I tore out all of the metal in the doors. The windows and door latches were to the point of being glued together with the old grease. So I'm cleaning everything up and before I grease it up and put it all back in, I wanted to get most of it yellow zinc plated. Then I found out they are limited to items of 14" or less.

Any recommendations of services that you have used to yellow zinc plate items at a reasonable price?

 

Quite frankly, I've never heard of yellow zinc plating. I'm always impressed that at my old age (it's not my fault) I can still learn new things. Perhaps, do you mean yellow cadmium plating? Also, I believe that things that are zinc "plated," it has a dull silvery color, they are not plated, but rather dipped in molten zinc to provide a protective coating.

Also, if it is yellow cad you're talking about, my very limited experience is that you just can't go to a cad plater and ask for a piece to be cad plated. My experience is that they will only do mass plating...you got to show up with say 100 pounds of parts for them to plate. It's the EPA problems..cad is a very toxic metal...and platers are harrassed by the EPA. I think there are some plater shops serving the repro community that will accept parts for cad plating. They take a lot of customers parts, store them, and when they get a large amount, they take them to the cad platers....I've never had parts cad plated because of all these problems.

If you're not worried about appearance, no one will see you're inner door parts, and you really want them plated, just take them to a chrome shop and have them nickel plated. Regular paint is an option. Eastwood make cadmium lookalike paints. You spray on the basic yellow, and then two other cans will give some green and reddish highlights.

I've installed a lot of "new" parts on my 68. Including many cad plated resto parts. They are prone to corrosion just like the original parts. Cad plated parts are not very durable. My opinion is that if you don't have a climate controlled garage,you can spend a lot on money on recreating cad plated parts only to have

 

Now instead of using the cad or chromate process they use a Trivalent Yellow Passivates which is a dye added to the plating process. So it's actually just zinc plating that has a yellow hue to it. Why, I don't know other than i like the look of it and it was not uncommon for some of the older cars to have plated parts that look like that. I believe the parts that I want to plate were once plated in zinc, just not yellow.

 

If your looking for protection and not originality powder coat might be and option. I have a connection and got shift **** black chrome coated. Looks nice

 

I love powder coating and use it all the time, however in the very close tolerances of the window channels with the rollers it just would work. The rollers are very tight in the channels and the thicker powder coat would cause them to bind. Heck the dried-up grease pretty much stopped them in their tracks (pun intended).

 

http://www.eastwood.com/paints/electroplating.html

Not an endorsement, I've never used these products. I'm a big fan of powder coating too..

 

I just dropped all my door hardware, bolts for everything, vent stuff etc to be yellow zinc plated. It cost me $200 bucks for everything (two buckets of hardware and a BUNCH of other stuff) I've used gold cad in the past but cad is a lot more expensive and if the part is stressed it should be baked after plating to stress relieve it.

I also use powder coating as much as I can but some parts just cant be coated as the paint is fairly thick and if its threaded, forget it.

I live in the peoples republic of CA and its fairly easy to find platers still.

 

Gold color on zinc plated parts is a chromate dip/wash after receiving basic plating of zinc. If plating with just zinc is much less expensive, do that and forget the gold chromate stuff. The gold surface doesn't last long once it hits the air, anyway (maybe a year or two). Then, you just have normal zinc plating protection again.

If it's the same cost, either way, get the gold wash also. There is some additional benefit for the time it remains on the surface.

 

Hi,
This is an example of the old plating system you describe… zinc plating and then a dichromate wash.
The size of the piece being plated is limited only by the size of the tank being used and the amperage limit of the power supply.
Regards,
Alan

This is a small system from Casswell.


This is zinc plating, zinc with dichromate wash, black oxide plating, and manganese phosphate plating on original fasteners and parts.


This is zinc plating (which is normally dull) with 'brightener' in the plating solution.


This is a front caliper bracket that was zinc plated and the dipped in the dichromate wash.


This is an original gas cap that has been zinc plated in a solution with 'brightener'.

 

I've seen a few setups like that. I'm wondering if I would be better off going that route. I've seen them for $299. I'd probably plate everything around the house!

Is that your setup, Alan? How difficult is it to learn how to do it properly?

 

As always Alan71 witrh some awesome pictures for reference

 

I've played around with rust removal using a battery charger, did some quick reading on plating using same principle so I'd be interested in hearing more if that's Alan's setup

 

alan71,can we get your adress,probably 50 guys have 2-3 5gal buckets of ''small parts'' for you to plate,can you got them done this week?

 

Yeah Friday afternoon would be good for me

 

Hi,
Yes, that my current set up.
It's the Zinc/ Copy Cad System from Casswell, it's not cheap because you need a power supply too.
The system itself is really quite easy to learn to use, and then continue to use.
I also have the Black Oxide System from Casswell which is VERY easy to use and get good results from.
For zinc phosphate (light gray) and manganese phosphate (dark gray) I use materials from Palmetto Enterprises.
For all the types of plating preparation is extremely important. All rust must be completely removed and the part must be scrupulously clean.
My method is slow but I seem to be getting good results. I only have a little experience doing the chromate wash so will hopefully learn how to control the amount of color and the various hues the dichromate should exhibit.
Thanks for the interest. This is one of those things that interests me but doesn't amount to anything in the grand scheme.
Regards,
Alan

This is the set up for doing phosphate.
A stainless or glass container, the solution heated to 200 degrees, the parts suspended in the solution.

 

Be careful with that chromate wash. That stuff scares the hell out of me.

Alan do you wire wheel the pieces before the bath?

 

Thanks for the post!!!!!

My wife just loves me to use the kitchen for my car activities. She has a lot of direct comments when I use the dishwasher to clean parts. The oven to bake parts..not powder paint..just heat to evaporate stuff.

 

Hi SR,
Yes, I'm really cautious around the dichromate solution.
After the zinc plating is compete I rinse the part throughly, then dip it in a muriatic acid solution for a few seconds, dry it, and then into the dichromate bath.
The length of time it's in the solution determines how much color you get.
Regards,
Alan