[John S]

I'm sure this has been addressed in another post before now but I cant locate within the Forum Search. - Silver paint on the welds has mysteriously appeared on the exhaust pipe of my fairly new C5 where chrome was before.  Has the chrome "burnt" away?  Thanks.

[Ducati Scotty]

It was likely already there and you didn't notice it.  We all have it.  RE chromes the pieces of the exhaust and THEN welds them.  They use silver paint to cover the welded areas.  We lovingly call this "Madras chrome".  Most manufacturers weld the pieces together and then chrome the whole assembly.   RE doesn't.

Scott

[john hut]

Being a welder myself I cant understand the logic in it as its much easier and stronger to weld clean metal than chromed , and better looking chromed afterwards, but then again it is Royal Enfield..

[Ducati Scotty]

Being a welder myself I cant understand the logic in it as its much easier and stronger to weld clean metal than chromed , and better looking chromed afterwards, but then again it is Royal Enfield..

You understand it perfectly

[tooseevee]

Being a welder myself I cant understand the logic in it as its much easier and stronger to weld clean metal than chromed , and better looking chromed afterwards, but then again it is Royal Enfield..

              It's a teeter-totter with piles of money stacked on both ends.

[Narada]

My understanding is that in India they weld, then chrome, then for additional protection, paint the chrome plated welds silver. 

I was told that you can remove the silver protective coating and find chrome. 

Everything I've ordered from India is like that, not just RE.

[Ducati Scotty]

That makes even less sense.

[Narada]

Welcome to India!

[tooseevee]

Welcome to India!

           It's just Econ 101.

[Ducati Scotty]

I wonder if there's a YouTube video of an old craftsman hand painting chrome welds.  You know the rest of the world just has robots doing that stuff.

[The Old Coot]

I cleaned the Silver paint off my Upswept Exhaust pipe with acetone, there was chrome under the paint, now knowing Royal Enfield HOW thick the chrome is I don't want to think about.   

[Arizoni]

I had always believed the folks at RE welded the chrome parts and then just painted over the weld with aluminum paint.  Kind of a crummy way to protect the weld.

I was curious after reading the comments above too so I just went out and drug my old telephone pole/torpedo back into the house and scraped off the aluminum paint on the front bracket weld with a straight blade screwdriver.

Lo and behold!  Under the aluminum paint, the weld was nicely chrome plated!
They welded the flanges on, chromed the weldment and then painted on the crummy looking aluminum paint.

Although their chrome is notoriously thin, I don't have the foggiest idea about why they would do this and the final product with its aluminum paint looks like hell.

Oh.  After discovering the chrome plated welds I got to thinking, maybe I should strip off the aluminum paint from all of the welds.

With that in mind, I tried using denatured alcohol, MEK (Methyl ethyl ketone ) and Acetone.
None of these had any effect on the painted surfaces.
Maybe I'll try an official paint remover but I really hate working with that stuff.  It's really nasty.

[wildbill]

yeah I reckon that car paint stripper would get it off -if I have any still about I will give it a trial run

[Narada]

I kept the silver paint and added a saree guard! 

[The Old Coot]

I guess I was able to use acetone because I cleaned the paint off before I used the pipe. I guess the paint cured after it got hot and now will be a bugger to get off.