I'm not responsible for damge to your truck, your tools, yourself, or anything else. Anyone that wants to try this do so at your own risk.

That being said, I got to messing around with my exhaust tips today and decided I would try getting them to look good again. They are probably 7 months old or so now and are already looking like crap. They had turned a bronzeish all over and had these brown looking spots all over it. I just was super unhappy with them and they seemed to be getting worse. One side at the end had bronze streaks in it. They just looked horrible. They looked good for maybe month when I got them but that was about it. I was really wanting to go back to Chrome tips as they atleast looked good until they rusted through. I've tried steel wool and other stuff like people have suggested but none of that seemed to work for me so here is what I did.

Do they look 100% new? No but they do look a ton better. I could have probably gotten them even better had I spent more time on it. The cordless drill kept dying on me so when I got them pretty good I quit. This got most of the yellowish tint off and either got rid of or made most the of the brown spots hard to see. Some of the ones I really worked hard on seem to be gone others seem to be really hard to see. If my batterys hadn't kept dying I might have been able to have gotten rid of them completely.


Things you need:
Drill(Preferably Corded)
Mothers Powerball
Mothers Polish or similar
Steel Wool
Cloth to wipe the polish off.

Here is what I used.






I thought that polish was about worthless when I tried it on wheels. I guess it was better than nothing but the Mothers in the cans seemed to work a lot better for me. I find wheels easier to do by hand usually but these that just wasn't the case. This stuff and the powerball worked well. Make sure not to try and put the powerball on a impact gun. My batteries kept dying in my drill as I'd only get 10 minutes or so give or take out of them when using them constantly like this. I decided to try out the Impact gun with a stocket. Well that wasn't a good idea as the powerball came apart. Not sure it was in the best shape to start with. I used it for a bit then ended up having to go buy a new one.

BTW Be careful with the edges of the tips. Mine where they are slant cut are pretty sharp. I have a few cuts on my hands and have cut myself in the past when messing with them. I'm not sure if all of them are like this but just a warning.

Here is what I started with here. They were probably a little worse than this now as these pictures aren't super recent.




Now the steel wool didn't seem to help much with the discoloration here the thing it's for is if you have any rubber or anything from your tires on there use this to try to scrape it off.

Once you are done cleaning the rubber or whatever else off the exhaust tips take the drill and put some polish on the powerball. I slowly started it out as if I you start it out at full speed it slings polish everywhere. It still does with going slow at first but not as much. Now I would get it on the exhaust and once it seemed to get most of it on there instead of on the powerball I would start using it full speed and kind of stay in one spot for a few seconds then work back and forth a little. I had to stop quite a few times to put more polish on the powerball. There are some spots like at the top that are hard to get to. For these you may just want to leave them or try and get a smaller powerball. This one will get in there some but seems to hit other stuff and have the ball start getting torn apart from hitting stuff. I tried doing it by hand and it just didn't seem to do much at all. It seems to take a while even using the powerball and you have to seem to use lots of polish and keep going back and forth. This I'm sure was hard on the drill and I'm sure it's why the battery died a few times. I have 2 batteries but still when you have to charge them for an hour at a time it takes forever. This is why I say get a corded drill for this. We have one but it wasn't at this house. I wish I had that.

Anyway after you start seeing the spots come off and color get back to a shine take take the cloth and wipe the exhaust tips down. If you see spots you missed you can go back and do them again. Overall it took a little bit of time and wasn't just a 5 minute job but it wasn't too bad either and got them looking pretty darn good again. I was actually happy with the stainless steel tips for once. I'm not sure how long this will last but it looks great for now.

Here is how it turned out for me. The tip on the right side that you see something in in these pictures must just be a little polish I didn't get off at the time of the pictures or something as I don't see it in person I think the flash brought it out and it must have just been polish or something on there.












Anyway there is my write up on how to get your stainless steel exhaust tips looking decent. I know myself along with others have been super unhappy with how they looked after a few months and this was the first time I actually figured out how to get them looking decent again.

 

That what i said on your other thread about using steel wool and mothers , it does work wonders i use the super fine # 0000 steel wool , now keep up on them and they will keep the shine.... i like to use the mothers chrome polish that in the little jar , paste like...

 

The aluminum polish in the jar is what I like for wheels but it's hard to use with the powerball. The steel wool didn't seem to do much except get the rubber off halfway. I think it's only good if you have stuff on the exhaust.

 

The other thing with this is If you already have the drill, and steel wool and just buy the powerball and polish it's around $28-30. Thats a lot of money to clean up your tips when you have to do it often. Now I guess the powerball will last more than once and hopefully the polish will although I'm not sure. I had some left from doing my wheels but I didn't use a whole lot doing them I don't think as I mainly used the other kind. So thats expensive for when you can buy chrome tips for $60 or so and not do this much work every month or two.

 

but who wants to keep buying tips i use a s.o.s pad on my chrome tips and my chrome stock wheels it works really good but ima hafta try that powerball and some polish about half my tip is really dicolored for they are a few yrs old.....thanks for the tip....j