Your preferred finish on various suspension parts?

[Mark D]

Very similar to Mark - in fact, he was one of the posters I copied for my DeLorean.

You can see it starting here in my build thread: http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?18...toration/page3

This was done just last year, and I have pricing and other info in the thread about the process.

Thanks! I was just copying those that came before me as well. This guy was a major source of inspiration for me:
http://www.noroads.com/delorean/3281/

I've been following your youtube videos and you did an amazing job on your car.

[84Impulse]

Wow, u guys are hardcore. Lovin it!! Hope to be an owner in next week or so, and will follow the same pattern

[82DMC12]

Yeah this is a very inspirational thread! Thanks especially to Bill and Mark D for the photos and links. You have me convinced on the right way to get it done. I'm going to start buying my parts slowly over the summer and then do all this at once including the brakes this fall. I found a place here in Kansas City that will do cadmium or zinc plating for minimum $150 charge (about 40 lbs of parts that can go into a tumbler) and blasting for $50/hr. Larger parts that can't tumble like calipers on a per piece quote. Seems reasonable!

[Mark D]

That sounds like a pretty reasonable quote for the zinc/cad plated parts. Cadmium plating was what they used back in the day for most of this stuff and it was supposed to be more durable and have better corrosion resistance than zinc plating. I'm not up to date on what the current salt spray specs are on cad vs zinc. The conversion coatings also changed from hexavalent chromium to trivalent chromium for anti-pollution reasons (thanks Erin Brockovich) so the color of the coatings are dyes now. It used to be that corrosion prevention ranged based on color since the color was an indicator of the thickness of the coating. IE: clear<yellow<green<black. With trivalent coatings the thickness can still range, but the color is just added.

You should be able to ask the platers and they can recommend which type of plating and coatings would hold up better in the long run and still have that bright gold finish.

Most of the automotive / heavy truck industry has moved away from zinc in favor of hybrid aluminum/zinc coatings like dacromet, geomet, and magni type coatings. These are generally silver or black in color so they wouldn't have that factory correct look. In general these coatings have salt spray hours orders of magnitude better than zinc. For parts like the calipers that see a lot of heat you could get those DAC coated and then powder coat over the top in a gold finish. If I were doing it all over again today I'd at least look into some of the other more modern coatings to see how they stack up against zinc/cad before making a final decision.