Zinc plating - cost and questions

[Fireball05]

Hello all,

After doing the "shop to Lowe's to Home Depot to the Ace Hardware" routine again this afternoon searching for misc bolts and hardware, I remembered seeing somewhere a box of parts all freshly plated. Turns out it was NicksTrix site, looks like a lot of their builds they entire disassemble and send off a box to get recoated in yellow zinc.

Anyone have any idea what this costs? Is the yellow zinc coating meant to mimic the original factory finish? Is it better? Would you consider other options?

I really should've done this from the start, but as it stands now, I've got a small list of parts that would be nice to have done...the hood latch and spring, door striker plates and door latches and some misc small bolts and hardware that the above named stores don't have available SS replacement pieces!

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Ben

 

[StnePny]

... look into ' Nickle Plating ' ...

i took a bunch of stuff to a friends shop to be Power Coated & some came back Nickle plated/Coated .. he said i've these parts for years , this will look better, if , you don't think so or like it i will power coat the way you want ...

 

[Crawdad]

I've had lots of luck at certain Napa stores. We have a couple in Columbia but the main store has lots of hardware. Another good store I found was Tractor Supply Company.

 

[fordfan]

One of the plating shops we use here local has a $75 minimum charge and the cost is by the pound. The costs varies with yellow zinc, clear zinc (silver), bright tin, dull tin, and anadizing. The parts have to be clean; We bead blast first.

 

[xcntrk]

The plating is intended as durable corrosion protection. Different plating adheres to different materials, each with its own color.

Although I understand your point, most folks don't use plating for color and style

 

[bk005]

Im interested in this to. I notice some of the bronco build shops send hood latches misc. hardware out for plating, and it looks good going back on the truck. Im not sure what type of plating or where to go look ethier.

 

[fordfan]

The shop we use for yellow zinc charges a $100 minumum which covers the first 25 lbs of parts. Small parts they have trouble plating because of the containers in the vats have holes that lets really small parts fall to the bottom of the tank.

 

[ObscureMachine]

How does one find a plating place? I've looked online here in NOLA and can't find a local place. I may not be searching using the proper terms.

 

[Apogee]

Look for industrial plating facilities, specifically with electro-plating capabilities. I use a company in Portland, OR called East Side Plating for my business, but I've used a couple others in the past as well and not all platers are equivalent. As with anything, the quality of their plating lines and operators will in large part determine the quality and thickness of the finish. With zinc, the thickness will in large part determine the corrosion resistance of the part and not all zinc finishes are equivalent.

With electro-plating processes like zinc-dichromate, cadmium, etc, there are two general methods for plating including "rack" and "barrel". Rack plating is just as it sounds, they rack each part along with a bunch of others, basically only limited by the size of their tanks and the amount of electricity they have available and then run them through the process including cleaning, etching, plating, etc. Barrel-plating is used on small parts like bolts, springs, etc where rack-plating wouldn't be practical. The "barrel" is made of a perforated steel sheet allowing fluid through while conducting electricity through the parts while the barrel rotates so that you don't get voids as all of the contact points are constantly shifting as the parts tumble.

As for part prep, some platers will offer debur operations in addition to plating, so polishing, roto-blasting (wire abraiding), bead blasting, vibratory debur, etc., however that's something to discuss with whoever you intend to use.

Tobin

 

[Fireball05]

Is yellow zinc the way to go for this particular application? I'm looking for a bit of durability and a relatively inexpensive way to protect and refurbish parts that I don't want to have painted.

I found a few places relatively local to me through a basic Google search, so will make a few calls and see what I can find out.

 

[Apogee]

Yellow/gold zinc dichromate technically has a higher salt-spray corrosion resistance than clear (which looks silver), making it the easy choice IMO, although clear is pretty good as well. A good comparison would be Grade 5 versus Grade 8 hardware for clear versus yellow. Either zinc works as a good base for paint as well if you want to further increase the corrosion resistance.

 

[bmc69]

How does one find a plating place? I've looked online here in NOLA and can't find a local place. I may not be searching using the proper terms.

Search for "metal finishers" and "electroplating".

 

[BajaFresh75]

How does one find a plating place? I've looked online here in NOLA and can't find a local place. I may not be searching using the proper terms.

Try Rick's Cabaret, they may know!

 

[red hot71]

When it comes to zinc plating or cadmium, cadmium is a finer finish than zinc and about 30% more, both use the same yellow die so over all it's hard to tell the difference. Any springs that are zinc or cad have to be baked at 400* for 3-4 hours for tempering.

Cadmium is a aircraft type finish and harder to find a shop that will do it and it's a heavy metal so the EPA gets involved. Again if you live in a area were aircraft production happens it's easier to find shops that do it. Again you get what you pay for. Yellow zinc is a OEM finish and looks like it should be on a car, and looks good. I don't like stainless steel bolts to me they look cheap, or it just doesn't look like it belongs there.

One thing to remember if the part is exposed to road salts it life is probley 4-5 years before it starts to brake down and rust will start to show itself, but clear coating will double it's life.

I will have 4 trips total to the plating shop, this includes every part that can be unbolted lots of twozies, a 5 gal bucket of bolts enough to do 3 broncos +, every bracket, cross members, oil pans, engine brackets, small springs the list goes on and on and on all done in yellow I'am guesting 500- 800lbs of parts. Total I'll have into it under $2000.00 including baking. Before you say that's outrages again lots of extra parts that someday maybe I'll sell and recoup some of my expense. If I knew then what I know now one stock bronco and enough bolts to do two broncos, one time thur $800-1200. The first trip was cad. 60% of the total weight the rest is zinc. If you add up what new parts cost it's cheap. A new door latch is $75 each, mine were good, cad finished there $2-3 each to do, fender bolts new yellow zinc $1 each?, redone 2-3cents.

When it comes to cleaning, the parts can't be greases oily you have to solvent clean those parts, rusty painted parts that doesn't matter they acid clean anyway. Heavy rust you should blast those and the parts will look better then new. Again I added up my time and to refurbish these parts I would of had hundreds of hours plus the part would of been a spray can finish in the end and the parts would of looked like crap in a year.

 

[NicksTrix]

as mentioned we do a good bit of yellow zinc
here's photo that shows the process.
crusty, after glass bead strip and after being plated.
this photo happens to be electoless nickel from years ago.

i've found the better the prep when you send them in, the better the results. if you leave paint on, there will be paint when it comes back, same for rust.
on many parts that have high visibility we'll shoot a high solids clear over them and that seals it from the natural oxidation process along with giving it a nice deep finish.

 

[DirtDonk]

In case you actually like the stainless look (I do with some colors), and won't or can't go through the re-plating process, we sell full kits that will do almost all of the usual suspects. We carry both standard hex head and indented head kits (http://www.wildhorses4x4.com/product/Body_Kit_Indented_Hex_Head) to more mimic the original body bolt type. Even the rear 3 fender screws behind the doors are the proper large dome headed Phillips screws.
I prefer the indented head version for a few bucks more. They don't look as cheap, as someone mentioned.

I mentioned color too, because although the silver stainless doesn't look proper to some, with some colors they look especially nice. Dark blues and reds for instance.
Oh, and in case you have a hard time finding them sometime without the link, just search "bolt" or "bolts" on our site.

Paul