Chrome vs cadmium plating?

[evren]

I have a new-to-me front hood latch mechanism, that I will be installing on my 71E soon. The parts had some paint on them, which I was able to remove with thinner and some light sanding. Now the question is what to do to them to prevent rust? What did the factory do? I would like an original look as much as possible, though I am not really hung up on originality.
Any suggestions and comments on different material plating vs. painting, etc. would be much appreciated..... Also, can I have these pieces plated as is, or do they need to be competely disassembled? thanks, Evren

[jmz]

my experience is unless you have a lot of things to re-plate (economies of scale) it might be less expensive to buy new. I think a front hood latch is only like $17.00

[evren]

Thanks, I'll look into that as well.... however stuff like this tends to be relatively cheap in Turkey, so it might be worth it.

[RickM]

I believe the factory used Yellow Dye Chromate (or variation) an inexpensive and very common alternative to chrome. Unless done in a batch it may very well be more cost effective to buy new as JMZ says.

Call a local plater and ask if they can include with the next run.

[CarreraS2]

It is definately some kind of cad plating from the factory, gold or zinc cad look close. Definately not chrome or paint.

I've had stuff gold cad plated - I could not get them to add my stuff to anyone else's order, and a minimum job is around $125.

You don't need to completely disassemble those parts, but the more disassembly, the better. You definately need to disassemble the spring assembly, though, to take off the end cap that holds the spring on. That is a soft metal that will get eaten up during the plating process.

I have some stuff I would like to get done. If a bunch of people have things they want plated, we can probably all go in together to lower the price. I'd coordinate it if we could get enough (and if it isn't a million tiny bits).

[Randy Webb]

I think chrome would look gauche. Call around for min. Cd prices, ask your mechanic or a local restorer to put them in with their batch, or...

recycle the parts and have one fabed out of Ti -- you save many grams....

[Scott Clarke]

An alternative is zinc chromate. It looks like yellow cad, but is easier to have done as it is a less toxic process. In the US, it is hard to fine anyone that does cad, although that could well be different in Turkey. As an example, Eurometrix re-plates throttle body linkages and other hardware with zinc chromate.
-Scott