Just scuff them up and paint them with high heat flat black . I did my stock pipes before I got my new pipes . Works and looks great!

 

Yup did the same thing, 3M sand paper and VHT 2000degree primer and paint cost like a total of 13 bucks....search " home projects thanks to you guys" and you can see mine...if you like your pipes and just want them black..than save yyour money ....its been 1000 miles and no fade no scratches....and looks pro done

 

for those of you that did powdercoat, did you need to rejet after the paint was done? I can't think of a reason why you would but I figured I should find out now before I do it.

 

If you are looking at temporary just paint them with some good quality stove paint, this old used set of Super Trapps on my bike was painted almost 3 years ago and still look like new.

 

Ceramic coating is a liquid, wet-spray application. No powder is involved.

 

it is all the prep. if they just shot over the chrome that is the issue... we coat pipes all the time, did 3 sets today, hell all my bikes have coated pipes, even my snowmobile pipe is coated with a high temp powder! next time your looking to have work done look us up we are located in IL and a forum sponser... all these are powder coated NO ceramic.. sounds like the other coater did not prep right or even worse your bike is not propperly tuned and is running very lean/hot... if that is the case powder is the last of your worries... here are some pics of some of the pipes/shields we have powder coated







































hell these i did on my bike 4 years ago... this is a built motor as well

 

http://www.powdercoatitnow.com/ Will do a high heat black for a reasonable price. I can understand not wanting to have chrome anymore if you like a darker look.

 

Contact Joe, he's a member here JRK5892. He does outstanding work for most of the dyna guys. He can answer any questions about PC And he's reasonable on the price too.

 

Whoops^ looks like he already popped in here. Carry on.

 

I worked with Joe at The Powder Pro to powder coat the stock heat shields on my 2012 Ultra Limited and they did an excellent job! In addition their follow up and customer service was truly great and I would recommend these guys to anyone! I've had a lot of parts powder coated here locally (in SC) but went with The Powder Pro because of their experience with parts that will be exposed to high temps. My local guy didn't give me the warm fuzzies when it came to these kinds of parts. Before I sent them off I talked to Joe and he told me that if my bike had a good tune I wont have any issues. Since I hadn't done any engine mods what so ever at that point (still bone stock) we both thought that everything would be fine. I sent the parts off and when I got them back they were absolutely beautiful! I put them on and they really looked great! After a few hundred miles I started to notice some issues with the rear cylinder shield and the shield covering the 2-1-2 conversion point where the CAT is located. They were starting the get dull looking and even bubble up in some areas presumably due to the heat. I contacted Joe and we were both a little surprised that this was happening. Was my engine running unusually lean/hot? Was there a part prep issue? I had to get this figured out or it would drive me nuts! Soooo, Joe offered to strip and re-do the two parts at no charge (that's customer service!) but in parallel I needed to find out why I was having this problem so I could fix it before putting new parts back on.

So I did some research...
I found out that there are two problems working against me with the stock set-up. The first is the very lean tune from the factory to meet EPA standards and the second is the CAT. So even though I had a stock tune it is too hot for the powder coating and the increased heat from CAT wasn't helping either. When actually measuring the engine temps it's also obvious that the rear shields get much hotter the the front.
So to fix the problem once and for all I had to make some changes and spend some more cash. I had the SE air intake and flash tune installed at my dealer which fattened up the tune and helped it run cooler. Performance wise its just a mild improvement with no real seat of the pants HP increase but I think overall makes the engine run better and is a little peppier and responsive.

I think that mod alone would have been enough to overcome the heat issue on the powder coated shields but I went one step further anyway and de-catted my header (following some instructions from this forum). This made a huge difference in the heat and I haven't noticed any performance issues what so ever since doing this (positive or negative), Just less heat.

While I had the header off (and after de-catting) I did scuff it up some with scotch brite and shot it with some high temp gloss black paint. The main reason was to just get it to blend into the background a little better. Otherwise you see some shiny exhaust material peeking out from under the black shields. I wasn't overly concerned with the quality of my rattle can paint job since most of it is covered anyway.

So, with all that I'm finally done and very happy with the gloss black powder coated shields! By the way, I have the black SE slip-ons as well but I rattle canned those as well with high temp gloss black paint. They came out really nice but if I was to do over would probably powder coat.

So, lessons learned...
1) Yes powder coated exhaust shields can work
2) Beware if you still have the stock tune it might be too lean/hot for this
3) An air intake and fatter tune will solve that problem
4) De-catting is probably not necessary but definately helped reduce heat further
5) The Powder Pro does excellent work and stands behind their work!

Thanks again Joe!
Bill in SC