www.boxertrix.com

my header pipes are quite crusty and need a good clean/polish to get the shine back.
What is the best equipment and cleaner/polish?

Henry

Hi Henry

Just use a polishing mop and your prefered metal polish. I've had good results using dialux of various coarseness, up to a mirror shine. You can get a complete kit with mops and compounds from Busters, HG etc etc

Toodle Pip

What Paul said - got my polishing kit from Hein Gericke, works well. In fact I must get round to re-doing my headers sometime soon as they're looking a bit skanky.

Gromit wrote:In fact I must get round to re-doing my headers sometime soon as they're looking a bit skanky.

By that he means they are less than mirror perfect

can't be as skanky as mine.


Spurred on to clean yesterday when a very shiny HD pulled alongside me at the traffic lights. he looked me up and down and said "thats a lovely machine you have there..........pause........have you ever thought of cleaning it?"
and off he went




Anyway thanks for the advice


Henry

My 3 stage approach .....

1. Medium Wet and Dry with car shampoo.
2. Fine Wet & Dry with Autosol
3. Cloth with Autosol
4. go for a ride and collect black bin liner on newly polished headers

Job's a good 'un.

I have a drill polishing wheel but without a vice it's a pain to use unles the headers remain on the bike.

My 3 stage approach .....

1. Medium Wet and Dry with car shampoo.
2. Fine Wet & Dry with Autosol
3. Cloth with Autosol
4. go for a ride and collect black bin liner on newly polished headers Confused

Thats 4 stages....

Not really the right time of year to be polishing headers is it?

Tripe you need to curb the chrome envy... everyone knows HD riders only come out in the sunshine

Need to re fix my power socket this weekend so I can hook up the optimate.. (and balance throttles) a recent flurry of cycling is meaning the S has stood all week without moving till today - shame they don't self clean... I prefer the matt dirt finish on mine anyway.

Ade

Hello All. Just joined the forum, hence late reply. Try a product called Astonish. It is made for cleaning Aga cookers and ovens and available from hardware stores/ kitchen equipment suppliers. Claimed to contain no phosphates or acids and comes as a white paste in 300 ml. tubs.
Can be used on a rag for pipes or with a stiff brush for the awkward bits.
Get the wife to buy it on the household budget!

Use anything you like on e'm but to do a proper job you to take e'm off,best results i've had,buy an electric bench grinder and fit a good polishing mop.

Yep I'd agree with Chris it's better and to be honest easier to remove em. Standard drill held in a bench clamp works too.

Toodle Pip

Yup - remove them. Take less than 5 mins and'll save hours of frustration.

Yup - remove them. Take less than 5 mins and'll save hours of frustration.

And then spend 2 weeks getting the sheared studs removed from the dismantled engine

Ade B wrote:
And then spend 2 weeks getting the sheared studs removed from the dismantled engine

Oh yeah...forgot about that bit (I was doing a Haynes manual impersonation)

All the more reason to regularly strip your bike.

luckily my chrome envy has evaporated like the last of the good weather. I suspect it will be sometime before I think about it again

Henry