exhaust wrap

[petercaughlin]

Any pro`s or con`s regarding the use of exhaust wrap

[ChrisWells]

Pros: can help keep you or various important components on your sidecar from melting/burning, can make a really ugly pipe more presentable
Cons: can hide derioration (cracks/rust/etc.) of your pipes, yet another item you need to buy and periodically replace
Pro/Con (depends): increase in temp over a given section of pipe could help or hinder exhaust flow (likely more applicable to 2 strokes and well beyond my level of tuning knowledge)

[Eric & Julie]

A BIG con- It can keep the heat in so well that it creates problems further down the line.
On our F1 pre injection I put wrapping from headers to muffler, to stop my leg getting burnt and my nuts frying. Well, it worked great, but at the collector it got hot enough to turn the band to glass, and melt 3 alu mufflers (It took me to the 3rd muffler to figure it out).
Took off the wrap, problem solved.



And it wasn't just me, a friend did the same on his F1, and their carbon muffler caught fire.

[ChrisWells]

I took a minor bump on the end of an aluminum can on an F1 and it must have miss-aligned the internals (which along with the wrapped headers) led to the can melting (twice in one weekend). If you think an un-wrapped pipe is hot, try having an open pipe ending just below/behind your stearing head INSIDE your F1 fairing. Melted the sole off my right boot which was about 4 feet away and facing away from the heat (but along the route most of the exhuast used to exit the fairing) and partially cooked my hands, arms, chest, neck, etc. Naturally it was pushing 40 degrees celcius that day Eventually replaced the header & pipe with a new stainless (unwrapped) replacement with a stainless mufller. I suspect the new muffler was less restrictive which may have helped but after adding a bit of stick on heat shield to protext the Carbon Fiber under tray in a few spots we found we didn't need to run the wrap (that or I had desensitized my lower extremities to heat). Probably not just me, as previous owner had to shield the throttle cable as well and we ended up running a plain cable without further issues.

[Eric & Julie]

Hi Chris,
Going off topic but I know what you are talking about with the open pipe ending inside the bodywork. I had an exhaust leak at the other end of the muffler, so just below the head stock, and the heat coming up around me was almost unbearable. A mid 30s day, it got hot enough to melt the wiring loom and the ignition cutout, just 200M from the finish line on the last lap..
And I've got the same story as you with the throttle cables needing shielding.

So yeah, exhaust wraps do a great job of keeping the heat in, but keep in mind where that heat will be discharged afterwards.

[petercaughlin]

Interesting comments, however I`m in the Classic scene so wonder if the same problems would occur,what you are running presumably are large high revving, high horsepower stuff so again presumably your heat outputs would be far greater then mine

[Eric & Julie]

In our case Peter it was a stock GSXR1100 air/oil motor (2 different motors a 1056 and an 1127cc) in pre injection class

I think to summarize, it does it's job well as insulating heat. If you need to protect from a pipe or small length, it does that great. But if you use too much, the heat build up can cause problems. Oh and if used on standard mild steel tubing, attention to rusting, as it holds moisture if not dried out.
As for performance increase, i think that's all BS. BUt that''s just my opinion.

[richard]

When a friend of mine made me a set of Chambers for my outfit, you may have heard of him, Peter Gibson. He told me how I could change the way the Chambers worked? And it involves exhaust rap which I have used with no trouble. To move the power band you need to make the length of of the body longer or shorter. Shorter to move the power up the rev range. One way is to rap the exhaust. The returning shock wave will move though hotter gas faster so tricking the engine into thinking the exhaust is shorter. This will raise the power band up the rev range and allow experiment with how much to rap. Hope this helps. Richard.