Ceramic coating true duals.
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Outstanding HDF Member
Joined: Oct 2011
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From: Illinois
Well Motown as you know I have to wait a while to find out for myself just how much I like them. They sure look sweet on your bike. JRK5892, I wanted to keep my pipes and shields chrome so that means I had to get my heat protection, or ceramic, put on the pipes under my shields. I got the 1 head pipe off of the front cylinder and the 2 small head pipes off of the rear cylinder ceramic coated. I did talk to my buddy who owns a shop about my bike and my "incident" today. He is going on vacation next week and as a favor to a downed brother he is going to come get my bike and all my parts his 1st day back from vacation and get on my bike so it's ready for me when I am ready for it. He's a great guy with a great little shop and a hell of a wrench.
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Outstanding HDF Member
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From: Illinois
I'm not fluent in powder coating so I can't comment on it. I do know that ceramic coating did get me what I wanted though....except.... my daughter went and picked my pipes up when I was in the hospital. Of course she didn't inspect them and that's ok, she would not have known what to look for anyway. I did inspect them though when I got home. They missed a spot! The 1 single spot they missed is going to be the 1 single spot that will show from under my heat shields, right at the front head. So, I have to take them back and have them fixed or I am going to have pipes with 1 single blue/purple spot right where everyone can see it. Sometimes you have to question why people are in the business they are in when they do chit work like that. I don't know how they could miss it, I seen it as soon as I picked my pipe up to look at it. I am anxious to have them on and see what I got for my money though. As far over budget as I am I didn't see no sense in putting them on to see if I have a problem. I just did it and got it over with.
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Outstanding HDF Member
Joined: Oct 2011
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From: Illinois
Ok, the latest. I had taken my pipes in for ceramic coating then had a heart attack. My daughter went and picked them up for me because I was in the hospital and she didn't know what to look for when she ran and picked them up for me. When I got out and came home I still didn't care about much other than my chest. I got to looking earlier this week, finally, and I noticed on 1 pipe they missed a huge spot that is up by the head. The boss at the shop was kind of a jerk when I dropped them off the 1st time so I was anticipating getting crap from him today when I took that pipe back to get it done right. He surprised me and he told me he wanted all 3 pieces back so he can do all of them over again. He said if 1 pipe looked like chit he didn't have faith in the job done to any of them by whoever at his shop who did them. He apologized for the poor work and said he will personally redo them and if I am not happy the 2nd time around he would refund me all my money. I couldn't ask for any more than that, well, unless it was to get them done right the 1st time.
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Joined: Nov 2007
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From: Hinton, Alberta
I am interested to see how things temp wise work out. Quite a while back a friend built a hot rod had his done. I think he was wanting to get away from the blue exhaust. I don't remember what the temp outcome was, next time I see him I'll have to ask.
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Outstanding HDF Member
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From: Illinois
I will be sure to post up some results or send you a PM once I get them back, on the bike and able to ride it. The main reason I did it was to address the heat issue on that left pipe. The 2nd reason I did it was for a "1 up" on the next guy at any bike shows I might enter this summer. I also did it to keep my pipes from burning and turning blue. I hate that. Yes, most of the pipe can't be seen because of the heat shield but still, I would know it was there. My budget was blown to hell so what was another 125 bucks? I didn't want to put these pipes on only to have an issue and have to take them back off to get done. I just decided to be pro-active on them and get it done and over with while the bike is down for all it's other winter mods and be done with it. The only thing I won't be able to comment on is the difference between the 2, coated verse not coated seeing how I will have never rode my bike with them uncoated. Stay tuned.
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Joined: Dec 2010
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From: Badlands of ND
I have a ceramic coated exhaust on my old air cooled VW. The exhaust does not have a heat shield so it is exposed to all the road grime and crud kicked up by the rear tires. I have had it for several year and have seen no discoloration at all.
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Joined: Jun 2010
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From: Sunny South Florida
Thanks for showing us the light. Strangely though, the only shops Ive ever heard of talking their customers OUT of ceramic coating their exhaust components in favor of powder coating, are ones that dont do ceramic coating. Further, if the customers primary objective is to REDUCE radiated heat, what good is powder coating going to do for them? Being a powder pro, youre fully aware that neither traditional nor high temp powders offer any thermal barrier or heat dissipating properties. High temp powder coating is merely a powder that will hold up to more temperature than a traditional powder, so basically a powdered BBQ paint. You may as well use a can of VHT at that point and avoid some aggravation.
As for this proper tuning you speak of, this in intriguing. What type of tune defies the laws of physics? Traditional powder may survive constant exposure to 250F 350F ish on a good day and most twins will easily make 600F-1000F + in a heartbeat. So if youre radiating anywhere near that under the shield youre going to have problems, particularly with heat soak. At minimum a powder that softens / gels up and dirt subsequently sticks to. Worst case, the powder actually burns off and fails in that its NOT meant for those temps.
Whats the point of using powder over ceramic when youre forgoing a nice smooth finish for a textured / pebbled surface of powder and getting no more reduction in temps than if you had just painted it. Not to mention there are only a few colors in high temp powder .
As for this proper tuning you speak of, this in intriguing. What type of tune defies the laws of physics? Traditional powder may survive constant exposure to 250F 350F ish on a good day and most twins will easily make 600F-1000F + in a heartbeat. So if youre radiating anywhere near that under the shield youre going to have problems, particularly with heat soak. At minimum a powder that softens / gels up and dirt subsequently sticks to. Worst case, the powder actually burns off and fails in that its NOT meant for those temps.
Whats the point of using powder over ceramic when youre forgoing a nice smooth finish for a textured / pebbled surface of powder and getting no more reduction in temps than if you had just painted it. Not to mention there are only a few colors in high temp powder .
I was going to bring this up, well, maybe with not such an obvious bios
but the point is valid. Joe, you do great work and are extremely valuable as a vendor here and I am not putting down anything you said. The point of ceramic vs powder is valid though. PC is great as a durable coloring, but it does very little if anything to prevent heat soak.
The Ceramic has been proven to do wonders. However in this case, I don't know if I would have done the outside of the pipes. I know they have shields and it doesn't really make a difference but I don't know that there will be that much difference in radiant heat, although there will be some.
To the question of how hot do they get, I have my laser gun calibrated for chrome (as close as it can be since nothing is perfect) and it reads near 600° at the pipe less than 1" from the rear head after a long ride on a highway above 70MPH. Any other type of riding or any longer than 3 or 4 minutes after I get off the bike, the temps are down at or below 400°. My FLUKE probe says the rear pipe is closer to 500° but it is harder to get it into that spot but I just wanted to throw that out there.
If CC does what they claim 7-12% reduction of heat then maybe 50° less could be found at that point in the pipe. The reduction down stream on the pipe will be noticeable however. The only thing I would recommend though is to CC the entire internal surface of the head pipes, right up to the muffler and if you have removable baffles or no baffles at all, do the entire exhaust. This will remove the last hot spot as the pipe right after the coating will be hotter than the coated pipe.
I've been thinking about duals for a long time and this is probably the last part that needed to be worked out for me. I'm not really into the ear bleeding loud pipes anymore so I want baffles. I may coat the entire thing anyway and just work out the installing baffle issues as they come.
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