What's it called?

[Ed]

What's the original plating on the engine parts called? I'm talking stuff like the trouble light, screws, throttle linkage etc.. I'm not sure but is it "Zinc Chromate"?

[Alan Pugh]

I've just had all my nuts and bolts done at the zinc platers, they just called it yellow zinc and they were done by the barrel method. Hope this helps.

Alan.

[owenk]

Back in the days pre first oil shortage when we still thougth that Japanize cars were junk. The joke was " The yellow was because the beer was not drained out of the cans before they were melted down".

[2ManyZs]

Actually I believe it is called gold cadmium plating... Zinc chromate is a light green color.. usually the insides of airplane panels are painted with zinc chromate primer..

Eastwoods has a kit that will supposedly will duplicate the gold cad look on parts, it's a 3 part aerosol kit, with gold base coat, red zinc and green zinc, never tried it but it's only 35 bucks if you want to try it.

The also have Tin Zinc plating, which is a shiny silver. Zinc phosphate which is a blue/grey, and a charcoal grey zinc phosphate coating as well as silver cadmium which is a bluish-silver...oh and a black oxide coating...

www.eastwoodcompany.com

[HS30-H]

I'm not sure if you use the same terms in the USA, but here in the UK the process is called "Gold Passivated Zinc" plating.

First they Zinc plate the items, then they give them an extra process called Passivation ( in this case, with a gold colour ).

Here in the UK we can buy home plating kits ( lots of nasty chemicals and electrics to play with ) and I bought one and had a go at it. The finish was not wonderful, but passable for stuff that's not looked at too closely. First you had to Zinc plate the items ( suspending each item on an individual wire was a pain ) and then go through a separate gold passivation process. The whole thing was much too fiddly and surprisingly expensive - so the professional platers get my vote every time now.

I believe that gold passivation can be applied to other base plating ( like Cadmium, as 2ManyZs suggested ) but that the original finish on the majority of first generation Z car parts was Zinc based.

Alan T.

[DatsunZGuy]

I tried the Eastwood Gold Cad paint system on my anti-backfire valve and good portion of the paint flaked off when I had the engine steam cleaned. :mad:

Furthermore, you have to purchase the gold, red tint and green tint all come in 12 ounces cans. Invariably, you will most likely end up going through 10 cans of gold before you even start to run out of the red and green tints. This is because you are just using the red and green to lightly spray on to simulate the gold cadmium (a.k.a. zinc dichromate) tinting. Needless to say, I wish they would sell the the reds and greens in smaller cans for less money.

For the rest of my parts that will require plating, I think I’ll give this outfit a try.

Click Here

[Ed]

Thanks guys, I definately want to get these parts plated. Paint just doesn't sound right. I needed to know what the plating is called so when I call different platers I could ask them if they do it.

Maybe save me some driving around.

[Alan Pugh]

Alan T is quite right as usual. If anyone is thinking of Cadmium plating any of their nuts or bolts, be carefull as Cadmium is poisonous. It is widely used in the aircraft manufacturing industry but generally not used on cars anymore. If any of you come into contact with cad plated nuts and bolts wash your hands afterwards.

Alan.