Well, I was over at my local metal plating business, A and A Enterprises, LLC, and was going to get a BUNCH of parts, pipes and linkage plated Cadmium when the guy said, "Are you sure this is Cad? It looks like Zink to me" I told him that the older cars were cad plated. He still had questions. SO I asked the 3 guys there if there was a way to check. The said sure and instructed one guy to acid test the plating. The idea is some acids react differently to different plating.

The guy came back with the result and everything he tested was ZINK. Its a 1972 all stock under the hood.

Also the T pipe feeding the heater core was Plated too but painted engine blue.

The question is has anyone ever really tested to see if the Cad plating was really Cad?

A few years back, I had some brackets and hardware tested. The results were zink. The gold stuff was called zink/yellow ( I don't know what product is used for the yellow ) and the few silver bits were zink/clear.

Phred

It's not Cadmium plated. The plating on the 240Z is Zinc Chromate, Yellow and Silver/Clear.

It's not Cadmium plated. The plating on the 240Z is Zinc Chromate, Yellow and Silver/Clear.

I agree. Zinc Chromate...

I've noticed two different looking metals on the parts that are yellow chromate coated (yellow chromate is added after zink or cadmium plating while hardening to create a second protective coat) one when I remove the yellow coat is flat and dull and just a smidgen darker than the other, wich is shinny. I'd pick one and stick with it otherwise you will go crazy trying to figure it out.