Restoring Black Chrome Pipes?

I know you're not looking to spend much if any money on it Irish-Kawi but just FYI and for anyone else wondering about black pipes in general; I had mine powder coated with "high-temp" coating, they claim it's good to 1500F and they've done plenty of hot rod cars with no problems.

It isn't chrome of course but so far I'm pretty pleased with the look. It's not the greatest picture but you can hopefully see that the fork lowers are satin black, the tank is shiny black and the pipes are something in between.



Anyway if anybody is interested let me know and I'll either put you in touch with these guys or try and find out what you should ask your local body shop to find out if they can do the same thing. Of course if you are the cautious type you might want to check with me again in a year or two and see if I'm still happy with the results.

Hey Bowman,

That ceramic coating looks great, Pops has that done on his long tube stainless headers on his WS6 Trans Am and looks and works great. In a perfect world would absolutely love to ceramic coat, but that is currently several hundred $$$ outside of my shoestring budget right now :laugh:

Brett

Oh, it's not ceramic, it's powder coat. Even I'm not crazy enough to ceramic coat a pair of 25 year old MAC pipes. Wasn't too too expensive, about $175CAD

Bowman wrote: Oh, it's not ceramic, it's powder coat. Even I'm not crazy enough to ceramic coat a pair of 25 year old MAC pipes. Wasn't too too expensive, about $175CAD

Ahhh should have read closer, and yeah definitely more reasonable, but my punish the body not the wallet approach is still over budget on that front, appreciate the heads up and example though definitely keep it in mind on future projects!

Brett

I had some OEM pipes "ceramic coated", but as mentioned it's just high temperature powder coat, possibly with ceramic particles mixed in? At any rate, it holds up to the temperature but the coating itself is fragile as glass. I was very careful to not bang the pipes during install but I wound up with a chip on one of the down pipes anyway. Now, after a few hundred miles, the chip size is growing and there is another chip close by the other. You can see where the pipe was sandblasted before coating so I don't think that is the problem, I just think that particular type of coating is fragile.

Hi guys!
There are some reasonably priced DIY kits for ceramic coating around. You'll need a compressor with clean air, a sandblaster using pretty coarse aluminium oxide and a baking oven.
One thing - that stuff does take some serious temperatures, easily! 
I saw a guy coating a 2" stainless steel pipe, baking it - and then heating the inside with propane until the metal got glowing red. One would think that the coating would just burn or fall off, but no. Cooled it down again, and it seemed like nothing has ever happened to the part! Amazing!
I have the kit, and working on building the oven for now. I use the heating elements from a regular kitchen oven, installed in the bottom of a custom-built, well insulated "closet".
The coating itself, is horribly expensive. But I'm still going to coat my exhaust for my GT750 P1 - yes, it's a Kawasaki! 
Hoping to get it done this summer, maybe also along with the exhausts for my Z1000 ST? I always take photos of everything I do on my bikes. I'll see if I can remember to share some of the process here with You.

Regards, ErlingW in Oslo, Norway