Drill a drain hole or two Spiker, then run some two stroke fuel through yer engine occasionally, and it'll never rust out. Cheers, Terry.
Why won't the two stroke oil gunk up the back of the intake valve?
Cheers,
No mate, why would an occasional tankful of gas with a little two stroke oil mixed through it cause any problems? It's an old remedy for rusty pipes (and to help prevent gas tanks rusting too) that goes back to the days when our bikes were new, and the OEM pipes would often rust out in one season.
The two stroke oil mist just coats the interior of the pipe, and creates a waterproof barrier. I've never heard of this "cure" causing any problems with valves, and I suspect you'd need a heck of a lot of oil to gunk up the valves. Dirty engine oil in old worn cylinders would be a more common cause, I'd imagine.
I've also heard of guys using a cup of diesel fuel in a tank of gas to loosen up sticky valves in cars, (I put some in my oil once, which worked well in my old Ford V8 to loosen up a sticky lifter when I tried it many years ago) and even transmission fluid in the fuel, as an "upper cylinder lubricant".
I've got stainless steel pipes on my BMW K1100LT, beautifully made as you'd expect with 1.6mm wall thickness header pipes, but the problem with SS is that it's brittle, and so far I've had to weld broken header pipes up twice in three years. (not a real problem, considering the bike has now done 100,000 miles without any other repairs of note)
If you're gonna use them, make sure that the pipe is well "clamped" at either end of the pipe, I suspect that my rubber mounted, (but heavy) OEM muffler assembly occasionally "flexing" on rough Aussie roads is exacerbating the situation, and if it wasn't such a nice quiet touring device, I'd install a smaller, lighter muffler. Cheers, Terry.