I have heard a darker coloration/blue on your header means that your bike is running too lean. Does the bluing on the header result from the way your bike is tuned? if so that would be somthing to watch out for.

 

I little bit of blue is nothing to worry about. You can avoid some of that on this bike by removing/plugging the air suction system. Warming up the engine properly is another good practice. If you push-in the choke way earlier and use throttle to maintain your RPM, you will be running way lean until the engine warms-up. During that that time prior to full warmup, you can actually see your head pipe glowing red.

 

hmm, good food for thought tremor.

 

Iowa - have you ever ridden your bike at night up to full operating temp?
Oh wait - you only have 500 miles on it - probably not. [:-]
Exhaust headers do get red hot, especially when ridden hard, and it's easy to see that "glow" at night.

 

My new pipe looks just fine, after putting about 50 miles on it. When I had removed the stock pipe, there where some pretty nasty dark purple marks.I am thinking that may be because the stock bike was set up lean. I am sure the heat that has caused those purple marks, was not very good for the rest of my engine. oh well problem fixed.

 

Bluing is an indication of a lean fuel mixture and the epa junk doesn'thelp. Take a plug reading to be sure. If it's too white your lean. I think they all come lean to meet epa standards. I don't know about stainless but i think chrome will golden up again when the mixture is right. I did the basic mods put some more fuel in it and my pipe still looks ok. (knock on wood)

 

I has nothing to do the pipe material or manufacterer, Iowa.
It does, however, have everything to do with fuel mixture. You'll never totallyeliminate it. If you can't see it at night it's the because of the ceramic coating, but I gaurantee thesteel untderneaththat coating will get red; Especially if you crank-up and hold an elevatedRPMusing the throttle whilethe engine is really cold.