Header wrap - 18 months later

If you like tinkering with your bike, header wrap is great. If you'd rather just ride it until the wheels fall off, not so much.

It looked good and caught the eye of people at Sturgis and all over the place. Then it came undone from one of the ends and got beat up a bit before I got home. I had to soak some more wrap and blend the wraps and do it again. At that time, I added the tips from the original exhaust back on to the bike. More paint, looking good. It wasn't too long before it tore at the frame mount. More soaking and rewrapping, and this time I took some black anodized wire and wrapped it around the pipes to keep the wrap on. Repainted again (actually, there were several repaintings throughout this time). When I was putting the pipes back on, the wrench banged into the wrap and split it again. :gah:

It looks good when it's freshly painted, but it doesn't stay that way long. When it gets wet, it stinks and loses some of the color, which means I've washed my bike a lot less than I normally would, so the whole thing looks like crap most of the time. People still ooh and aah over it, but I no longer care.

I took my heat shields down to the performance coatings place today, and they're putting a ceramic coating on them. It'll be a dark grey and kind of sparkly. I'm going to end up painting the bike to match (good excuse for a new paint job). I love the color, but it's taken a hit over the last 50,000 miles, and it's time to give my baby a new look. I'm going with something lighter so it isn't so hard to keep looking good. I'm excited!

Don't forget the pix when you get it done!

Pix!!!!

Thanks for the info. I didn't know what would happen to the wrap and how hard it is to deal with. And, yeah, post some pics when your done.

My friend Tattoo has the wraps on his pipes and they look rather ragged. He doesn't care though. My bare pipes are turning a bit yellow/blue and I use "blue Job" to keep them reasonably clean. You'll never get all the stain off unless you take the pipes off and buff 'em up on a wheel. I can live with a bit of bluing.