly! I ended up with metal polish and SS steel wool and Scotch brite pads to clean it up and least to the point of not looking like I'd been riding through the Cow Pats!

I WISH STAINLESS STEEL HEADER PIPES WERE AVAILABLE.  I had a Gary Hoos racing header on my SR500 & a stainless pair on my W650, they were very easy to polish & shine.
Somebody may start making them. ROYAL ENFIELD could sell a bunch.

[topdog29]

Is it chrome as in chromium or just electroplated nickel alloy? I don't think RE uses genuine chromium for plating. Had that been the case, it would not suffer such easy thermal damage.
 I use titanium wrapping to hide it. No shame in hiding :-P Can't afford to powder coat it yet :-D
Correct me please, if wrong. Cheers.

[NH Oldguy]

I don't know what process Enfield uses on their header pipes, but a quality chrome process - "triple plating" - employs a base layer of copper for adhesion, followed by a nickel layer for shine, and topped with a chromium layer to protect the nickel layer from oxidizing.  The chrome layer is visually transparent.  When a pipe blues, the chrome layer was inadequate to protect the nickel.  The bluing is nickel oxide.

[Kalbo]

That looks suspiciously like my own pipe : I parked, took off my jacket, and hung it from the throttle-grip to let it get some air.
Walked away and then glanced back to see smoke rising as the sleeve of the jacket was resting against the pipe. Ooops, never like that jacket anyway.

Have heard that coke and foil/blade will clean it up but haven't tried yet so don't quote me !

[topdog29]

@NHoldguy : Thanks! I was not aware of that. It seems either good chroming or powder coating are permanent solutions, apart from exhaust wraps.

[suitcasejefferson]

Anything that "removes the bluing" from a chromed surface, removes the chrome.

The color is due to oxidation and there are no simple ways of reconverting the oxide back to chrome without stripping it off and subjecting it to a number of chemical processes.

Chrome pipes and mufflers have very thin coatings of chrome on them.  It is expensive and a thin layer will do the job.
By thin coatings I'm talking about thicknesses of less than .003 inch.  That's the thickness of a typical brown human hair.

Once that coating is removed there is nothing to prevent rusting of the underlying steel part.

As I've mentioned before, the Japanese don't have some "magic chrome" that does not oxidize and change color.
Their exhaust system uses a pipe inside a pipe method with the inner pipe carrying the hot exhaust.

  This does two things.  It keeps the outer pipe much cooler so it never gets hot enough to blue and it increases the velocity of the hot exhaust gas, improving engine performance while giving the appearance   of "BIG PIPES to get all of the exhaust out of the engine."

The Japanese certainly don't have "magic chrome", they simply have better quality chrome. The only other bike I have with chrome pipes is my Japanese Vulcan 750. The front pipe (it's a v-twin) collects a lot of bugs, and by the time you get home and the pipe gets cool, they are baked on. I have been using chrome polish to remove them for 12 years now, and still haven't worn through the chrome. Also, there is not one single blue or brown spot on them.

I actually like the blued header on the Enfield, reminds me of my old Triumph. But the brown spots on the muffler are none to pretty, and polishing the chrome instantly dulls it, even the first time. I have a feeling that the whole bike will develop a "patina" fairly quickly. That really doesn't bother me, but blown engines and broken frames are another matter.