Zinc Plating Dmitriy's Struts

After what seems like way too much time, I finally got all of Dmitriy's strut housings welded together, so as mentioned in my first post about them, they're now ready for plating. Since the threads cannot be painted or powdercoated because not only would either of those processes add too much material to allow the threads to work, but as soon as it got chipped or scratched (as it would because they're threads), the underlying metal would begin to rust immediately. Zinc plating is different because it's actually a sacrificial layer and will corrode before the base metal around it does, even if it isn't completely covering it. That's why you find this kind of plating on fasteners as well as steel brackets that might be exposed to harsh environments.

I ended up ordering a zinc plating kit from Caswell Plating after reading a lot of positive reviews of their product. The kit comes with all of the chemicals required, some heaters, some buckets and you pretty much just add tons and tons of distilled water.

This isn't all of it

I did actually have to take a trip to Home Depot to get some other things like muriatic acid and a bucket to keep the acid in and a spray bottle...but it was all pretty inexpensive and readily available stuff. For lack of any better place to do it, I set up all of my buckets and electrical stuff along the wall of my garage on the side of my Starlet that I'm not currently working on. I really need a bigger garage.

Um...don't worry, I'm a professional

After dipping things here and applying electricity there and spraying stuff, I managed to get the part cleaned and plated with a delicious layer of zinc. Then, it went into a quick blue chromate dip to seal the zinc and improve its corrosion resistance (I don't pretend to understand how chemistry works) and bam! we have this super sweet plated part!

It's actually a crazy iridescent blue, but the photo doesn't really capture it. I guess that's still my fault.

You can see in the picture that it has a little bit of plating all the way to the end of the tube, but I rearranged it slightly in the bucket so it only has significant plating maybe an inch into the mounting tab area. Then, there's the less obvious chromate layer which ends just about 1/4" below the end of the threads. It's not terribly important to plate the whole thing because everything but the threads will end up powdercoated.

That was pretty exciting stuff. Now I just need to do it 5 more times and off it will go to the powdercoater while I finish up all the spring perches. It looks like Dmitriy's making some serious progress on the shell, so I hope I'll have these all ready for him when he needs something to bolt knuckles to.