SM: Zinc plating

When you spend hours browsing over web sites from amateurs or professional car restorers, you get some very useful information. One of this information is about zinc-plating.

Many parts are originally “yellow” zinc-plated on the SM, even if on my particular car, the yellow color has been replaced by a “rust” one 😉

So, following examples like Othello (check his website here, but in french only), I decide to have parts zinc-plated, the ones that were originally plated, and also some others, to protect them better than with paint.

Here is how it looks like, presented the Othello way. Should I say that it took a lot of time to obtain such a result? To get good results, everything has to be cleaned, some times sandblasted and always brushed.

OK, I admit, I had zinc-plated parts that were originally painted in black, like the engine oil filling pipe. In fact, I thought that a good plating will be a lot better than simply using a paint can, and it should be nicer too. But I’ll perhaps have too much yellow parts, so I’ll paint some of them back in black color, which will protect them even more.

Here is, in January 2007, my “display” of plated parts, after receiving a fresh new batch.