WHATS THE BEST WAY TO CLEAN OUT THE INSIDE OF YOUR EXHAUSTS.

[reed]

Whats the best way to clean out the inside of your exhaust to remove the oil and carbon etc.
Let me know.
Thanks.
Steve.

[Bikenstein]

Steve, I have never cleaned a muffler for the purpose of rechroming. A torch would burn everything out, but you would have to be very careful and also good with a torch. Some pipes use beads or some other packing. You might try pressure washing. I'm gonna do a combo of both when I repair my pressure washer or either use a steam washer that a friend owns. There should be some answers from those who have rechromed mufflers if they did it themselves. Anyway, unless somebody gives a better solution......On second thought, I don't think I will torch my pipes because the carbon inside will light up and oxidize the metal inside.   A hot air gun would provide enough heat

[reed]

We used to put grease on the outside of the exhaust, then i would block off one end of the exhaust with a cork.
And i would add a little caustic soda and fill with water and leave over night, the next day empty out the caustic
Soda and clean out the inside with water or a pressure washer clean off the grease and we would be set to go.
Thanks.
Steve.

[Bikenstein]

Sounds like a plan. How about oven cleaner?

[reed]

David,
I would think that oven cleaner would have caustic soda in it.
You could use your oven you have made that might work.
Thanks.
Steve.
 

[MitchB]

From an old post -

Just pulled my exhaust to clean and try to re-polish the chrome a bit.

The good news - the chrome is in good shape, the pitting cleaned up nicely

The bad - the header / down pipes have a hard carbon-ish coating of about 1/8 inch thick on the entire inside. It is very hard, and does not chip off easily.

Certainly (hopefully) there is some solution these can be soaked in to soften this crap..? I won't be using any kind of torch of flames. That looks like a nasty accident waiting to happen.

I've heard Pine Sol - in full strength - works well to clean carbs ,etc. Oven cleaner hasn't worked well for me in the past, but? Thx for any help.

[husker]

My first problem with my mufflers is getting the baffles to come out. I tried a side hammer but they would not budge. I was thinking about a length of pvc pipe with one end capped that I could side the muffler into and fill it up with diesel fuel and let it soak for a month. What are your thoughts on this would diesel soften up the crud?

[BRT-GTR]

Mitch,
        With the old two strokes, Hot Caustic Soda was the recommended way to remove /soften oil and carbon but take precautions. Don't know the mix ratio. That seems like a very thick build up, have you managed to chip some off to check it. The metal was quite thick on the down pipes, well at least to start with. 
 
Husker7519,
                The baffles were always difficult to remove in my experience. Originally they were just a tight fit with a carbon build up. These days the problem is likely to be rust so a good soak wouldn't do any harm,. Anyone know of a product that will help to crack rust, apart from acid. . A bit of heat would also help. Don't twist too much on the metal bar it soon bends.
Brian

[slawsonb]

Evaporust will demolish the rust, but won't dissolve the other crud. I suggest soaking the baffel ends in some solvent (diesel probably as good as any, maybe kerosene) that will break that down and once that process is done, switch to evaporust. I have used long pieces of PVC pipe (like you suggest) to accomodate mufflers, etc for this purpose. You'll not need too large a PVC pipe until you get to the hanger brackets. This may require some trial and error.
...bert

[OldSwartout]

I have a home-made powder coating oven.  I cleaned out a set of expansion chambers by heating them to 750 Deg. F.   It made a LOT of smoke for about a half hour, but the carbon and oil was gone.

[husker]

Did a search on cleaning 2 stroke mufflers and one suggestion was to use methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) as a solvent. Would have to use a steel pipe as a container as MEK will melt pvc but at 22 dollars a gallon I will try diesel first. Maybe spike it with a quart! I do have 5 gallons of Evaporust but I would like to have most of the other crud out first.   The oven with a controlled temperature sounds far better than the torch idea which I have done a couple over the years.
                                         Rod

[dcr]

I will eventually need to re-chrome the exhaust on my 175DT. Does that require a thorough cleaning prior to sending them out? I cant imagine the chrome shops want to drop a dirty exhaust system into their tanks.

What has been the experience of those here that have sent these out for re-chroming?

[davis]

I capped the end of a muffler, stood it upright, and filled it with mineral spirits (I had considered Grease Lightning which worked well against carbon in the past). Drained it after a few days the used a large, heavy duty, long handled bottle brush attached to a drill and went at the inside. Worked well on the areas I could reach which did not include the middle chambers below the baffle mounting of the muffler. The brush's diameter was a little larger than the header pipes so the brush/drill cleaned those to bare metal with a little scraping help.

I removed the baffle pipes using a 1" dia. steel rod several feet long. Make sure the rod is properly seated in the end of the baffle and the attachment bolt is removed and the muffler securely clamped using its mounting bracket. I needed a number of hard mallet blows to move it out, but all four came out. One baffle end cap was pushed up an inch which I will move back and re-braze in place. Perhaps the mineral spirit soak before this operation would have helped. The baffles then got a good soak in mineral spirits and outside cleaned with a fine wire wheel and treated with penetrating oil. I had to treat the interior of the mufflers with penetrating oil since they now rust quite rapidly.

[davis]

I also found that tapping the muffler between the center bulkheads carefully with a metal hammer released carbon soot and scale which was then easily shaken out.

[OldSwartout]

I've stood an expansion chamber vertically, heating the lower end with an oxy-acetylene torch until the interior starts to burn, then switching to plain oxygen to let it continue to burn. You can control the burn by regulating the oxygen feed. It will burn out anything combustible.  I have not tried this on anything other than an open expansion chamber a long time ago, so don't know how well/if it will work on a street pipe.