metallic sand in muffler?

[Vintage Veloce]

So I bought this exhaust pipe for my motorcycle from (ahem) aliexpress (cough). The bulge in the pipe was not explicitly defined as a cat nor muffler, so I wasn't sure what I would get. But for the really cheap price I thought I'd give it a try.
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And when I received it about a teaspoon of these particles came out. Like sand, dark colored and uniformly sized.
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They are magnetic, in a picture below I put a small magnet on the side of the container and they are attracted.
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If I shake the exhaust, more particles keep coming out, slowly, but perhaps endlessly? They seem inexhaustible (pun intended).

I have also included a picture of the inside of the pipe taken with my cheap endoscope. It looks like fairly standard muffler construction to me.
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Any idea what these particles are or why they are in there?

 

[Bogie1632]

Looks like left over shot or cleaning media from the production process. I've gotten a few less-than-stellar Chinesium products with that left in it. My hitch hauler has lots left in, all welded up.

Were you able to get it all out?

V/R
Bogie

 

[ericm]

Looks like shot blasting media

(edit, the post before came while I was writing this, but I can't delete it.

 

[Sumboodie]

Looks like shotblast material. Ie "sandblast"

Being it's a muffler, it shouldn't hurt anything. Could give it a douche with compressed air to get the bulk of it blown out.

 

[Vintage Veloce]

I hadn't tried yet to shake it ALL out, as it must be coming from the "muffler part"... I was afraid it might be the packing material. But shot blasting media makes sense! They must have blasted the heck out of the thing and it got in the muffler.
Frankly, if I shake it ten times I get another 1/4 teaspoon out, every time. It's like it magically generates the stuff. But I'll shake for a while and see what happens...
(goes and shakes the damn muffler for 5 minutes)
Well, it does seem to be subsiding. I'll never get it all out, but I can't imagine it will do any harm, I'd expect it to get blow out the exhaust, not sucked into the engine.
Thanks, I do think the shot blasting media guess is correct!

 

[dogdog]

might be magic black gold ? and..... you just shake them all out... no more magic pixel dust in that muffler to make it go farster ...

 

[nadogail]

Those are motorcycle seeds, if you plant them they just might grow into a new Chineseium motorcycle.

 

[BillK]

Yup, looks just like the shot in our shot blaster. It is death on an engine if it gets inside.

 

[Vintage Veloce]

Yup, looks just like the shot in our shot blaster. It is death on an engine if it gets inside.

Maybe I'll shake it a bit longer... ;-)

 

[Mr_fixit]

Maybe my memory's failing, could that be catalytic converter insides? The pellet or bead kind?

 

[dogdog]

Yup, looks just like the shot in our shot blaster. It is death on an engine if it gets inside.

Maybe I'll shake it a bit longer... ;-)

Not sure how under normal circumstances, unless you are doing some really weird inverted stuns and your exhaust gets reverse functions as intake....

 

[texasprd]

Not sure how under normal circumstances, unless you are doing some really weird inverted stuns and your exhaust gets reverse functions as intake....

Exhaust reversion...

Whether reversion could pull the stuff that far back up the exhaust system, I couldn't say - but reversion seems to be the way it could possibly enter the engine.

 

[BillK]

Exhaust reversion is very real. Ask anyone with a marine engine that has tried putting a larger camshaft in it and started sucking water into the exhaust port.

 

[HaiKarate]

Either leftover blast media and/or petrified tears of political dissidents