MOXIE62

Remember 10 years ago when cad plating was cheap and all these wiper motor restorers advertized about cad plating the metal parts. Now that you can not get cad plating anymore they are saying , no, never did use cad plating. What we do and have always done is zinc plating. And they most likely do it with one of those cheap little kits you get from eastman. Some are using paint that looks like cad plating, yeah right. But their prices are just as high.

Frankie the Fink

I have real cad plated parts and parts I did a 'faux' cad plating on with the Eastwood kit. Any car guy should be able to quickly tell the difference. I doubt a competent restorer would expect to pass one of as the other and get away with it.

John McGraw

Most plating shops will have a minimum charge, and somewhere around $75-100 is normal minimum charge. There are still places that do Cad plating, mostly aircraft type shops, since it is still widely used on propellers and other components. Cad has a superior corrosion performance to Zinc, but not by a large margin. Most of the Cad you see today is the yellow chromate treated variety, once again, for superior corrosion protection. Very little C1, and almost none of the C2 components were actually Cad plated, as GM offered either as acceptable in their spec's. A good plater, can make either one look like the other, just by varying the technique. You can make either one, dull and grey, or bright and shiney, based on how you prepare and plate the part. Either one can be treated with the same chromate dip, and will yield the same appearance. The chromate dip is what imparts the kind of gold, rainbow appearance that you see on a lot of Corvette parts, and is a very easy appearance to replicate, even for an amateur plater. I set up a Zinc plating tank over 10 years ago, and have gotten quite proficient in replicating the correct look on Corvette parts. The only parts that I still send out for Cad plating, is radio cases. They were all Cad plated originally, but for a good reason. A lot radio cases have the ground lead of many of the capacitors soldered to the case, and it is very easy to solder to Cad, but zinc is real tough to solder to.


Regards, John McGraw