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I went over the parts that were original to my car with my friend. It is his business and he can tell by just looking. Just as I can easily spot raw mag vs aluminum after 30 years of casting both. I also talked this over with some of the National PCA experts and they confirmed it.
I have had several friends plate their parts with zinc chromate. In each case the hardware was showing corrosion after just one year. It also scratches far more easily when installing. The 10 year old cad plated parts I had done are still in excellent condition albeit slightly darker in color. The zinc comes out brighter looking than the cad and the cad offers more of the rainbow effect you see on these parts. Yellow or black cad was what was specified for military work especially if for marine application. Zinc chromate was not allowed. Salt fog testing is required to verify longevity of parts under marine application. Zinc won't hold up remotely as long.
The parts I see come from the factory today no longer appear to be cad plated but if a coating is applied appears to be zinc. There is quite a bit of inconsistency with classic parts and how they are treated. I have received factory packaged parts. The same part number one is yellow the other is silver in color.
Anthony is spot on. Being in CA, near impossible to find a place to do "proper" CAD so I do zinc. I found one spot that would do cad and it was stupid expensive and didn't look right, not factory and not like the parts anthony posted which look factory We ended up doing zinc chromate which looks pretty close. mine has held up but I don't drive car in rain and i don't wash them very often (quick detailer wipes most of time).
This is debated on pelican and Early S quite a bit, but the factory changed from CAD to Zinc at some point, i forget when, as the process to do Cad is toxic.
This will drive most people crazy as there is a current fad to hate on powdercoating buuuut...
For no other reason than curiosity I tried replicating ZYC with powdercoating and got decent results. This was a random coil bracket on my alfa, (maybe 912, i forgot now) not a part I felt the need to obsess over. A slightly transparent gold lets the underlying imperfections of the metal show thru.
jack pad is real zyc, coil bracket fake. its a stress test cuz the jack pad is the most oil-slick greenish zyc part I've ever come across.
I've very successfully worked with PMB for yellow chromate on top of a zinc plating to get parts back to OEM spec.
They have a complete cleaning and coating process.
Coating starts $1 for screws and up. Very reasonably priced.
Can't recommend them enough. Parts come back gorgeous.
Downside you'll see even small screws/nuts let alone bolts, washers, brackets, clamps, calipers on your 928 that you want to have recoated - it becomes an addiction.
I've very successfully worked with PMB for yellow chromate on top of a zinc plating to get parts back to OEM spec.
They have a complete cleaning and coating process.
Coating starts $1 for screws and up. Very reasonably priced.
Can't recommend them enough. Parts come back gorgeous.
Downside you'll see even small screws/nuts let alone bolts, washers, brackets, clamps, calipers on your 928 that you want to have recoated - it becomes an addition.
06-08-2020, 08:40 AM
