my exhaust glows red please help

I had the same thing with a catalytic muffler which got very hot and turned the chrome a bluish tint. It gives off a lot of heat and one evening last summer I got home late enough that it was kind of dark out and I saw it was glowing red. I think the problem is the muffler catalytic design which I think is set up to get very hot and burn up unspent gasses. I do not like that muffler, but I suppose it is an attempt to make the exhaust cleaner. I use opti 2, so it is clean enough. I dislike the muffler enough that I bought a pocket bike expansion exhaust and adapted it to the bike. Runs much cooler, gives more power and sounds real good, or it did unti I lost the bike in a truck fire. I had thought at first that the hot exhaust was due to the bike running too lean or something, but that wasn't it. I don't know what to advise, you, but I really don't like that catalytic muffler. I've hears since then that not all of the catalytic mufflers are made the same way, so maybe some are better than others. Mine came from BGF and no doubt the same muffler shows up with other dealers. That's what I think your glow is all about. Somebody who knows more than me may venture another opinion.
SB

Mine did the same thing as silverbear's and I pretty much did the same thing except I put the muffler on the end of a pocket bike pipe after I cut the cat out of it.

You can see from the first pic that the chrome has burned off the middle of the muffler.

The middle thing in the 2nd pic is the cat which sits just before the burned spot inside the muffler.

Kevlarr said:

Mine did the same thing as silverbear's and I pretty much did the same thing except I put the muffler on the end of a pocket bike pipe after I cut the cat out of it.

You can see from the first pic that the chrome has burned off the middle of the muffler.

The middle thing in the 2nd pic is the cat which sits just before the burned spot inside the muffler.

Click to expand...

Kevlar,
You sure did a nice job on that exhaust. Your pipe looks just about like mine, but mine already had a little muffler on it. Did you join things up by welding or what? Is that pipe hot on your leg? It sure looks good. You did a much better job than I did using flex pipe to go from the exhaust manifold to the expansion tank. Is that handlebar you used for extending the pipe?
Regarding the stock catalytic pipe... seems like a goofball way of getting cleaner exhaust to have the muffler that hot... what about somebody riding off road through brush? I'd think there could be a fire hazard. I know that I burned my ankle more than once and rode with my foot as far to the outside of the pedal as I could because it was uncomfortably hot just to be near it. The first kit motor a few years ago wasn't like that and was OK.
SB

Actually everything back to the muffler is from the pocket bike pipe, I just cut the pipe right at the expansion chamber, flipped it and re-welded it so it followed the curve of the frame. Doesn't burn my leg at all since I wrapped the whole thing in header tape. Although I do miss the sound it made before I wrapped it, it had the nice tinny pop from the expansion chamber like a dirtbike has. lol

As far as a catalytic converter getting red hot, I would think that would mean the thing was working properly since the platinum media has to get over 600º to properly convert CO onto CO2. I remember cars in the 70's had warnings on the sun visors about parking in tall grass because the cat could cause a fire.