Carbon Coated Exhaust Tips

Joined
Sep 19, 2008
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2,970
Location
Pennsylvania
My 2017 VW All Track has two nice chrome exhaust tips, one on each side of the rear of the car below the bumper. Saw over time that they were getting covered in carbon and finally decided to clean them.

Much to my chagrin, the carbon was baked on to the point where no liquid (carb cleaner, gun cleaner, wax, you name it) would even really touch it. And then I tried a brass scouring pad that I had in my tool collection. This stuff worked great! Very light rotating motions took the carbon right off and without scratching the stainless steel under the carbon. When done, I put a little Nu Finish on the exhaust tips. That will burn off in s few miles but right now they look good. I was just floored by the hardness of the carbon coating and have to wonder what the inside of the pipes and mufflers look like. It just the nature of the beast with a GDI engine. Runs like a scalded cat and very smoothly as well.
 
Seems to be the nature of the beast on GDI cars. I gave up a long time ago on the single SS exhaust tip on my Mazda3. Black is fine. My car is white and the inside of the bumper cutout is stained gray from the exhaust. I figure it's a car and not everything needs to be perfect.
 
It's just a part of cleaning the car. Some BKF on a PowerBall and they clean right up. Adds a few minutes.
I guess the value of a clean car has dropped in my life lately. I keep it clean inside, free of clutter, dust, and schmutz, but I don't care as much about the outside anymore.
 
My 2017 VW All Track has two nice chrome exhaust tips, one on each side of the rear of the car below the bumper. Saw over time that they were getting covered in carbon and finally decided to clean them.

Much to my chagrin, the carbon was baked on to the point where no liquid (carb cleaner, gun cleaner, wax, you name it) would even really touch it. And then I tried a brass scouring pad that I had in my tool collection. This stuff worked great! Very light rotating motions took the carbon right off and without scratching the stainless steel under the carbon. When done, I put a little Nu Finish on the exhaust tips. That will burn off in s few miles but right now they look good. I was just floored by the hardness of the carbon coating and have to wonder what the inside of the pipes and mufflers look like. It just the nature of the beast with a GDI engine. Runs like a scalded cat and very smoothly as well.
Slightly different application, but I use the Borla polish on my exhaust tips and it works amazing.
 
That is why they started to make more and more fake exhausts tips in cars nowadays
I love the bmw ones where I can see behind them that it is fake. At least they could have painted the inside black, so I don't see a shiny wall from behind. The magnaflow one on the X gets fairly dirty but it cleans up easily with some chrome polish.
 
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