Pipe bending

I successfully adapted a chrome pipe for my single by heating it red hot and gently giving it a heave! It discoloured the chrome but it polished back up, however the pipe only cost me £20! 
Dan 

First do some tests on another tube. Practice needed to figure out where and how much heat to apply. Only a small amount of bending each time. Done wrong it will get oval or worse buckled. Bought some pipe of equal size at a car supply. I think it took five tries to figure out which part of the tube to heat read hot. Fixing one end in the vice and a bar in the end to avoid burning yourself. Not much force. The chrome will disappear. Did not bother me as it was on the Manx which very rarely sees rain. If you look closely at the pic in my avatar you can see it under the gear lever.

Hi Adam, I managed to successfully bend my M50 pipe by cutting some sq pieces of hardwood (3) after drilling a hole in them the size of my exhaust pipe, I then cut them in half and using them to prevent the pipe from squashing I found a press very easily re shaped it to my requirements. I don't have access to enough heat, and if the movement you require is not great it worked for me. The wood needs to be if possible quite thick (50mm ) at least.  Good look Regards John O

   Adam,hi. in my limited experience, there is some merit in the tale that, with an Oxy_Acet. flame, wind in th Oxy adjustment to get a soft & black smokey flame (stop breathing )to play over th entire area & surrounds where any heat will be applied, leaving a sooty deposit thickly covering th chrome, before heATING IN EARNEST. (OOPS, STOP SHOUTING.)This helps protect chrome from excess heat and wipes off after th operation. 
  If you heat th inside radius of your forming curve, there is a tendency to get kinks there, too much on th outside and edges induces flats Practise is a good idea. or be lucky. . .

Barry's plan sounds very logical.  It's hard to find written information about technical reasons why chrome plate goes black when too hot. 
I have one nickel plated pipe (no chrome) and carelessness led to a few miles running retarded.  Pipe was new...and went black.  It seems the nickel plate was oxidising. Very sad.
But it polished out completely.
Blackening chrome plate seems to because at high temperature the extremely thin super hard layer of chrome over the underlying nickel is porous enough to allow oxygen to reach the nickel.  Which goes black.  And the chrome is so hard that it's impossible to polish blackened chrome back to a shine, unless you polish all the way through to thd nickel.
But a black carbon covering the chrome probably protects it from oxygen.