Whether you have an Arrow motorcycle exhaust, an Akrapovic exhaust, an original exhaust, custom or a sports exhaust. Cleaning keeps it looking new and will prevent premature wear of the pot. Discover all the Street Moto Piece tips to clean your complete exhaust line and restore it to its former glory.
Why maintain the exhaust of his motorcycle?
Whatever the material used by your exhaust, steel, titanium or aluminum, carbon (silencer), its aging is inevitable. Indeed, over time and the heat generated by the combustion of the engine, your motorcycle, quad, scooter, cross, enduro exhaust line will show signs of fatigue (loss of shine, rust, tarnishing, oxidation, etc.) .
It is important to clean your motorcycle collector because with the lack of maintenance, the collector becomes fragile and can be pierced by rust, which will force you to buy a new one . It would be a shame for you to have to spend money to renew your exhaust when regular maintenance is enough to keep your original line in good condition.
Regular cleaning, a way to maintain your exhaust over the long term
As mentioned earlier, regular cleaning is an effective weapon against the deterioration of your motorcycle exhaust. Prevention is better than cure. Indeed, regular cleaning will allow you to prevent the appearance of rust and make your motorcycle exhaust shine . To do this, take a motorcycle cleaner , a sponge, a small tub of hot water and a microfiber cloth.
The interview is done as follows:
Step 1: Prepare your exhaust outlet
Just like the method for regularly maintaining your motorcycle exhaust, you can equip yourself with a cleaner, a sponge and a microfiber cloth. Be sure to remove tar stains, insects, and all impurities from the exhaust line.
Step 2: Clean oxidized, rusted, corroded exhaust manifold
It can happen that some exhaust manifolds are attacked by rust / oxidation without you noticing it. To deal with this type of eventuality, you can remove the oxide in two ways :
If you observe a deep encrustation of the rust , the passage by the cleaning with the drill is obligatory . Using the following cleaners, you can remove all surface rust:
If, however, the manipulations mentioned above are not sufficient and the rust is too deep, Street Moto Piece offers you complete lines of ARROW, Scorpion, Akrapovic, Yoshimura, or TERMIGNONI exhausts ( collectors and rear silencers ) adapted to your motorcycle and with original quality / original type to your old exhaust.
On the contrary, if the oxidation is light and does not seem too encrusted in the metal parts, you can simply use the Belgom Alu cleaner and rub well (for the aluminum, stainless steel, brass, chrome parts, etc.)
Some areas are difficult to access, especially on 4-cylinder manifolds. For greater ease, you can optionally disassemble the manifold in order to access these parts more easily (pay attention to a possible exhaust leak). If you do not think you can disassemble your exhaust line, you have the possibility of cleaning the oxidation on sight (visually) on the exhaust pipe.
Step 3: Properly clean your motorcycle muffler
A silent exhaust in stainless steel, titanium, or aluminum, the belgom aluminum polish is more than enough for a sparkling clean.
If your motorcycle muffler is made of carbon, be careful not to use abrasive cleaners. Since carbon is not a pure material, using the wrong cleaner will attack the resin of your exhaust silencer, causing white spots to appear. Therefore, we advise you to use a Wash & Wax dry cleaner .
Iron with a microfiber cloth to remove all traces of product and bring out the shine of the exhaust systems.
At this stage, your motorcycle’s chrome exhaust line should be very clean and should last for several months even on your long journeys !
What is a carbon exhaust? It’s very simple, calamine is a carbonaceous residue generated during the combustion of an engine. Thus, during the expulsion of the combustion gases, the scale accumulates on the walls of your original pot and reduces its performance . This is why it is necessary to decarbonize its exhaust. There are mainly two ways to descale :
The descaling manipulation that will be presented to you is a chemical descaling with caustic soda (available in DIY stores). To do this, you must wear gloves ( the chemical reaction will heat the stainless steel collector to more than 80°C), wear a pair of goggles (caustic soda is irritating and corrosive for both the skin and the eyes). The handling is as follows:
cover the other side with a piece of paper towel, mix again so that the soda dissolves correctly (and spreads throughout the collector) and remove the piece with the paper towel (be careful not to touch the collector anymore, because the temperature due to the chemical reaction will rise to about 80°C )
Yamaha, Triumph, BMW, Suzuki, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki or KTM, you are aware that an exhaust line is made up of several spare parts : catalyst, removable baffle (DB killer), wool rock etc.
When cleaning your motorcycle exhaust , this is the best time to replace certain consumables . To give you an example, stone wool degrades and loses its effectiveness over time . This will lead to noise pollution / higher noise and the risk of losing any anti-pollution approval of your silencer. The sound level is all the higher with a double exhaust outlet with several rock wools.
