Blue Job

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I have years ago (20+). Moderate success. It does a pretty good job of removing stains, but not so much the "bluing" of exhaust pipes.
 
I’ve got a can. Funny that the pair of lips isn’t on your pictured container. I guess some markets are more politically correct.
Anyway, it works ok with elbow grease. Basically it’s micro-polishing the chrome.
 
Yes and it did remove the bluing. However, the bluing will return.

It was a lot of work by hand and ended up using a small orbital sander (Black and Decker “Mouse”) with the supplied cloth cut it a small square and on the very end of the sander Velcro pad.
 
I have to ask
Why do people want to remove the blue from the downpipes?
 
I did it because the pipes were second hand and needed cleaned up. It also was one of the things to let me know where I was with carb settings and engine harmony (if that makes sense?).
 
"Back in the day" they had a product called "Blue Away". It would remove the blue alright, but it would also remove some shine and the pipes would never look the same again.
 
I've used this BlueJob on my modern Bonneville with stainless headers that go blue from the air injection system. Worked pretty well, used a thin strip of cotton cloth, wrapped once around pipe, then holding each end of clothe, pulled one end then the other to easily rotate 360 deg around the pipe.
After deleting the air injection system, headers have stayed clear of the bluing.

Just be very careful doing a google search for that stuff, esp if at work or the wife is watching....;-)
 
Yes, I too tend to ask the question, why remove the blue. I think it adds to the appearance. Unless of course one cylinder ran lean and the excessive blueing made the pipes look lopsided. I have seen pipes blued for over 300mm. It looks dreadful.
A bike with no bluing just doesn’t look right to my eyes.
Do we know if all chrome goes blue and at what temperature? How thick is the blue or to put it another way, how much chrome do we remove if we do polish off the blue. Do we run out of chrome?
Al
 
Alan L said:
Yes, I too tend to ask the question, why remove the blue. I think it adds to the appearance. Unless of course one cylinder ran lean and the excessive blueing made the pipes look lopsided. I have seen pipes blued for over 300mm. It looks dreadful.
A bike with no bluing just doesn’t look right to my eyes.
Do we know if all chrome goes blue and at what temperature? How thick is the blue or to put it another way, how much chrome do we remove if we do polish off the blue. Do we run out of chrome?
Al
Click to expand...

To answer your questions in part:

Chrome forms various oxides at temperature. Each variant of the oxide exhibits a different color, depending on the temperature at which it formed. The color varies from purple to blue to yellow (hottest to cooler).
The thickness is but a few molecular layers; the layer of chrome oxide protects the virgin chrome under from further oxidation.

Removing the blue, and the other colors, removes chrome, and intimately one runs out of chrome. There is a layer of plating under the chrome which will be exposed. This could be nickel, but in cheap chrome jobs is most likely copper.

While the oxide layer is but a few molecular layers deep, cheap chrome jobs have total chrome thickness that is only a matter of a few molecular layers. For example: I was with a woman friend when she bought a chrome faucet fixture for her house. I knew sha liked the design, so I said nothing about the price but I thought "how can you get a quality faucet for $39?" After a year of use in her new home, the faucet developed a stain, which upon close examination revealed to be the copper sub-layer. She never used harsh chemicals on the faucet, but was in the habit of wiping the water stains off with a soft cloth, each time she used the sink. One year of such wiping removed the micron layer of chrome.

Slick
 
I always chase the gold/yellow/wheat colour for headers , guess I in error thinking blue means lean running condition ….. which is result of factory tune to pass pollution testing , my bad ???
 
Modern emission control devices such as air injection, which introduce oxygen into exhaust ports to burn off remaining fuel, raises exhaust temperatures reaching the headers. Unless the higher temps are addressed, it would seem futile to de-blue the pipes.
 
Yup you correct Tory ! …. Not answer to my question though, it half the answer ….,
 
I always interpreted blue pipes up and around the head as an indication of sustained running at WOT...I prefer to let mine go to the color they seek, lots of reasons for bluing pipes.
 
Lots of reasons for blue pipes or not
Including the wall thickness ,state of engine tune
How the bike is ridden
 
If you coat the inside surface of the pipes with bbq black when new, it will take a lot longer to blue them out.

Blue Job
 
texasSlick said:
To answer your questions in part:

Chrome forms various oxides at temperature. Each variant of the oxide exhibits a different color, depending on the temperature at which it formed. The color varies from purple to blue to yellow (hottest to cooler).
The thickness is but a few molecular layers; the layer of chrome oxide protects the virgin chrome under from further oxidation.

Removing the blue, and the other colors, removes chrome, and intimately one runs out of chrome. There is a layer of plating under the chrome which will be exposed. This could be nickel, but in cheap chrome jobs is most likely copper.

While the oxide layer is but a few molecular layers deep, cheap chrome jobs have total chrome thickness that is only a matter of a few molecular layers. For example: I was with a woman friend when she bought a chrome faucet fixture for her house. I knew sha liked the design, so I said nothing about the price but I thought "how can you get a quality faucet for $39?" After a year of use in her new home, the faucet developed a stain, which upon close examination revealed to be the copper sub-layer. She never used harsh chemicals on the faucet, but was in the habit of wiping the water stains off with a soft cloth, each time she used the sink. One year of such wiping removed the micron layer of chrome.

Slick
Click to expand...
Many years ago, Charles Falco wrote an excellent explanation of why chrome goes blue. Charles Falco is a professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona, and a committed motorcyclist (at one time he had an ambition to own a copy of every motorcycling book in the world!). Basically, light gets reflected from the chrome layer, but the thickness of the oxide removes some of the frequencies(by destructive interference when the oxide layer thickness equals half the wavelength of a particular colour), thus creating the various colours. The only way of removing the colour is to remove the oxide, which if done often, will remove all the chrome as well.
Oddly enough, this explanation caused something of an uproar, when several people refused to believe this!
 
My pipes were black when I got my 750 , my timing was not correct, not enough advance ,
Blue Job
it's really easy to bring them back to shinny chrome , buy some cheap felt discs to go on your angle grinder , get a fine finishing polishing bar type Rouge or even some autosol works great , so easy. Cheers .
 
Danno,
I see the other bike, looks to be very nice as well, (not the bicycle !!!)
If I ever get new pipes, I will remember that.
B.T,W,, residing in Illinois have You heard of R & K Cycle in Kirkwood, Illinois ? or perhaps
been there ? It has been a few years for me, but it's a cool old shop, Ron's been there forever, and
has sold Brit bikes since back in the days when they were new, and I was Young !

Ride
 
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