dr bob

Pretty parts! Good tip on the acid-wash for stripping the old plating off.

My original recommendation still stands though-- get a protective clear-coat layer over the yellow zinc. The chromate layer, the 'yellow' zinc, and the base zinc layer itself, are quickly turned to gray (less than a year) in anything short of that perfect dry climate. These plating layers are sacrificial by design, reacting with contaminants so that the base steel part does not.

IXLR8

I did order a couple of cans of 2K high-temp gloss clear for some aluminum parts that I am glass beading. That is a two-part industrial finish that is supposedly very durable.

The original yellow zinc held up pretty well for its age so I will leave the newly yellow zinc plated parts as they are.

Rob Edwards

I took a bit of a field trip with about 130 lbs of pieces to Burbank plating, to see whether they would in fact be willing to do real yellow cad plating for a civilian who just shows up on their doorstep. Turns out the answer is yes- They did it in two batches, all the small pieces get barrel plated, and all the bigger ones get hung on a hook- the finish ended up being ever so slightly less 'gold' on the hardware, and a bit less shiny than than the hose ends and fuel rails. Total cost was $300, for whatever that's worth. Turnaround time was 10 days.

90 lbs of hardware, unsorted.



6 hours (...) later:



Patient wife:



Here's a natural light shot showing the diff between yellow cad (left) and yellow zinc (right). I think the cad is going to look a whole lot closer to the mildly faded pale gold matte patina that one sees on original low mileage cars. There's still too much chromate variation of the surface but I think that will fade a bit with a couple of heat cycles.



Pretty suspension bits for an early car:

Leon Speed

Good result for an OCD-saturday! I'm a bit surprised cad plating is still legal in Californa.

Rob Edwards

I was too, but Burbank plating has been there more than 40 years, so they must be grandfathered in. I was pleasantly surprised that they were willing to do it, figured I'd need some sort of document stating I was building an SR-71 replica or something, but no.

Bertrand Daoust

Nice!

Love to see shinny parts like that.

Rob, what your wife thinks about laying down all these parts everywhere on kitchen counters?

Rob Edwards

Who gives a ****?

She's very patient with it, though it's all still sitting there as I had a bunch of stuff to do in the office today. At least she knows exactly where I am on Friday night.....

Leon Speed

She's probably away for the weekend

Eplebnista

None of the commercial platers in my area will touch any lot that small. Nice looking stuff, i am most jealous.

Rob Edwards

Their minimum batch is $200, I 'm sure people mail them stuff all the time. No downside to calling them.

Ducman82

im shocked you have to sorted and organized the boxes of shiny parts behind Gregs work benches... :-)

Rob Edwards

And all of the cupcake tins of shiny bits, organized in order of their appearance on the PET pages? Where do you think I learned my 928 OCD from?

NoVector

Hi Rob - Just curious if you applied a clearcoat to your parts(?) I did when I did my top-end refresh a couple months ago and I noticed it kinda washed out the "bling". I'm more than okay with that--especially if it helps it last. Just curious if you did/noticed the same thing or if it was just a chem reaction specific to the plating kit I used. You can kind of see what I mean in these pictures.

stuartbrs

Here in Tasmania there is nowhere that does quality Zinc plating. I sent some stuff up to a place in the North of the state and it came back and I was deeply unhappy with the finish.

I have used the Janes kit with good results on my 911 race car build.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...ml#post8207933

I also tried some zinc plating by using a cheap bath of Vinegar and Epson salts and got great results.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...ml#post8568578

The next car I build though, i think I would like to try Nickel Plating.

Ducman82

he he he.... i know right!