Patcon

I would think cold temperatures would make it less prone to spark knock...

Much better, thanks C

Is that a factory mirror on Cody's car? I would like to find another one like it for the other side...

I know a lot of people go the DIY chemical approach. I am not confident these solutions are that easy to reproduce, and Caswell support does make it easier to trouble shoot issues. I used a wire brush for a while but it is very labor intensive and difficult to do small bolts without launching them across the shop. I also think the wire wheel is much easier to contaminate versus the bead blaster. I was using a wire wheel after the blasting cabinet for a while but you have to use a light touch. The wood is from a house I built last year. We took about 50 trees off the lot. Some pretty large. I found a sawyer to cut up four large pieces for me. I gave him the rest of the logs. There are two poplar logs that were about 24" across and two maple logs that are smaller. It needs another year or two of air drying before they are eligible for some wood working projects

I couldn't get to it... and is that a pdf link, because I can't highlight it...

@NVZEE Where are you sourcing all the excellent diagrams?

Would some or all of that slack not be taken up by the oil pressure moving the chain adjuster????

This is how it currently sits. It runs and he has been driving it to work some. We have had a loss of power problem recently. I took the carb off and checked it and we don't seem to be loosing fuel flow. So I suspect water in the fuel. So we added some gas dry. We have the hatch off right now and we are working on getting it changed over to orange. We are doing all the individual panels one at a time then we will pull all the remaining glass and spray the body of the car and have the headliner redone and reinstall the glass. WE can get away with this because it is a solid color and if you shake the paint well, the colors should match ok. This way he can drive the car as we paint it. Instead of breaking it down for years like I have done with my projects. Plus it has the added advantage of being the only car like this for 100 of miles. So if he acts stupid I will probably hear about it.. He has also grown some in the time we've had the car...

Thanks. Me too! It was frustrating for a while but I kept coming back with the mind set of this being done in a commercial shop. It can't be this hard. So I started trying to make it simpler and figuring out how they would do it. They are not doing all the hand buffing I was doing. Too much labor... If I keep at this I will build a plating barrel. Like on one of the sites I referenced early on in this thread. The real issue now is the time it takes to string parts and it takes 20-30 minutes to do 10 parts or so. So it takes a good bit of time to do any real amount of parts. If I had a plating barrel I could do 10x's the amount of parts in that 20-30 minutes and they would be constantly rotating so the coverage would be more even. I have several more cars to do so If I can get this car out out of the way I may add that to the project list. Finding the right size screen drum is the real trick. I am thinking a chlorine bucket maybe for a pool skimmer... hmmm

I will give this a shot: I start with the parts, if they are oily or nasty I wash them, you can use purple power, carb cleaner or sometimes I use my parts washer. Get them clean... If I am worried about residue I might wash them with soapy water or use carb or brake cleaner... Then I bead blast them in here...until I get clean metal. Bolt threads can be a problem and I am currently using these beads https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00867RC50/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Extra Fine glass beads Price For: Each Standards: OSHA Size: 53 lb. Item: Blast Media Media Type: Glass Beads Size: 53 lb. US Sieve: 170-325 Nominal Dia. Micron Range: 45 to 90 Nominal Dia. Range: 0.0017" to 0.0035" Grit: Extra Fine Country of Origin (subject to change): United States Then your part will look about like this Then you need to string everything up. I just started using some finer copper wire yesterday and I found it much easier to work with and gives less shadowing on the parts. I stripped some multi-stranded copper wire and I use a few strands or even one sometimes for really small parts and string them up on there. I use heavier wire for larger parts and for making hooks to hang parts. I have 2 strands in my hand... Then I head to the plating bench During this time I have been warming up the bench. Cut the crock pot on low if it's warm out. High if it's cold out... The crock pot is the first step. Running hot SP Degreaser from Caswell. I leave the parts in here on strings until I am ready for them. They can sit in there for a long time. I have even left them for days and they don't rust. If you leave them in water or exposed to the air you can get flash rusting. After this point parts only get handled with gloves until they are dry... Next over is the power supply. I am running a power supply I bought off Amazon I believe It's 10 amp so that would give me about 83 inches or so at .12 amps/squ in The pickle tank sits between the power supply and the plating tank. It is muriatic acid and I have stopped using it for now. If you have parts that have some rust that you really can't get clean then the pickle tank might be necessary but for now I am skipping it and seem to be getting good results. I had concerns the acid was etching the parts and making the parts rough, and sometimes it discolored the parts which effected the final color. Plating tank is running with a submersible aquarium pump HFreight (be sure when done plating to rinse this pump and blow dry or it will corrode and not run the next time) circulating fluid. 2 Anodes one on either side of the tank. 2 heaters running off a thermostat that keep the tank about 110d F. I am using Caswell plating solution and their Zinc brightener additive So parts come out strung and go into hot SP degeaser. They wait there until the plating tank is available. I dip them in a rinse bucket, then I hang them on a copper tube I have suspended across the plating tank (this bar has corroded alot during this effort and made connections a problem so I plated it tonight to mitigate that) I am running parts based on the square inches of surface area. If it's a washer you count both sides. I made an excel spread sheet with some formulas that work a little better than the caswell formulas. It does washers for instance based on id, od and thickness instead of having to calculate the area of a cylinder and subtract the area of a cylinder. I may try to attach it later... I calculate my amperage at .12 amps per square inch. I was at .14 but I have found a little lower seems to work a little better and the plating times aren't too bad. When I first put parts into the tank. I will check them within just a few minutes. If the plating is dark. Sort of primer gray then you need brightener. I have found if in doubt, add a little bit. Parts should come out light gray with really light highlight areas. I have even had some parts come out that almost look like they've been chromed... Also if I am getting some blackish areas your current is too high. I have found though sometimes parts will develope some black on them, almost looks like soot. Looks bad but when they go in the first chromate tank it is gone almost instantly. I have also found on my last few batches that the correct amperage gives me a voltage of about 0.3V. We will see if that holds true now that the hanging bar has been plated... Today I ran the current up until it read 0.4V then backed it off a little until a little bit inside the 0.3v range to get good plate. The higher you run your current for a certain size part the higher the voltage will be (that's "Sparky" talk ). I have also found when plating concave parts, sometimes the interior area doesn't want to plate due to the magnetic lines of current. So to get around this I plate at my normal current for a while, maybe 75% of the run time. Then I turn the current down, sometimes to even half of the previous amperage. This seems to help the interior areas plate by reducing the magnetic fields . I normally plate for 20 -30 minutes depending on how big the parts are and how the coverage is coming. The more complex the shape, the more you have to turn it and rehang it or rotate. Plating works by line of sight. So the hanger wires can cause shadowing, other parts can cause it or even hanging in the tank can cause it. So I check parts about every 10 minutes or so to make sure every thing gets covered. After the plating tank I rinse the parts with a spray bottle filled with distilled water ( all water used in the processes is distilled water!!!) I will probably go to a rinse bucket soon. they should look like this or better After rinsing them I dip them in Caswell blue chromate. I really don't dip them. I hang them in the solution and swish them around for between 15-60 seconds. They will brighten up alot! The chromate tank needs to be at least 80d F to get quick results. Recently I went to running them with hot water baths to keep them warm and that has really helped. When it's warm outside they sit in holes on the far right side of my plating bench. When it comes out of the blue chromate they will look like this They almost look chromed. The are hatch dovetails for Cody's goon. They will stay silver. At this point I rinse them with the spray bottle again and hang them up. I reload the plating tank and when I get a chance I will dry them with the Milwaukee heat gun from the earlier picture. After I dry them good you can handle them. If you don't dry them with heat you need to let them hang overnight to dry or you will damage the finish. If yellow zinc is required then before drying them and immediately after the blue chromate, I swish them in the yellow chromate for 15 secs exact! I use my phones stop watch. If you aren't consistent your plate color will vary. Find a time period that gives you the color you like based on the concentration of your chromate and stick with it. The blue chromate isn't as sensitive for time because it really doesn't change after it brightens up. After yellow chromate, dry as before... @grannyknot How's that? Questions? Any aspect I didn't cover?

Uhhhhhh, no and no... I wish I was at the point that I consistently got these results and I may be getting real close to there. I plated most of today too on some of Cody's parts and had pretty good success...

Just remember you can't be too big if you're gonna get in that Bug eye Sprite!!!!

I have a set of those. They measure roughly 36mm but might be 38mm. I saw on the Z therapy site where they seem to differentiate between the two, but I couldn't locate the difference...Maybe it is the float bowl drain location I have a head I bought out of Australia. Will need some work but should be usable. I am hoping to get Eiji to help with that motor when we get to that point. On your SU carbs, it looks like the bowl overflows are pipe away in hard lines to avoid the exhaust. Is that correct? I have two hard lines that came with the carbs and I assuming that is what they are for. Dumped onto the ground... Guy, also how did you handle the chokes and throttle linkage?

We have a guest house and you have lots of frequent flier miles...

You are correct, he has a pump in his tank which is quite large with a filter setup. I was wondering what he used for bags over his plates. I was not sure how that would work...How do you know the bag will work but not block the plating action but still contain the contaminants?

Thanks, I was bummed after my last season but was really pleased with the results from today. It is a slow process though. I string parts but it still takes a while to do a group of parts. I need to make a barrel plater. I could do much larger batches that way

We solved this. I bought a refurbished switch off of Ebay and that fixed this issue

We bought a 72 510 wagon for my son about a two years ago. It had been hit on the front right and it took us a while to get that straightened out. Lots of pulling, shrinking and welding We rebuilt the hood out of two different hoods there are some more pictures of this on the forum, but I don't know where... We are changing the cars color from an Ivory type color to one of the factory orange colors. Last weekend we pulled the hatch and started reworking it but there was some bondo on there, so that required a good bit of metal work and even after that there is still a lot of filler on the panel I will try to post up some more picture tomorrow

How do you tell SSS carbs apart from regular 1600 carbs? I am rebuilding some small throat SU's for Cody's wagon but I was unaware there was anything other SSS carbs...

I fired the plating bench up today... I took the other strut caps to start with and bead blasted them. Then I took one of them and sanded the flat face with 320 grit paper I put them in SP degreaser; then water bucket rinse; then to the plating tank. I skipped the Pickle tank because I thought it was causing a rough finish on my parts After the plating tank, spray rinse then I put them in the Chromate tanks Blue for 30-60 secs, spray rinse and yellow for 15 secs The sanded one is on the right in the above photo I added a hot water bath for my chromate tanks to keep them warm I have a bucket heater we use when doing tile work in cold weather. I warmed up a bucket of water and poured it around the bottom of the chromate tanks I had to heat them up 3 times during a 9 hour or so plating session I worked on plating hardware on Cody's Su's for most of the day This is after bead blasting... I have a very fine bead in my blasting cabinet right now, so I skipped wire wheeling these items for This is the result. After they hang a little while I use a heat gun and finish drying them the rest of the way. After working at reassembling the SU, which is quite the puzzle, this is what I've got... Before on the right, after on the left

If my notes are correct, this is what I gleaned: Yellow Chromate 10 Oz/Gal Sodium Dichromate 1/2 Oz/Gal Sulfuric Acid - battery acid He plates for 15 minutes or so He is using Caswells plating solution and hasn't done anything other than add make up water Plating grade Anodes Using Caswell Brightener Blue Chromate: .8 Oz/Gal Sodium Dichromate 3.2Oz/Gal Nitric Acid

In your position I would buy a 260 or 280z and put SU's or triples on it and drive it. You can make the front look just like a 240z with the turn signals and little bumpers...and it is a much cheaper way to "get in the door" than a 240z...also after I believe 76 they started galvanizing the bodies which helped with the rust some...

That car is better but rear wheel arch is rusted out. Rear deck lid has rust on the rear edge and bumpers look like they are rusted through. Considering it was originally green, I would assume there is more rust under the gold respray. If you want to look for a clean car, search in Phoenix, Southern California or some where else in the South West. The cost of shipping is well worth it. As for daily driver, they are more than capable of that but in states that salt roads it's a bad idea to run these cars when there is salt on the roads.

Thanks for the links

Not very much! There is rust all the way across the front of the roof panel and I'm sure there is a lot more you can't see. You would be better off to buy a car from somewhere with less rust and pay to ship it...