Chrome bubbling

It is plastichrome, a copper chrome laminate vacuum sealed on the plastic cover, heat from the exhaust causes it to separate off the plastic. Mine was fine until I put hard lowers on increasing the heat in that area and it bubbled too.

Backroadrollin said:

Just bought this bike the other day 2008VTX1300T
Sorry about the shine. Anyway the one cover is bubbling the chrome, any ideas on why? I'm assuming since it's the only one it was just manufacturer defect. Other than that bike runs beautiful and eats up the blacktop. And it's low KS only 33000 km. No scorching or discoloration on the cover from a heat issue. Any ideas would be helpful. View attachment 246308 View attachment 246309

Click to expand...

Not really a manufacturer defect, just age, it's 15 year old chrome. What has worked for me in the past, I also have a 1975 Gold Wing; is to crumble up some aluminum foil, dip it in water and scrub a bottom part of the chrome that can only be seen when the bike is on a lift or in a ditch. Either place it won't matter, scrub the chrome with the wadded up wet aluminum foil and dry it with a rag, on some chrome it works wonders and on other chrome it doesn't help at all. I think it's the Honda plastic parts that are chromed that it doesn't work on, if it's a steel part that's been chromed it works. So if it looks better you can do the rest of the bike. Otherwise the best you can do is take the parts to be re-chromed.
In the Navy we used that method, also; newspaper, Never Dull and brasso to shine just about anything. All items I've found relatively cheap on the civilian side. There's no telling how much our US military paid for it. Probably a lot more than we do😉

On that one usually is because someone was running it with the clutch slipping very bad and over heating the clutch inside and it will make the adhesive on the cover separate and that’s why it’s the whole thing not just on the bottom where the exhaust is you should be able to pick one up on eBay for cheap my brother in law ran mine like that for three days and about 950 miles messed it up good and I couldn’t find a way to get it to come close to sealing back to the cover good luck it only cost me like 30 dollars to pick one up

Just got back from a 4 1/2 hour ride, and I noticed the cover had warmed up but not hot I can put my hand on it easily but the chrome doesn't have the bubbles anymore. I'll check in the morning to see if it stays the same or reverts back.