So over the years owners have gone mad at times and polished the hell out of their bikes, including the exhaust. Does anyone have any tips of 'unpolishing' the exhausts? I was going to try Scottish cloth but I think that may polish it more....media blasting? Anyone had any success of returning polished exhausts back to original dull and boring? TIA
Kind of . They were matt when new...like a clean scaffold tube, but definitely not polished - not my thing really. Someone did mention Vim scouring powder....
I've had this dilemma and tried 2 different ways. First bike I used a wire wheel / brush for every part of the exhaust except the manifolds. Turned out matt and a really good finish but was very time consuming and boring.... just the other day I instead tried hand polishing with Autosol and Scottish brite and then wiped off with alcohol or similar. I think it turned out ok with what felt like much less work. The different colorizations don't always go away as with the wire wheel but the brown ugly rust lookalike disappears and also its relatively easy to polish the fixed manifold for the same look. Mainly it looks much more tidy without being shiny which to me doesn't look like OEM. I considered vapor blasting but looks to much like aluminium too me which don't sit right with the exhaust.
I had the exhaust system on my 996 SPS blasted with dry ice, since previous owner had painted it black. Agree with Yellow Ducati that the result looks too much like aluminium, though much better than matte black. Here is a comparison for what it is worth. 54mm Corse system "dry ice blasted": 50mm Corse system "NOS": I am planning to soft polish it towards a more OEM correct look, but not sure what method to use yet. Will follow this thread and hoping to get some good ideas. It also annoys me that the exhaust welding's have lost the brown/burned color, but not planning to do anything about that unless somebody knows how/what to do.
Anything with hydrochloric acid will clean it easy enough. Harpic X10 toilet cleaner is my go to product. It needs a thorough rinse after cleaning or it will actually go rusty.
That looks good. Do you have any more photos of the rest of the exhaust? Have used them since? Did they change colour?
