First I will say that getting old, used 2 stroke pipes clean is not easy nor cheap. I took mine to a radiator shop and had them boiled in heated acid over night 3 different times with rinsing with high pressure afterwards, but still had oil residue. I also went through some 14 different pipe pieces to get good ones without holes. Pipes that looked near perfect from the outside would come back from the radiator shop with the bottoms looking like Swiss cheese where rust had eaten the metal from the bottoms. This was not the seller's fault as I would have made the same "good pipe" conconclusions based on initial appearance. One the acid eats away the rust, you'd find the bottom surfaces where water/sulphuric acid spent years eating them from the inside out. We all know that our gasolines contain a high content of sulphur and when moisture is introduced (cold starts and humidity) the resultant mixture is sulphuric acid. This is why new bikes/autos have gone to stainless.
After finding a good, solid set of 5 pieces, I took them to Carolina Strippers. These guys have some nasty tanks that you put whole dumptruck and car bodies into for stripping. It's highly caustic and leaves nothing but metal. The insides look like the outsides - not a trace of oil, carbon, or rust. So far, I had $700 in pipes (good and bad ones) $200 in radiator shop cleaning fees, and $125 in the stripping process.
I took the 5 clean pipe pieces home and lightly sanded the areas of damage with fine grit to make sure all chrome was removed, but not to take any structural material off the pipes. I then took each pipe one at a time and attached my welding studs to all of the low places and dents. I purchased my own gun and 300 studs of various sizes for this task. Over several evenings I slowly pulled the dents from each pipe and then cut/smoothed each removed stud area always careful not to remove any pipe surface area. I'd use a die grinder to a point, then finish the spot weld by hand with an 8" file and my orbital sander.
I did all of the sanding myself, in fact, I told my chromer not to do any sanding - first I did not want and grinding marks, no structural materail removed, and no loss of detail on the factory welds, the seams, or the typed warning stampings. They could buff and chrome - no grinding or sanding, I would take all responsibility for finish irregularities. Chroming cost me $600.
I am not happy with the results. For the money, I'd gladly give twice that for NOS and I will find a complete set one day. These are ok and will serve the bike until I can find them, but I'll wait for the new, old-stock set sure to come up for sale one day.....
Regards,
Gordon
