What is the best exhaust cleaner?

carraigman

Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
10
Location
dublin, ireland
Bike
St 1100
Looking for a good product to clean my stainless steel exhaust? Also Has any one recommendations for removing surface rust . i have a small bit of rust on the release clips for rear panniers. There is also surface rust in the middle of the front brake discs.

thanks
Dave:)
 
I have not done any polishing on my new ST yet, but on my old CX, mothers mag and metal polish was the best for me. Worked well and smell real nice. The best part was the first warm up after a good muffler polish. Smelled like grapes for miles.
Michael
 
If you like to exert effort to polish then stop reading this and use the polish that works for you.

If you like to take about 2 minutes of time and virtually no effort to restore the sparkle to your stainless steel mufflers then find some Bar Keeper's Friend cleanser. Wet a sponge and make a paste of BKF and apply it to the catalytic converters and mufflers. Leave it on for 1 or 2 minutes then rinse off. I do mine about every 10,000 miles to remove the yellowish gold oxidation the SS gets from exhaust heat. BKF is a chemical reaction cleaner that needs no rubbing or polishing and it will clean down inside the weld crevices where regular metal polish can't.
 
I don't know if Bar Keeper's Friend ( A non-abrasive stainless steel cleaner that comes in a powered form ) is available in Ireland, so... you might have to search a bit...

On the rust I would use an acid; but, again it depends on what you can get across the pond...
We have Navel Jelly which 'sort of' stays where you put it...
If the rust is bad you might want to remove the piece from the bike and immerse in a light acid... a cola like Coke comes to mind as it has phosphoric acid...
 
for stainless pipes, get the cleaner from Hein Geirike, it is magic at cleaning the staining, BUT make sure you wash thoroughly as I have noticed it will bring on some rust on the steel if your not carefull!

Bar keepers friend is available in the UK from Lakeland
 
That mothers stuff is good for getting tar off without destroying the pipes. Bar keepers is good also but maybe not as good on tar.
 
For stainless steel exhaust;
Dark coffee with little milk (to help coffee stay on the metal without washing off) smeared on the pipes. Day later wipe it off and it will be shiny like brand new. Coffee only takes the yellow color and leaves the steel alone. You cant use coffee creamer since it has alkali in it to naturalize coffee's acid.
You can use any shower calcium cleaner but it is friendly with nothing except the stainless steel. You have to be super careful with it and the only option is to wet a towel and smear to the pipes and wipe it out or wash a couple of hours later.
Polishing is time consuming but can be done with many different kinds of things, hand, oscillating tools, green buffers, white buffers.
 
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