Re: [Chrysler300] Pot metal restoration recommendations?

[Josh Mishler <mister300d@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Group,

Well my ten cents worth is for the place I work, Advanced Plating in Nashville, TN.  One of our specialties is pot metal restoration.  I have heard a lot of valid points about time involved and the cost.  There is nothing cheap about chrome plating.  If you are finding someone who will do it cheap, do not expect much.  Generally a commercial plater will use little to no copper and more than likely use a minimal amount of nickel before chrome plating.  At Advanced Plating, all parts go through the process of copper nickel chrome with a copper buff in between.  What many refer to as triple plating.  

Here is a brief summary of how we process pot metal.  First we electro-strip the part to its raw material.  This way we are starting at the ground up and not plating over existing plating.  From there we sand the parts as smooth as possible.  Any imperfections or pits that remain are then lead solder filled.  However, before they are lead solder filled, the part is run through cyanide copper.  This is a thin layer of copper plating that allows the repairs to stick to the pot metal.  After lead solder has been used to fill in the imperfections, the solder is sanded smooth and feathered out.  All this is done while retaining any detail that would be visible when the part was new.  Chances are the part is run cyanide copper a number of times until the imperfections are filled in and removed.  Once the polisher is happy with the repairs, the part is then run through acid copper, which is a heavier deposit and has a shiny finish.  From there the
 part is sanded and buffed.  After the buff the part is plated in nickel and chrome. 

Another thing I would like to note is that we use hexavalent chrome.  There are two types of chrome out there, hexavalent and trivalent.  Trivalent is more EPA friendly, has a slight yellow tint to it, and is not as heavy of a deposit.  Hexavalent chrome is the old school chrome.  A heavy deposit with a sort of blue tint.

Anyway, that is my thoughts on the subject.  If you have any additional questions about plating feel free to ask.

Thanks,
Josh Mishler
 


________________________________
 From: Ray Melton <rfmelton@xxxxxxx>
To: chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 1:53 PM
Subject: [Chrysler300] Pot metal restoration recommendations?
 


  
Hello Group -

In the midst of restoring my late father's 1957 Chrysler 300C convertible, I
decided that the door handles needed to be refinished - I originally thought
they looked good enough (visually about 9/10) with only a few tiny pits, but
soon the rest of the car was looking so good  that it began to make the door
handles look a bit shabby, although nothing broken and only a half-dozen or
so pin-hole sized pits and zits on each of the pull-up parts of the handle.
I sent the handles, minus attached linkage (four pieces: the stationary part
and the moveable handle part) to a place in Fresno that bragged about their
beautiful work, particularly on restoring pot metal motorcycle parts - their
website shoed a dozen excellent before/after examples.  I said that of
course I wanted the tiny pits and zits filled, not just sanded away, which
would have badly degraded the decorative horizontal ridges in the pull-up
parts of the handles.  Two months and $300 later the parts came back with
deep, shiny chrome over the totally untouched tiny pits and zits, which
actually highlighted the small defects!  When contacted about the
unacceptable work, the shop manager said, "I think they look pretty good;
I'd put them on my car", and refused to refund my money!  However, he
offered to re-do them to a better standard if I would pay him $75/hour for
an indeterminate number of hours to refinish them like should have been done
in the first place!  Needless to say, I don't want to do business again with
a shop that harbors that attitude!

Then I looked in Hemming's and selected a place in Pennsylvania with the
best-looking and best-sounding ad, and a month later received their estimate
of $1013!  That huge number just seemed so far out of line (I was thinking
more like $500) that I had the handles sent back to me untouched.  To their
credit, they didn't even charge me for the return shipping - clearly a
stand-up place. 

So now I am appealing to the collective experience of other Club members for
recommendations on where to have this work done, hopefully with a short
anecdote regarding their experience in terms of work quality and cost.
Also, I would like to know whether the shop uses the three-step
copper-nickel-chrome process, and whether they use the old-school hexavalent
chrome (renowned for its deep luster but severely restricted by the EPA) or
the later trivalent chromium (less onerous EPA regulated, but said by some
to not quite match up to the deep luster of the hexavalent chrome).  While I
don't consider the hexavalent vs. trivalent issue to be the priority
consideration, it would be interesting to know what was used on your parts
pot-metal parts. 

Any help will be much appreciated!

Ray Melton

Las Cruces, NM

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