Playing around with the heat shield on my K100 (there was a missing nut) I decided to pull it off.  I then decided the exhaust looks like it needs a good clean a polish.  Something I'm going to start tonight.

Now looking at the bike I like the look of it without the worn black heat shield - just the stainless exhaust.

Is there any reason I can't leave the heat shield off permanently?   Is there a downside to not having one - ie does it produce so much heat that it might damage my panniers (should I use the shield when I use the panniers on trips)?

Any advise on the 'correct' approach to cleaning up the stainless exhaust?

I've run mine for the last 2 years without the heat shield and did no damage to the panniers. I have heard some horror tales about them melting but at 37Deg c ambient temp and all sorts of traffic, nothing happened.

Having said that, the main reason I took it off was an incessant rattling that I could not fix, I did like the look though.

I just went through the process of polishing it and the headers up, using an electric grinder, first fitted with a nylon wheel (called scotch brite stuff over here), that got rid of all the road grime and stains. Then I used a cotton wheel with 2 different grades of stick polishing compound. Came up a treat. Put them all back on including a newer shield, and you cannot see the nice pipe. What a bummer. (see my avatar for the header
shine, won't be there after my next trip by the looks of the weather).

And good luck.
RT

I found both this link and this link to have pretty good information about stainless steel polishing.

albyalbatros has a good shiney chrome exhaust ...all polished up ...hasn't seemed to affected his panniers so far
it looks spectacular .....and sounds great

If you don't want to go down the OCD polishing route you can buy a chrome heat shield or get your old one chromed.
For the bits that can be seen when the shield is on, I use Solvol Autosol.

In order to stop the rattling, I simply stuffed a piece of fiber glass between the exhaust and the shield.
This took care of all the vibrations.  Simple, cheap and very efficient.
What I found the best to clean the headers is wet sandpaper (at least 600 grids). They always come back like new. This is not a solution for the stainless exhaust.

CF