I just had the header covered at the shop today to prevent burning holes in pants/damaging boots. Didn't think anything of it till I left and it stalled a number of times. Also the exhaust was louder.

The pipe is stainless steel, I read there is no issues there. However it is covered all the way to the manifold, which I didn't ask for, but I'm not in my home country and their English isn't the greatest.

Anyway, the bike seemed to run fine after the first few stalls. Just checking in for some opinions... Its no big deal the remove it and opt for one of the clamp on heat shields.

Cheers and hope you are all well.

 

Never had an issue with burning things on the header. Other than my hands while working on the bike and I forgot thats hot. Didn't take me long to figure that out. You posted some nice pics in the show us your KLX section like the camo.

 

Glad you enjoy the pics mate. Location is central Vietnam.

So far I've burned through all my pairs of shorts (when I hop off the bike they made contact with stock and after market pipe). I've also managed to burn my jeans up too. Now I've finally got my hands on some new (& expensive) riding gear, I was hoping not to burn that too :P

 

The header wrap shouldn't be any contributor to the stalling of your bike. If anything I'd just turn up the idle a shade. Fact is my KLX idles around 1800 rpm and that's fine with me, stock exhaust makes it barely noticeable and it never stalls unless I just plain screw up. Supermoto racers also use high idle, but higher yet, around 2500 rpm to avoid stalling.

Only negative to wrap is in some cases it can cause header pipe steel to harden and/or corrode due to holding moisture when not hot. Don't know if either apply to the stainless used in your header, probably not.

 

Header wrap is supposed to go all the way up the head pipe to the head. I'm guessing you're aware it's real benefit is for performance by allowing the contained, hotter gases to exit faster and create a kind of scavenging effect. It's offers some insulation to the rider as a side effect.

To be honest I wonder how much performance could be obtained on our KLX's measly power output, but on high horsepower, racing applications it's supposed to yield some benefit. For your need to insulate the pipe from your riding gear, it should work great. On cars and trucks it does keep down the under-hood temp too.

I cannot see that short of a run of wrap on your stainless header pipe doing any harm to the pipe. I'm pretty sure if you pull it off after running it just one time that it will leave some discoloration, but that's about it. The examples of damage to headers usually comes in cases of non-stainless pipes and/or thinner walled racing headers with long runs of wrap that really builds up the heat.

The only time you see a KLX header glow red is sometimes when you warm it up and the air injection system really heats up the secondary burn close to the head. I'm guessing your KLX is an FI model. I wonder, do they still use air-injection on those? Mine is carbed, and many/most carb guys like to disable the air-injection. If yours has air-injection, I could see the wrap leaving some pretty nasty residue over time where that secondary burn occurs. With FI I wonder if disabling the AI...if it has such...would screw up the exhaust sensor data...I'm assuming the FI KLX has an exhaust bung...I don't know.

 

Wrap will definitely trap moisture and discolor the pipe... my used '09 came with wrap (which I removed) and you can tell it was there.

 

Should be able to clean it with some emery cloth wrapped around it and worked in like shining shoes.