Has anybody used one of the DIY zinc plating kits to refurbish the bike bolts using the gold/yellow passivate. If so was it successful and were you happy with the outcome. Just thinking of ordering a kit to do this.
A chap who works for me, has a cheap eBay special plating set up, he's done every bolt, and some other metal bits on a 748 he has restored, works really well once you get the hang of it, can vary the colour as well to get them perfect
I bought one over lockdown. I found it rather hit and miss. some parts came out nice, others a bit crap. I think it was largely down to surface preparation. If the parts were vapour/grit blasted prior to plating I suspect this may have helped consistency. I also found it a lot of faff with a lot of different containers with nasty chemicals you need to keep safely stored. In future I would find a local plating shop and pay them to do it, given the time and hassle involved.
I’ve just had almost every nut, bolt, washer, bracket, clip, axles, rear sprocket for my 916 restoration professionally zinc plated with a yellow passivate coating to match the original finish by JW Rudge in Birmingham - being delivered back to me on Monday, so I can’t comment on the finish just yet, but they chemically clean and prepare the parts before the plating process, so I didn’t need to do this myself which would have been a ball ache otherwise as there were hundreds of items. Total cost was an amazing £50 + £10 to Fedex back to me. I did initially consider buying a kit to do this myself but quickly found the cost / hassle and likely quality of the end result was just not worth it compared to letting a professional who does it day in, day out do the job. I’ll post a picture up when I get them back. I found other suppliers (there’s quite a few in and around Birmingham) but they weren’t interested in small one off batches, whereas JW Rudge were more than happy and said they regularly do this for private individuals restoring classic bikes / cars. I have a contact there if anyone wants to get in touch with them. i did initially try Redditch Electroplating as others on here have used, but their website is down and they’re not answering the phone, so not sure if they’re still trading or not.
Brilliant JCW, I’ll sort out all I need doing once the summer is over and get this company (JW Rudge) to deal with it. I’d be grateful if you could message me the contact you mentioned. Also, how long did they take to get the work done?
Pm inbound. I dropped it all off in person on Tuesday this week and will be back with me on Monday, so less than a week.
I've done a whole bike with the gateros kit. It takes forever! The only benefit I can see of doing it yourself is that you can do the work in stages and keep track of which bolt goes where. The place above sounds like a proper bargain, I would just record where each and every bolt goes before handing them a bucket of pieces!
Exactly what I did - as I removed each nut, bolt and washer I logged exactly where it fitted after noting the type & measuring it precisely. The ‘special’ bolts (collared etc), larger parts and brackets / clips etc are all pretty obvious.
