B7 S4 stock exhaust tips: stainless or chrome?

[emilio]

i cleaned years of caked-on carbon from my S4's exhaust tips and polished them up a bit. i'm pretty sure they're polished stainless steel, but removing the carbon revealed some pitting that made me wonder wether it's actually really thick chrome. i was thinking about grinding and polishing out the pitting, but i don't want to go too far if it's just plated. what are they?



as a side note, i used a pumice bar to break up the carbon and bronze & steel brushes to get little bits (steel wool was worthless for this much carbon). then i used two polishing compounds on tapered buffs to remove the scratches and Flitz by hand to brighten them up. it's an OK job; if i work on the pitting more then i'll probably do a better polishing job.

there's one big lesson for cars that i learned from cleaning guns: there is nothing commonly available that will chemically dissolve carbon. you might dissolve some grease or sludge that's along with the carbon, but the actual hardened carbon isn't going anywhere without mechanical removal.

- emilio

(moved from Chatterbox because that's almost dead.)

[Terry.Reese]

Looks nice, I need to clean mine also..

[emilio]

year-old bump - no one knows what these are made of?

- emilio

[StealthyQ]

I'll throw in a bump for this too, I would assume the Q5's are made of the same material and I'm tempted to go to town on mine but I am afraid to polish thru the chrome plating if there is any.

[Nollywood]

The S4’s exhaust tips are chrome-plated mild steel.

If it was my car, I would cut them off,and have stainless steel ends welded on, then polished to a bright finish.