Aluminum and plastic cleaning

I'm taking a few bits of the bike apart to give it a good cleaning underneat body panels. What product or method is recommended to clean the hard bits of road debris that cooked and hardened on aluminum parts (mostly front cylinder bank and under the motor)?

Is it possible to polish the windscreen and headlights? Mine are have a slight haze that I'd like to restore. I guess securing the parts safely in place to work on them won't be easy.. any experience doing this?

Bike bright worked well for me, need lot of water to rinse away.

WD40 works wonders

Yes, windshields can be poilished to new consdition as long as you use good quality plastic polishing compounds going from coarse to fine grits. "Novus" makes good polishes that you can try out. I used their three different grit grades to renew the condition of my 4th gen's original windshield two yeas ago and it still looks just as good today as when I polished it up. You can find Novus plastic from most bigger motorcycle dealerships or motorcycle accessory stores. Plastic supple stores like "TAP Plastics" should also carry the product.

Beck
95 VFR

Great ideas. How about the exhaust, from the headers to the cat? I'm thinking of taking it off and bringing it to my local muffler shop for a clean up, but looking at how the piping is routed around and between the center stand legs, this may be a bit complicated. Any on-bike method to give a better look to these SS pipes?

[image: View Post]Bruckner, on 20 August 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

...........Any on-bike method to give a better look to these SS pipes?
I'd try to avoid wrapping them as wrapping pipes have been known to actually shorten their lives by speeding up corrosion and maybe embrittlement from high heat soak. If there is also a lot of bluing on the stainless steel pipes, you can clean it off with "Blue Away" and a lot of elbow grease, but the bluing will always just come back after some miles.....Not really worth cleaning off the bluing IMO, as you cannot see the pipes under the fairings anyway....

Beck
95 VFR

Oh no! I wasn't considering wrapping the pipes! There are dirty spots that look like rust (I was under the impression SS does not rust), I'd just like to find a method to clean up the pipes and give them a smoother look. Whether it's worth it or not is something to be argued, I'm just looking at doing a thorough clean up job while I convert my track only VFR back to street guise.

PJ1 SuperClean will release debris from metal including brake dust from wheels, calipers,
etc. SimpleGreen works well on the plastic fairings. HondaBrite cycle wash is what I use to
wash my bike and this spray-on wash is very effective. $10 bottle diluted per instructions
will last several years. Leaf blower blows remaing water off of bike and leaves incredibly
clean and shiny bike.
Kevin in Atlanta

Once the exposed metal (I.e. exhaust system) is cleaned you might ask any of your boating friends if
they have any SharkHyde(solution). This will seal this exposed metal for many years to come. It's rated
to withstand a salt bath for hundreds of hours!
Kevin in ATL