dr bob

Rob-Thanks for confirming the services from Burbank plating. Is Greg impressed enough to move plating services to Burbank, some 45 miles or 2.5 hrs further than his local plater?


Seems like the CAD plating lasts a lot longer un-clearcoated than the yellow chromate over zinc. Rob has the pleasure of living in a dry climate, albeit just a few miles from the ocean, and that helps a lot with the life of the protective plating.

Rob Edwards

Haven't had a chance to show it all to Greg, didn't get back from Burbank until around 2 on Friday.

I think anything would last longer than the yellow zinc on the GTS- that motor is now 5 years old and ~8000 miles, and it's all pretty significantly faded. Never been wet, but it doesn't hold up. Will be interested to see how the cad does. If you look at the original stuff on say, the 351 mile Amazon green GT, the plating has this nice uniform matte finish. I'd like to believe that this new plating will replicate that. And hold up better....

dr bob

The original plating was called something interesting like "class 5 cad irridite" or similar, which defined the process, color and thickness of the cad plating. It showed what appeared to be a thermal bloom in the coloring, particularly noticeable on larger pieces that heat unevenly in the plating solution. That's "solved" some by preheating the parts, which Burbank plating may do.

The plated bits under the hood of my '89 look very similar to what's displayed in the Amazon Greet GT picture. Takes a lot of extra care to keep it looking even that good. I'm not quite ready to pull the engine and replate all the parts that you can see there. But the suspension bits probably need it, and ar more likely to be out for rubber-part replacement in the next few years.

Rob -- any of these pieces going onto the GTS motor?

Rob Edwards

Bob-

Everything I put onto the Cobalt car was zinc plated, from my existing collection of bits. So now I have a replacement set of cad plated stuff- it'll either go on the GTS next time it's all apart for something at Greg's, or I'll use it on the Zombie motor.

Man, now I know why the Germans lost World War II- check the number of different hose clamps in the pile of plating. Not all are necessarily 928-specific since a lot cam from Greg's, but still....

Hilton

Very nice Rob! The side-by-side shot of Cad vs Zinc is pretty much dead on for my experience of looking at well-preserved cars vs. my own Zinc plating experience.. the zinc is just a bit too shiny.

granprixweiss928

A portion of all those Parts Rob had plated found their way onto my engine.




Many thanks to Rob with his help with my concours prep.

Chuck Schreiber

Great stuff guys,
Love seeing the before/afters as well as the engine shots! 👍🏼👍🏼

When I started down this road w the 79 almost 20 years ago, I was just buying bits and replacing them to "spruce things up". I didn't know anything about platers, etc. I amassed a pretty good amount of used screws, washers, brackets, bolts, etc.

When it came time to start the same on the gts, I had boxes of stuff accumulated. I took what would have filled about 3/4 of a Home Depot bucket to Texas precision platers here locally. I ended up going w their yellow zinc as it looked really close to brand new bits you'd get from Porsche.
(I think Their Cad looked more like gold spray paint)
Ended up costing me right at about $100 if I remember correctly.
Compare this with getting something like a brand new hood latch which is about $40 (I think) to buy new, and you start realizing what a great value it is to get this stuff done..
A lot of these bits have been on the GTS for 5-6 years and still look brand new.

Wish I knew that when I started paying stealership prices back in 95 just to bling the underhood of the SilverBulit!
😜😜😜😜

Rob Edwards

For those who might wonder why no vendor offers a kit containing all the plated bits you'd need to R&R an engine compartment's worth of stuff, this is the pile I came up with to separate 'my' pile of hardware from the Cobalt car from the bigger pile of Greg's plating. And this doesn't include the hose clamps (that pile I figured out separately...)

Eplebnista

That is simultaneously inspiring and forbidding. Wow.

I either going to have to retire, spend less time with my lovely wife or bite this off one small chunk at a time for a long, long, time.

Nicely done.

Ducman82

looks like just one of the small collections that sitting in boxes in the front of Gregs. When ever we go there Allie (my 4 year old) wants to collect all the "Gold" for her treasure box....

walt_mink

This is most impressive. I'm curious about your process. How are you making note of which fastener goes where?

When I take apart an assembly I make a set of notes and drawings about which fastener goes where and then keep those stored in a separate container. With plating, it looks like you need to do a large batch, which means dumping all of those parts into, essentially, a bucket. This makes my OCD hurt just thinking about it.

I'm thinking I would need to take even better notes about sizes, thread pitch, etc for each sub-assembly. Is that what you did?

Rob Edwards

Hi Walt-

Yes, absolutely. The first 928 I owned, I pulled a bunch of hardware into little baggies, and took it to Greg Brown. Who dumped each baggie into a bucket, in front of me. It was very upsetting at the time but I got over it.

We are very lucky that the factory documentation is pretty good for the most part, so a lot of the hardware specs are listed. And the stuff that isn't, you just have to keep careful notes. Fortunately digital film and rulers are cheap.

walt_mink

Thanks Rob. I'll take a few deep breaths before I do it. It looks like it'll be worth it in the long run.

M. Requin

Man, this is so funny! One of my best friends was over the night before last. He has a German wife, a real peach (we have visited her folks' place near Bremen), and he is fluent in German himself. He always likes to see what nutso project I'm into, so I showed him the engine compartment of the 928 which is in the early stages of its top end refresh. He asked, "where's the intake manifold?" and when I pointed to the pile of organ pipes, his comment was "now I know why the Germans lost World War II!" I'm going to forward your post to him...

tmpusfugit

I continue to be amazed by the hardware in a 928. I grew up and worked in an industry where the focus was always to streamline and simplify mechanical assemblies and processes, along with the piece parts and fittings that was used in final assemblies. Pretty much a polar opposite from what we see in 928's. Also, a source of continual frustration is the lack of continuity in tools required to do anything. Torx here, Phillips there, straight bit someplace else, 4x3 elsewhere, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm hex heads used indiscriminately in different places to do approximately the same things....my contention is the 928 was designed by several teams of people who never spoke to each other....and "more complexity is better than less" was certainly the mantra for several of those teams...