Polished my header

I bought some Mother's Mag and Aluminum polish and got to work on the header. My bike is a 2006 with about 7700 miles and the header had surely never been polished before.

Before


After


It's still not quite perfect, but it's much better.

After I finished up, I noticed that my rear brake lever was bent inward toward the center stand spring so much that the spring was grinding a groove into the lever. I'm new to bikes so I didn't even notice the friction on the spring until close examination by chance. I bent it outward about a 1/4 inch and now it's all good. The bending was likely from the drop from the previous owner.

Last task was to remove the Warning sticker from the tank. No sign of it left except a barely noticeable ridge from the sticker outline.

...I had to share after being proud of my work. Thanks for reading.:thumbup:

I admire your dedication :thumbup: luckily I actually like the bluey tarnished look

Spring = header polish fever!!

Nicely done :thumbup:

Did you polish it by hand?

Brandon said:

Did you polish it by hand?

Click to expand...

Yup.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

I'd be happy if mine looked liked the before photo!!!

nivag said:

I'd be happy if mine looked liked the before photo!!!

Click to expand...

THIS!

Looks good. I plan to do this in the coming week..but did you say 06 with 7700 miles? Enough detailing, time to get out and ride! Blah

Will stainless steel polish work?

sent from my s4

pester said:

Will stainless steel polish work?

sent from my s4

Click to expand...

I would imagine so... the header IS stainless steel:thumbup:

stanless steel polish will not do much to remove the brown stains, there is no harm in trying but i did not find it effective, it does make the headers slippery though!

nice work OP

turbid said:

stanless steel polish will not do much to remove the brown stains, there is no harm in trying but i did not find it effective, it does make the headers slippery though!

nice work OP

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip

sent from my s4

pester said:

Thanks for the tip

sent from my s4

Click to expand...

If you already have stainless steel polish then go ahead and use it. It WILL work, it's stainless steel polish! lol. As far as making the surface slippery, that would only because its polishing off the rough stuff baked on the header.. any polish will make it feel like that. I used Mothers mag and aluminum polish and it worked fine. Most of those metal polishes do the exact same job.

Humperdinkel said:

Luckily I actually like the bluey tarnished look

Click to expand...

Me too!

Unfortunately, it becomes the browney tarnished look
26K miles with not a single polish, the effort would help the resale, but...

Botch said:

Me too!

Unfortunately, it becomes the browney tarnished look
26K miles with not a single polish, the effort would help the resale, but...

Click to expand...

nothin' to it but to do it:thumbup:

I like to use a blue pot scrubber with some Mother's mag. This is after 30 minutes of scrubbing them for the first time since the weather turned nice. Prior to this they had 6 months of riding in rain on them.

I'm OCD about keeping my bike clean but there's no way in hell I'd sit there
and rub that sh€t for 30 minutes (someone better not take that out of context).

I'd rather pay one of you nutters to do it for me!
(Don't take that out of context either!)

Cortez said:

I'm OCD about keeping my bike clean but there's no way in hell I'd sit there
and rub that sh€t for 30 minutes (someone better not take that out of context).

I'd rather pay one of you nutters to do it for me!
(Don't take that out of context either!)

Click to expand...

Only takes me 30 minutes the first couple of times, after washing the bike anyways. Once you get the grime off it's all about maintaining. A quick rub down :innocent: after washing and your done.

boarder4life81 said:

Only takes me 30 minutes the first couple of times, after washing the bike anyways. Once you get the grime off it's all about maintaining. A quick rub down :innocent: after washing and your done.

Click to expand...

Might be the fact that I live in an apartment so I don't have anything "handy", or a garage where I'd run away to and mess around on the bike, so, I just don't
do anything on it other then ride it.