www.DRRiders.com

Years ago I had a 1977 Honda 350XL. The exhaust had no leaks but was a lovely rust colour. I simply took off the pipe and painted it with Black BBQ (heat resistant) paint.

Being the cheapo that I am I was considering this for my 2003 DR. New pipe is $159 and can'o paint is $10.

Would this be easy on the DR or just all together retarded? I'm only considering it for the aesthetics.

_________________
DRfURYOS on YouTube

The stock pipe is stainless. Just sand off the old paint and polish it. There's quite a few folks that have done and there are several threads around about it. It looks pretty nice when finished and only takes a couple hours.

i actually did that and it looked good right after. now its still all the same color it it just looks almost chalky dark grey. but still an improvement over what it looked like before. if i actually washed it, it would look even better.

_________________
shemp

+1 on polishing the header. If you do a thorough job on the polish, its far easier to keep clean.

Before:


A little while later, finished with the wire wheel and spent some time with a sisal buffing wheel and emery compound:


And after another pass with a cotton buffing wheel and stainless polishing compound:


And bolted back up:

_________________
'02 DR650, Dynojet'd BST, airbox mod, FMF Q2, IMS tank, Seat Concepts seat, Zeta Armor/XC handguards, Spitfire S-06 screen, heated grips, Wolfman sideracks & Expedition dry bags, 520 chain conversion

I polished mine too. I only ride street so it is staying pretty nice. I don't have a before pick, but the pipe looked like burnt poop. This picture is a few hundred miles after polishing.

So did anyone have to replace the exhaust gaskets when you removed the pipe to polish it?
I remember when I had my cruiser I didn't change them out when I swapped pipes.
I've been wanting to look at/grind the weld on mine anyway, this will give me another reason to take it off.

I picked up a new gasket for the header when I took that off (did the header weld grind at the same time), but I didn't need a gasket for the header-to-muffler connection, as the FMF fits more than snug enough on its own.

_________________
'02 DR650, Dynojet'd BST, airbox mod, FMF Q2, IMS tank, Seat Concepts seat, Zeta Armor/XC handguards, Spitfire S-06 screen, heated grips, Wolfman sideracks & Expedition dry bags, 520 chain conversion

Chances are that you will not have to replace the head gasket when you remove the header. I have removed mine several times including going from stock to FMF and back to stock and there were no discernible leaks although I did buy a new gasket just in case.

_________________
Ass, gas or grass, no one rides for free.

Not a cheaparse solution but it works for me. Ceramic coating...



Another pic from new, but after 7 days in the desert mud (oxymoron?) she cleaned up like new with a quick high pressure water blast and 5 mins with some metal polish. The permanent discolouration on down pipe is as bad as it gets (done ~8000km so far)

_________________
Shane
2010 DR 650 (and 2009 BMW R1200GSA)
Teknik suspension; Safari tank; FCR-MX carb by mx-rob; RockHardRallyGear bashplate; Seat Concepts; MTD pannier & tail racks; Vapor dash; Screens for Bikes; ProTaper bars Windham Bend; Rox Risers; Scotts steering damper; Barkbuster VPS; Quick throttle; Kaoko throttle lock; SW Motech centrestand; ProCycle lower footpegs... and more

Shane,

Was that done by Jet Hot or elsewhere? What did they do with the flange when the pipe was coated (with it loose on the pipe?)

Cheers,
David

_________________
1990 DR650RS restoration complete! Yay!