Anyone used exhaust wrap on head pipes?

I am interested in wrapping my stock KZ1100 4 into 2 head pipes. Anyone know how much 2" wrap it would take to do just the 4 head pipes?

Assuming you use about a 50% overlap on each wind, you can estimate how much you need by:

measure TOTAL linear length of pipe to be covered.

measure the width of the tape.

divide total linear pipe length by tape width

multiply X 6 to get approximate length of tape needed

I did my 650 with 2" wrap and I used about 75 - 85 feet.

Question: Wrapping deteriorates the exhaust in what 1 yr of operation? Titanium pipe wrapping is a no no, so why wrap?

Wrapping has been on my bike for about three years and still looks ok. Coated it with the recomended silicone spray and it seems to keep it dry. The only marks I have on it is from the time the racoons broke into the shed and tried to steal my bike.

Dragone where did you get that from? My pipes are also wrapped for the past 2 or 3 years and I have no signs of deteriorating head pipes. Mine stays inside and I rarely run in the rain. But when they do get wet, it just evaporates.

FWIW, I have never used pipe wrap but I did read that the NASCAR guys abandoned it because it made the pipes wear out faster. I think the problem is that condensation can get on the surface of the pipe under the wrap which keeps it moist longer and will accelerate pipe deterioration. YMMV, that's what I read never used the stuff myself.

Bdog wrote:

Dragone where did you get that from? My pipes are also wrapped for the past 2 or 3 years and I have no signs of deteriorating head pipes. Mine stays inside and I rarely run in the rain. But when they do get wet, it just evaporates.

That is just from what I have seen. The oxidation factor. Stock steel pipes are gone in a few yrs.

I got the Supertrapp/Kerker pipe for my '84 GPZ almost twenty years ago. They were non chrome, so I immediately had them sand blasted and aluminized. I ran them like that until I got fairing lowers. The heat from the pipes blistered the paint on the lowers so I had to redo the fairing. I put the wrap over the aluminized pipe to prevent that from happening again and not for any performance gain from heat retention. I recently removed it after many years where I occasionally rode through heavy rain. The pipe underneath remained perfect, showing only the spiral pattern of the wrap on top of the aluminum coating. The reason for removing it was because a hole to the pipe was worn through when it rubbed against stuff that was packed on the trailer with the bike when I had to move a few years ago. So, I will redo it without concern for it's longevity. The key is to spray over it with their silicone heat paint to seal it from the water absorbing and evaporation cycling. There are better coatings now since I blasted and aluminized the headers. If I do another set of plain tube headers,
I probably would Jet Hot coat them.

Stephen