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Home Electroplating system

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R

RestoreThemAll

Jedi Warrior
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After over a year off for health reasons I'm returning to my BJ7 full restore. Mine was a bad one so nearly all fasteners need to be replaced or refurbished.

Has anyone used home electroplating systems? Is tin zinc correct for any BJ7 nuts & bolts or other parts? Is there a better source than this one...

https://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/produ...;iProductID=134

Also,Is there a source these days for nuts, bolts, screws, fasteners that are correct for my car and good quality?
 
If you live in or near a city of any size you can get the fasteners replated at a professinal plating shop for far less than the time and cost involved in doing it yourself. I believe that zinc is the proper finish. The last car I did, the total cost for all fasteners was $50.00. The only downside is that they do a batch plating and the minimum was $50.00. So all fasteners had to be done together.
 
I used this kit for the fastners on my restoration project. It is conveient to do it at home and looked good FOR A WHILE. I got caught in the rain a few times last year and the first things to notice were the home plated fasteners. They all have flash rust on them.

The process is more than it seems as well. After plating each bolt needs to be polished. Maybe a tumbler would minimize this step. I will say I did the door straps and other parts that didnt get wet and they still look great.

I agree that they should be professionally done. But the kit does work as advertised.

Kevin R
 
Hi RTA,
I've no experience with the Eastwood kit, but I do with the Caswell kit. I bought their Nickel plate which has served me well. John Loftus bought their zinc kit and I've seen his stuff in person, looks great. Here is a link to his site that shows some examples. One thing to know about plating is you have to get the parts absolutely clean for a good result. Any scratches or irregularities will come through, so you may need to buff and polish first. Sometimes you need to de-plate the parts which depending on the material being removed means a bath in Sulfuric or Muriatic acid. All that said, I'm glad I did the plating myself for the small parts, kinda like a chemistry set. I've added a photo of a part I made for my throttle linkage that I plated.

Check out the Tool forum, there were two threads about Caswell plating.

As far as buying bolts, you could try British Car Fasteners. You can link to them from the Caswell banner in the Supporting vendors link HERE You'll see the fastener link towards the bottom left of that page.
 
Hi, I'm new to the forum. I purchsed the 2 gal. zinc kit from Caswell. It was large enough to replate almost all the hardware on my bj8. It took a little to time to get the whole process correct..volts,temperture,time,very very clean parts, but with help form their forum I ended up with great results.

Peter
67bj8
74.5 mgb
 
I checked out the Caswell web site. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the input guys!
 
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