Does anyone consider cleaning their exhaust out as regular maintenance?

Depends on the condition of the bike , But I repack my silencer's and inspect and or clean the rest up annually or there abouts ...

Glenn

using what method to 'clean up'?

i had the it cleaned by an engine rebuilder., had them hot tank it for a day...repacked it..good to go.

When I took my silencer off I just used wd40 and a boiler flue ways round brush and rag which cleaned up easy.

On the front pipe I left it in a cosmic soda solution a couple of times for 24 hrs a piece and then in with the round brush again, b&q or Asda sell it.

I haven't attempted the mid pipe as you can't use cs with aly but I think I saw a link to a YouTube vid on here with a guy burning it out with a wet towel round it.

If your engine is in good condition, your jetting is good and you use a good quality synthetic two stroke oil there shouldn't be much need to clean your exhaust too often. If I remember rightly the last time I cleaned out the exhaust on my bultaco was about ten years ago. I run it on castrol power 1 @ 50/1

I've cleaned mid section by sloshing petrol through it. But REMEMBER to let it breath over night to get last vapours out

I use the WFO method to clean the exhaust...........

Go to a trial with a lengthy trail and get in top gear with the throttle Wide F*****g Open, when exhaust stops smoking when you stop its clean.

(I did this once and the silencer got so hot it darn near burned my leg )

LOL, WFO does work huh, top of a hillclimb usually has my bike puffing smoke pretty bad

I don't see any serious amount of carbon causing power issues, for carbon to form the metal needs to exceed the combustion point of the oil/unburned fuel, not likely to happen in an exhaust system

It's pretty much liquid goo plugging the silencer packing so it stops being a silencer, I don't think it causes a power loss