cad plating bolts

[John D.]

Re: cad plating bolts

good morning to all, trying out the eastwood cad plating system this morning seems to work well enough . but how does one remove the chalky apperance from bolts it is very hard to use autosol on a rag on such small parts ... thanks Don..

Donald, If I were to attempt to use that kit on my FI restorations I would have to quit. I bought one many years ago and had the same problem. If you use a wire brush to remove the chalk marks you don't achive an original appearance.
"OO" steel wool is fairly course. But if you use "OOOO" then the cad will be shiny.

Sounds like you might be having a "current" problem. It's not easy to cad plate on your own. It's not even that easy for a pro to do it in the big shops. They have their problems also.

Now if you just glass beaded the parts then you can expect an extremely flat chalky appearance.
Cad plating is only as good as the preparation. If a guy glass beads then he must follow up with a fine wire brush on a wheel. Or use Skat Blast as it gives a pretty nice apearance.

I would give you the name of my plater but I don't do that anymore because of he gets any slower I will have to use cry lawn. I have been waiting almost two months for some FI plating. Course the holiday screwed things up. JD

[Michael G.]

Re: cad plating bolts

The best way to remove most old GM finishes from bolts is with a brass wire wheel. It takes the plating (or paint coating ) off without damage to thread peaks, nor does it leaving significant amounts of plating in thread valleys. This means you get good re-assembly and tightening characteristics. It also does not remove significant amounts of steel, while leaving a surface finish very similar that imparted by the headers and thread rollers used to initially manufacture the parts. So the part looks like it did when new.

We use a brass wheel every day in my business becasue we need to remove plating without part damage to insect thousands of new GM parts for correct "as manfactured" shape. The parts look perfect at 50x magnification. To do this, I recommend that you clean the threads by holding the part axis parallel to the grinding wheel axis and slowly revolving the part.

Regarding cadmium plating. Most GM bolts were not cadmium plated. If a GM bolt had a smooth, shiny silver metalic plating it could have been cadmium, but most likely it was zinc plated, possibly with a clear chromate sealant. (This advice does not apply to nuts)

Its improtant to note that zinc and cadmium plating may look similar, but performance differences are like night and day, so one should never be sustituted for the other unless you know what your doing. This is important because the upper torque specifcations developed for a zinc bolt will possibly damage or break a cadmium plated version of the same bolt. The other notable difference is that corrosion performance for zinc will be much, much poorer than cadmium. Oh, and by the way, Cadmium is a bio-accumulative carcinogen, so its not something to casually mess with.

Mike

[Tom R.]

Re: cad plating bolts

All you need is contained in one of their zinc plating kits. The manual will explain in detail various methods of power, but the additional purchase of a plating rectifier will greatly simplify the process.

What size plating kit to do a car?

[Donald T.]

Re: cad plating bolts

What size plating kit to do a car?

Depends on how ambitious you want to get. The small 1.5 gallon kit will be more than enough for small parts like nuts and bolts. If you want to replate larger items like a brake booster then you will need a larger plating tank. I think my plating tank is 4 gallons and the largest item I have been able to plate is a clutch cross shaft.

[Gerard F.]

Re: cad plating bolts

Tom,

If you just want to do bolts and small parts, the 1-1/2 gallon kit is fine.

I started out with the 3 gallon kit, and initially used only half the chemicals in 2 gallon plastic paint containers and a crockpot for the degreaser. The 3 gallon kit gives you twice the chemicals of the 1 1/2 gallon kit.

There is a lot of other thinks you need to get outside of the kit for a full plating setup. (dichromate, pickles, power supply, etc.). If you are just starting out, get the manual first, go through it and decide what you want to do and what you need.

Pretty soon a corner of your garage will look like this:

[Tom R.]

Re: cad plating bolts

Pretty soon a corner of your garage will look like this:

Gerald...that's scary!