A forum for owners of Yamaha TTR250 trail and enduro bikes!

It was scary Pete - bottles of chemicals and packs of strange powders all with hazard warnings on them and enough sheets of H&S guff to put a normal person off 

I said to Trish that I felt like the sorcerer's apprentice out in the workshop!

Let's hope I can introduce a bit of wizardry tomorrow and get some shiny nuts and bolts eh?

Brian

I got a fairly aggressive media in my blaster so it strips off any plating along with rust etc. Sadly this means that in our climate rust sets in very quickly if the items aren't protected. 

In the past I have cleaned in TFR, wire brushed, wiped in clutch & brake cleaner and sprayed. The drawback with this is that the paint chips off when doing the nuts and bolts up with a socket although there is usually some of the original plating left underneath.

I think plating is the answer if I can get it right!

Brian

PS I am going to put glass beads back in the blaster soon so that I can do aluminium parts again.

Hi Brian, when I was building a kit car about 20 years ago I made a plating set up that looked very similar to yours and nickel plated a load of brackets and small pieces, and on the whole they came up very shiny indeed, I have also had parts chrome plated in the past that had a mirror finish, and the key is that they have to be polished to a shiny finish in the base metal first, I suspect that if you grit blasted the parts the surface is too rough to come up shiny, the plating is only a few microns thick. Its fairly easy to clean up flat components with emery cloth and wet and dry but bolts are a bit harder, why not try polishing up a bit of flat strip and see what it comes out like?

Mind you I never tried zinc...

Cheers

Mike

leigh wrote:

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Brian is "Breaking Bad" - after the shop sale.

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  - slightly safer chemicals though and, AFAIK, totally legal  - 

It is true that I now have the chance to do some of those less pressing jobs around the workshop 

Brian

PS Got some black and olive green "drab" passivate delivered t'other day so can try and match the finish of the original parts coz they do seem to have different finishes here and there. Most of the new parts from Yamaha seem to have a blackish finish compared to the olive green originals.

Hello,

It seems to me that your doing a good job. Matching plating on old used materials is difficult.

The material has been through rain, mud , heat and cold and the material has aged through the years.

I worked in a place where we had a lot of plating done for us by plating companies, the finish could vary for several reasons.

The water that they cleaned the components after the plating process is allowed a certain amount of chemicals in - when fresh you can get a certain colour, when near the allowed limit you can get a different colour.

The drying process also can affect colour - some companies use ovens and if I remember correctly, some blow them dry.

After a bit of a break I have dug out the plating kit and am having another go.

I have replaced the power control supplied with the kit with a more precise unit that allows me to set both voltage and amperage.

So this is what I was using:

 

and this is the new unit:

 

With a bit of experimentation I am getting much better results 

 

The carb top on the left was originally very rusty and the plating hasn't hidden the pitting left after bead blasting but it is still a very usable part.

I only included the float bowl as an experiment and, although it worked, I don't think a carb would look good with this finish i.e. zinc plated and yellow passivated.

This is what a few of those parts looked like before plating.

Brian

 

I confess that I watched a few of his videos before I twigged 

I am aware that not everyone has access to a shot or bead blaster to clean their parts.

I have seen quite a few suggestions on the old interweb to use brick acid (actually diluted muriatic acid) to de-rust parts so gave it a try.

The photo below shows the before and after although the sprocket nut I de-rusted was in much worse condition than the one on the right in the photo!

Works well but don't leave the part in the acid too long as it will start to eat the metal 

It's a powerful liquid so take all the recommended precautions regarding wearing gloves, not breathing the fumes, etc.!