How NOT to Mod Your Exhaust Cover!!!

[SANGER_A2]

Well, when I bought my black Fazer, I was always planning to get rid of the stock exhausts and get the whole thing stealthed up in black. I was planning to wait a couple of months to buy my new Scorpion exhausts to save up the money, but in the mean-time decided on a little mod to improve the looks of the exhaust and to occupy me. Here is my story of what I did and how it went wrong...

Here you can see the stock exhaust cover on my shiny black bike. Doesn't look too bad, just needs to be a different colour. Hmmm. I wonder...


I decided to take the cover off and paint it with black gloss Plasticote BBQ paint (great stuff). I used my Haynes manual (one of the most important things to buy if you're planning to mod your bike) to get the cover off the bike - stripping a few of the Phillips screws in the process and having to replace them with decent stainless steel bolts. I don't know what it is about Motorcycle manufacturers, but their fasteners always seem to be made of cheese! I actually had to use locking pliers to loosen some of them! Anyway, after a few coats of paint this is what the cover looks like:-


Pretty sexy eh? Well, you have to cure high temperature paint to get it to harden properly so I waited for a day when girlfriend was out and put it in the oven for about an hour. I started out with the temperature at about 50c and put it up in 50c amounts every half hour. I assumed that this aluminium cover would be able to take that easily! And here is the finished product:-


Looks pretty nice huh? The paint dried on and formed a very strong layer actually. The only problem was that the exhaust cover is not actually made of aluminium as I thought. It's some kind of weird insulating foam stuff with silver covering on the outside. It didn't like being in the oven for so long:-


Here you can see where some of whatever is inside the cover has leaked out:-


Although it was a bit misshapen and warped I eventually got it on the bike and it looks pretty good:-


Although not from all angles:-


But very nice from some angles (as you can probably tell, my camera sucks):-


And REALLY nice here:-


But not as nice here again:-



The moral of this story is don't overcook things! I wish I'd just put it in the oven for half an hour, then let it cool, then put it in for another half hour at a higher temp and then that would have been fine! I was quite tempted to buy a second cover on ebay for £30, but in the end just splashed out £300 on a new set of oval stainless steel scorpions that I was planning to buy in a month or two anyway! I was sooo glad I did. But more about that later...

[steveindenmark]

Luckily I like the stock pipes on mine but am always willing to stand up and applaud someone who has tried something and messed up and then has the common sense and bottle to make sure we all don`t make the same mistake.

I will have a drink to your health and hope you have a good 2009...without any more disasters.

Steve

[notjohndavid]

I agree. thanks for the post. It's just as important how not to do things as it is to know how to do them

[Wolfman]

A lesson learned i guess, will be a distant memory once you get those Scorp's on your beast.

Thanks for sharing.

[SANGER_A2]

Originally Posted by Wolfman

A lesson learned i guess, will be a distant memory once you get those Scorp's on your beast.

Thanks for sharing.

They're on now and I'm laughing all the way. It just makes me smile now at the thought of the covers bubbling away in the oven!

[YamahaMAXdRPMs]

i painted mine a few months ago, never put it in the oven, just painted and put em on.. no problems.

im pretty sure they are plastic (if i remember correctly)

[Hollywood416]

Originally Posted by SANGER_A2

They're on now and I'm laughing all the way. It just makes me smile now at the thought of the covers bubbling away in the oven!

This is part of the reason I quit baking paint years ago. Now I have a large ceramic room heater and whne I do paint I set things in front of it to get their cure. Doesn't melt plastic and so far has done just as well as anything I used to bake.

[sfcali86]

wow i dnt get it though why put it in the oven just let it dry on its own oh well lesson learned

[SANGER_A2]

Originally Posted by sfcali86

wow i dnt get it though why put it in the oven just let it dry on its own oh well lesson learned

High temperature paint doesn't harden properly until it's heated so any little knock would dent it or chip it off. I discovered this when painting the downpipes on my other bike. You have to get it warm and it goes rock solid. I let the paint dry for a couple of days before putting it in the oven to cure anyway. I thought it would take a long time to cure on the bike (assuming it even gets hot enough) and in that time the paint could have got damaged.

[Boneman]

Originally Posted by SANGER_A2

High temperature paint doesn't harden properly until it's heated so any little knock would dent it or chip it off. I discovered this when painting the downpipes on my other bike. You have to get it warm and it goes rock solid. I let the paint dry for a couple of days before putting it in the oven to cure anyway. I thought it would take a long time to cure on the bike (assuming it even gets hot enough) and in that time the paint could have got damaged.

Any standard spray paint like Kylon will do just fine for the exhaust covers since they are plastic. If you are worried about chipping, then best to sand down the cover first, prime it, and put on several light coats of paint and let cure between each coat. Then you could spray on a clear coat coating if you wished.

Thanks for posting your trials and tribulations with exhaust covers. It sucks that it didn't work out after you took your time and put lots of effort into the project.

I'm still kind of confused that once you had it off, how you could of thought it was aluminum?? A simple finger tap on the exhaust covers tells one that it's plastic and not metal. Guess you never checked the temp of your exhaust cover after a ride as it can easily be touched by hand and only gets mildy warm.


Can't wait to see pics of your new Scorpion cans!!!