Popular Post tomble Posted September 23, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 23, 2021 Leonie used her connections / google to source some solid carbonic anhydride: Strictly speaking we probably didn't need to remove the sound deadening, but it was already flaking off in some places, possibly had rust under it, and it'd just be weird blasting and repainting a whole car and not be bothered to get the deadening off. It wouldn't feel right. Like a silly billy I didn't get any good vids of us smashing it up. 1. Pour onto sound deadening 2. Listen to the snap crackle and pop of the deadening cracking and releasing from the metal. The cracks are cool to watch appear; sometimes there's enough force to launch bits of dry ice 3. Remove the ice 4. Take to it with fingers/hammer/scraper and it just crumbles off It was very cool to play with this stuff. For the deadening on the tunnel etc we just held some dry ice against it using a towel. Not hard to do, and very fun! Before: After: Happily there's almost no rust under the deadning except in a couple of places. The worst place is where I expected some surface rust to continue under the deadening, on the rear right side seat. But it's not bad. If I could weigh the deadening I would - it's pretty beefy. Somewhere between 15-25kg we think. Now the car is basically ready for blasting... some final zip ties are lurking here and there and I'd like to have a go at removing some seam sealer in places and scrub off the worst of the caked dirt. Here's a shot of the car just before we removed the deadening. We've got a date for blasting: 11 oct 27 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted October 23, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 23, 2021 A few years ago I got sick of wearing glasses and got laser surgery. My eyes suck so they couldn't just do the in-and-out, drive-yourself-back-to-work one. They laid me under the laser, put alcohol into my eye, scraped to the lens with a tiny spatula, lasered the lens into behaving (after warning me that the smell would be the air ionising not me burning) then tweezered a bandage contact into place. I was told I'd have to basically stick to a dark room at home for at least a week. I'd been told what the process was. I was okay I guess, I wanted it and was steeled for it. Then the doc said "cool that's one eye done, onto the other one" and it suddenly hit real. There's no backing out now. I've got one eye done, I can't exactly nope out at that point. While the mystery of the first eye was easy to experience as it came, I knew exactly what was coming now. I suddenly felt very anxious. I'm feeling a lot like that again. One eye done. There's no backing out now. 19 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted October 23, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 23, 2021 Did the car need blasting? Maybe. I doubt someone experienced would have done it - they would have started taking bits off and decided "actually it seems pretty straight". They'd have tackled problem areas as they arose with wire brushes and some welding + paint. But I went into this project with the idea of transforming something old and tired into something that's ready for another 40 years, and that combined with my bushy-tailed newbiness and slow pace always meant getting someone to blast and paint the bulk of the work in one go. There were some clear problem areas we knew about Fun amounts of bog in places The radiator mount has a rust hole in it There's some cheeky rust above the dash Some rust damage at the boot latches A tiny hole in the floor pan so why not just Get It Done. Strip it all away, know what we're dealing with and let the phoenix be born again from the ashes. Was it worth it? Idunno, prolly. I think it was. The above issues were all of course still there. Less words more pictures you say? Well you may regret saying that, straw-reader. But I made sure to downsize all of the photos on this page so it should be less brutal on your modem this time. The misc bog wasn't actually that bad........ .... (foreshadowing?): The radiator support had no surprises for us. The hole in the floor. There was also a tiny hole on the other side. The rear latches had a bit more to say, with some issues at the keyhole and pinholes below the rear as well. What we thought was just surface rust on the back seat actually punched through a bit, but not by much. We thought we were one of the only starions on the planet without rust under the windscreen but we didn't quite escape that event horizon. I had no idea it was this bad! We learned about some new problem areas. The left rear fender has some issues. And the swiss left door sill.... But the worst blindsided us: the entire front has been stitched on. Someone threw a new front-end onto the car, then bogged and painted the welds in the frame to hide them. Overall, the work doesn't seem to massive - but the front end gives me pause. The car has previously been registered in NZ so I feel it's probably okay as long as the work is cleaned up a bit? Would love some advice there. The other thing is it'd be great to get the suspension back on (once cleaned up). But it seems like we should get the underside sealed/painted first? 11 2 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted November 22, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 22, 2021 We knew that this was a deregistered car from the start and got into it anyway. Just part of being a noob I guess, but I always figured we'd be able to sort it out down the line.. maybe it'll be a bit expensive but should still hopefully be reasonable in regards to the value of a fully restored Starion. Right...? I called a few panel beaty places and instead of straightening the car out, they straightened me out. It's not fun hearing "oh yeah you can expect about $30k for an average panel and paint job on a car this old". Especially when that's followed up with "deregistered? Okay yeah we can do it but it'll have to be be the Rolls Royce of repair jobs". But one of the nicer folks I called offered to come around and check it out soonish. So I had no idea whether we still even had a project. Anxiety effing sucks. Thinks like sunk cost fallacy was at the forefront of my mind. Was this a lost cause? How much will this repair cost - is it going to be better to just getting a beaten up reg-on-hold Starion and starting fresh with that? How many years would it take for that opportunity to make itself available again? I didn't want to put another second into the car. All motivation just gone. Also the frustration of the legalities of this. I could roll the dice and hope the re-registration people just feel like stamping paper that day, and don't whip out the endoscope or mandate stripping everything back to metal. Yet if whoever had it registered last had just paid the $peanuts every year to put the registration on hold the above repair would be perfectly legal. ARRRRRGH. ---- Guyman McPanelbeaty finally is able to come around. He's a numbers guy so he brings a hammerbeast. I bitch to them about my registration frustrations. Hammerbeast replies instantly with "yeah", throws his hands up, "yeah!" He goes on his own rant. This was a perfectly legit (if ugly) repair back in those days, the style of the time, onion on his belt. Kindred souls. They like the car. It's in pretty good shape rust-wise, they hand-wave the other repairs. They warn me of the dangers to my wallet if I end up going with a darker colour (or god forbid black). What colour should I go with? Not important right now, but this question will be asked a little more frantically later on down the line. But onto the work. I ask them to ballpark the repairs that need real certifying, the bare minimum to just get it back on the road. They guesstimate the work and throw some numbers out. The numbers are acceptable. My shoulders relax. I shake their hands and literally bounce back inside. We have a project! ---- Of course, they're super busy so it won't happen until next year, but I have homework in the meantime: I have to find new front rails and a new radiator mount. There's a wreck in Palmerston North so I started there. "Yeah mate let me check. You need both rails?" "Yes please." "... ah sorry mate, someone's already taken the front cut" Amayama's manager is permanently offline. The image above is from their site. Easily over 50% of the parts I order there end up being out of production, and for whatever reason they don't have the rails themselves listed separately, so I wanna talk to a person. The rails + wheel housing + other thingy are over NZ$1k each to import. if they exist. Bah. NZ's Starion facebook group is small but often useful. Not this time though - I got a name dropped to me but he was out of stock. The Austarion facebook group is much more lively but same deal there. @ProZac's Starion Sell-Up has long exited FOMO territory and is well established in MO territory. I have some more options before I'm ultra desperate (USA + expensive shipping, more mitsi parts websites, from-scratch fabrication) but things aren't tracking great lol. Does anyone know of anyone with a Starion parts car who might be willing to part with their front rails? Motivation's back tho. 24 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted January 12, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 12, 2022 I made a dumb cart! This car has no wheels. The proper wheels are a long way away, so it needs some temporary wheels. Especially because Panel McPanelbeaters will need to be able to move it around. After looking at a bunch of vids I decided to lazily over-engineer a cart out of wood, with two arms to attach it at the back where some of the rear suspension subframe bolts in, and just wedges between the front frame rails to give it some lateral stability. I got some annoyingly expensive M12 bolts with 1.25mm pitch long enough to be able to through some of mitre10's finest framing wood and test fitted them with the help of girlface: Turned on my granddad's old circular saw, put it down and used a hand saw instead, did some shitty drilling and screwing and measuring attempts, and after evolving the original plan a bunch I came out the other end with a cart! Three of the bolts even line up! It's a small cart and the footprint looks quite narrow but it's technically not far from where the jack stands would go anyway, and is quite sturdy. Most of the weight is in the back of the car too, so the cart is located quite far back. For the wheels I selected some nice big 100kg fellas with locks. The finest cheapest that mitre10 had to offer. I hear that the bigger the wheel the easier it is to move it around and the less susceptible it is to bumps. The weight capacity of 100kg per wheel or 400kg~ for the distributed load should be plenty, given that I can lift the front half by myself and the back half with a hand. So of course one breaks the first time it hit uneven concrete. This is also with me moving it by lifting the car from the front end, so there's even less weight on the wheel than normal. Nope, doesn't matter. As soon as it snagged on the crappy concrete while trying to rotate it crumpled faster than a hollow easter egg in the hands of a fat kid. Fortunately the mitre10 service desk guy didn't put up a fight and I got my money back. Then splurged on some smaller but 125kg wheels that looked and felt a lot sturdier. Non-locking but I was already paying significantly more for them. So that's that job sorted, and while I'm still trying to locate some new front frame rails the panelbois will at least be able to move it into their shop and get a start on it. I can sit in it and have girlface push me around, so I'd say we're probably over 70% done with the project now. 24 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted March 3, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 3, 2022 Bought some frame rails! They're attached to a car though so I guess we own that too now. 17 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Share Posted July 2, 2022 Hi! We're still working on this, it's just been a bit slow with life stuff like house painting and work things and laziness. Also, the frame rail thing is pretty disheartening. I think I'm on now the right path towards resolving that but there's other stuff to do while I wait and let the funds build. Ugh I've left this thread too long and now have to sift through some old ass photos. There's a bunch of things on the go but the biggest is the suspension and drive train. One of the first goals after the shell is repaired will be to get it back on wheels instead of a trolley so it's a decent place to focus on. Where to start? Eh, blasting? We borrowed a mate's blasting cabinet and went to down with it. I'm really happy we splashed on our compressor as it can keep up 100%. However something about the setup sucks. We've got 3x water traps (ignore the back-to-front one in the pic, it's proper way around now) yet still will get a decent amount of moisture spraying out of the gun. This means that things clump up pretty rapidly and lots of gun-bashing is necessary to get it going again... for a couple seconds before it clogs again. The longer the session, the worse it gets. The cabinet is also poorly designed in the pick up department and we have to tilt the whole thing every minute or so to get the sand back near the pick up. But the results are decent. Oh I should probably get the bushings out of the control arms before I blast them. A quick trip to my mate's place who has a press and they're out. Keep on blasting... Wait hang on, one of the arms is bent? It's OK, said handy mate to the rescue The saga of Right-side Lower Control Arm is to be continued... 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 2, 2022 Meanwhile, in another part of the garage... This rear suspension has been leaning up against the garage for too long. Also being on its end means that the already-leaky diff is extra-leaky and that gear oil is really stinking things up. Ugh. Oh that red thing off to the corner is my partner's new, fun, totally functional car that she can tinker on and then have on the road again in the same weekend. It's fine, I'm fine. No honestly I'm fine. Let's focus back on the rear subframe? First thing after disassembly is to drain the rear diff. Better late than never? But PLOT TWIST I won't be using that diff! A rare narrowbody LSD popped up on trademe then somehow was removed within a few hours of its listing and ended up on my lawn. It even came with a free torque tube! I can't leave it in this state though so let's disassemble it to make cleaning up and painting easier. Cover comes off. At this point, I could have done some checking to see if the gears line up OK and the lashing and whatever, but I didn't. Bearing thingies out. The diff was scarily difficult to get out. For me anyway. A new gear puller helped get the rest of it done. I think I preferred my torque tube over the LSD's one, and they seem to be the exact same part so all good (?). That gets disassembled for clean up too. And the universal joints from the drive shaft. It's all manky, one of the UJ's seems a bit stiff too. And while we're at it let's clean the grease out of the front hubs and remove the seals, bearings and races. We'll file down some particularly gross parts of the casting too. A nice little side quest which will also be continued... 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Share Posted July 2, 2022 Now, I've got all of these tasty new poly bushings - but I need to re-use all of the steel cores. That means removing them from the old bushings. They didn't really suit the press, so Handymate and I tried a few things... saws, drills... till I decided to just go home and try the burning method. My mate thought that it just meant burning all the rubber away, but apparently that's a very common misconception. Some further research revealed the proper method which is to heat the metal around the rubber, which causes the rubber to literally boil and separate. At that point you can just poke it out with something that isn't your flesh. It worked really well! However I did it in the wrong order: I should have burned the inner sleeves out first as they would have been easier to push out while the rubber was still being held by the part they're in. It wasn't a huge deal though, I just decommissioned some kitchen tongs and managed. After some acetone and wire wheeling, they came up great! (If you want to follow in my footsteps, pro tip, give them some paint or oiling or something now because by about a month later they were orange with rust :D. I ended up coming back with the wire wheel again and some CRC black to prevent any further rust) Some mocking up with the new bushings. Let me dream. But... what is this? Right-side Lower Control Arm-san is not very happy with his new bushings. The outer bushing was never meant to be pressed out of the arm. D'oh! How will this be resolved? Will Right-side Lower Control Arm-san get his metal sleeve pressed back in? Or will he be forever doomed to a bushless existence? Stay tuned... 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 2, 2022 Another side quest. One of the towing hooks and suspension rod linkage thingy mounts are bent/mangled. They still work but... The towing hook is easy to fix with heat, a hammer and a file. And someone has left another Starion parked nearby for ages, so I snuck over under the cover of noon to perform a switcheroo on the mount. I doubt they'll notice. Man I'm really amassing a number of stripped down parts here huh. They need to be blasted and then painted I guess. With that shitty little blaster set up. 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 2, 2022 21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 2, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 2, 2022 RLCA-san still needs that sleeve. LLCA-san does too, I'm not sure why everyone's latched on to righty's story, but who am I to withhold him from his fans? Back to Handymate's press! First we add a couple of bracing bolts to the inside of the arm to prevent it from just bending again. Then we (I) pucker up and get pressing... Success! Then with some lube, light fingering and some consensual force we get the bushings and their inners in place. I think this is technically the first ever instance of some Joining Of The Finished Parts on this project. May it continue! 27 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 7, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 7, 2022 Mmmm delicious steamed parts! Patented tomble recipe! I accidentally included the automatic transmission mount in there - rubber and all - and the coating process turned what was already a sad part into a very squishy sad part. Oh well, hopefully can source a replacement or just deal with a saggy transmission until the inevitable manual swap. 18 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted July 29, 2022 Author Share Posted July 29, 2022 So now I can actually start reassembling stuff. Exciting! First I have some u-joints to install into the drive shaft. I might be going a bit OCD on some of this stuff, but one of the old ones was a bit hard to rotate so this was worthwhile at least. It's a bit nerve wracking taking a hammer to new/restored parts but it went fairly smoothly. The only wrinkle was that after fully installing, the joint was stiff and not easy to rotate. Fortunately this was easy to figure out, some of the uninstalling or installing hammer/visework must have bent the flanges outward imperceptively and a couple swift hammer strikes got it all to behave. I also learned how to use a grease gun. Driveshaft: check! 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted July 29, 2022 Author Share Posted July 29, 2022 Past Tom got feck all pictures of this but I also reassembled the torque tube. This was a lot easier; parts wash everything to make sure there's no grit left over, make sure it's all dry, grease everything up just in case, install the new bearing, gussy up the old snap ring and lego it all together in reverse. I have no idea how to properly torque this nut down... it might have to happen once everything's back on the car! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 29, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 29, 2022 Next: the diff! As with the torque tube, parts wash everything thoroughly to remove any grit... and any dirt and stuff that may have accumulated, and old oil. Also a bunch of scraping to get rid of the remnants of old masking tape and over-powder. The tap set comes out to clean up the threads as well. Really glad I did because a lot of crap came out of those threads! Now they're all nice and shiny. I decided not to mess with the pinion or core thingy. The bearings feel okay, and cross-referencing pix from the internet didn't raise any red flags for tooth or race wear so I'm going to test what I can but work under the general assumption that what I've bought is fine "for now". So, lube up the pinion's splines with grease and in she goes. I'm making sure to lube everything up with the new gear oil as well. Babby's first oil seal . Given that I do have new races to install in the hubs I invested in a bearing and race set which makes tapping these in easy. This is NOS... I actually have two sets as I accidentally some from rockauto as well. And finish off the exterior side with the spliney cog thing and its washer and nut. I was foolish during disassembly and didn't mark where the spliney cog thing mated with the pinion, but fortunately someone else had in the past and it was still visible I have no idea how to torque this down either. The guy from the guide I followed hacked his old torque tube up and welded it into a tool for holding the splines in place. I do have a spare as well but I'd rather not mess it up. I'll look into this later. Next up I checked the pinion runout. My approach here is to get 'good enough' to square and if I measure really close to the limit, figure out a better angle. The limit is 0.1~mm, I measured 0.05mm on both the smooth part and on the teeth, moving on! Now for the core thingy. Like an absolute noob I didn't mark which side anything came from. At least I didn't disassemble any of the internals! Everything measures up identically on each side except for these two shims. Oh well, 50% chance of getting it right. Getting the core in is an absolute pain in the arse as it's so heavy and I have to somehow hold the shims and races onto the core as it goes in, while also wrestling the angled races wanting to slide off. I may have broken skin. In the end I managed to do it by holding each entry of the core by two very sore fingers, getting it into place with as low a drop as possible, then pulling my fingers out like the dickens. Then I softly tapped the shims into their proper place while malletting the core until it seated properly. Then the bearing caps go in. Again, no idea which side is which - but fortunately one of four bolts was a little hesitant to thread in with my first attempt yet was smooth when the caps were swapped around so another win from lady luck. Okay so here goes, did I win the 50% lottery? Runout is okay. 0.02mm and the limit is 0.05mm. ... arse. The backlash is around 0.32mm :(. It should be 0.12 to 0.17~! I'm okay with bending the rules a little but that's an insane backlash. Is my diff toast? Can I fix it? Ugh. A quick google tells me that this is fixable, it just means I need to have the core closer to the pinion. Shims the wrong way around? Cue... removing the caps and malleting (with difficulty) the core back out. Yay, the thicker shim is on the pinion side! Reassembled with the shims swapped (and yet more pain) and... it's good! 0.12mm backlash. I'll take it! The teeth have already been schmoo'd in the past. I can't see any real wear pattern on the teeth themselves, I didn't disassemble the internals, and I don't have any schmoo, so I'm going to go ahead and say "yes this is probably fine moving on". Twerk the caps down. This is really difficult without a stand. Install the drive shaft oil seals. And some NOS plugs - finger tight for now And then clean up and smoosh the breather thingy on to the cover. Chuck some glad wrap on the exposed parts to keep crap out and it almost looks like I know what I'm doing! All that's left is to install the cover. But the old crusty bolts are gross... I'm going to have to do something about them... 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted July 31, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 31, 2022 A low tow truck was probably overkill but it made it easier to lift on and off. Now to watch the contents of my bank account get Thanos'd. The'll first be doing the repairs and getting them certified, then we'll decide where to go from there. I feel a kick up the bum to get the rest of the panels and doors blasted. 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted August 7, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 7, 2022 I've heard that the auto starion has a different diff ratio to normal so while I had it open I measured it - 3.909. I also dragged the old one out and got it open, but it's also 3.909. I dunno, maybe the new LSD is from an auto too... but I'm glad I don't have to think too hard about what effects the swap will have! As there are negative quantities of new gaskets for starions out there, and the interwebs seems fine with just gasket maker for this application, I decided to go that route. Break cleaner'd all the gasket surfaces and waited to dry. Applied a smooth continuous bead of permatex ultra black that would make any professional cry with joy (or just cry). Gently lower onto the diff and hand tighten a bunch of crappily passivated bolts (I'll post about my electroplating efforts later... still nailing it down!). After an hour, twerked down in a chris fix pattern. I also schmoo'd a bead around the breather and attached it. The breather used to have a little ring that is meant to be lubed up and pushed through to hold it from the other side, but that tore off in moments... so it's just the gasket maker holding it in right now. I've given it a few solid tugs and it seems okay but I can try again with the old diff's breather if I have to in the future. And hey while I'm here... greased up the splines on the torque tube and its bolts and connected it all up. I also torqued up the drain bolt because I know I'd forget. There's not enough purchase on the diff right now to be able to torque it down easily so I just left future Tom a note. That's one more complete thing I can store and ignore! 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted August 7, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 7, 2022 I've been putting off touching the rear hubs because they've been unkind to me. The axle nut is torqued down to stupid foot-libs and I was really struggling to get it off. Max send on impact wrench, the pair of us with crowbar and breaker bar in various strange configurations and our full body weights, I even drilled four holes into the bench to slot the hub into which wasn't useful. For some reason I waited till the end to try the vise, but when I did it worked second try. Even then I had to find the right angle as the breaker bar threatened to tear the bench down (and I don't trust the person that engineered it). Then I put my little gear puller into use once again, followed up by a rubber mallet at full send when it reached its max travel (manual says "tap it out", yeah right). There's what I now know is a "blind" bearing that has no purchase on any side of it. The manual says to use a blind bearing puller, which involves using a special tool to punch into the bearings then each lever in the puller is inserted then turned 90 degrees to pull against the outer and inner races simultaneously. It costs $1500. So I instead went to the internet for advice. Someone managed by removing the bearing retainer then smooshing all balls against one side to be able to knock the outer race free, then cut the inner race off. They also said "good luck" if that retainer was metal and not the more modern plastic style. Feck. But it was a good start so I somewhat carefully just took to the bearing with a variety of chisels, punches, drill bits and screwdrivers in an attempt to mangle the race free. In hindsight I had no chance of succeeding but no harm done. What worked: I took a dremel to the outer race. The geometry didn't let me cut all the way through it but some more "experimentation" with a chisel revealed that the remainder of the race split very easily with a few taps! I dremel'd the other side, and a single tap opened it up. The retainer and balls then slid/fell right out. Again the dremel geometry wasn't favourable to completely cutting the inner race but I was hopeful. I cut as much as I could without risking cutting into the permanent bits. This time instead of splitting entirely, the cut made a perfect purchase point for the chisel to work the inner race free such that I could just slide it off by hand. Yay! What was hours of faff turned into minutes for the second hub now that I knew what I was doing. Then I clawed all the grease out of the hubs like Pooh with a honey pot and gave it all a solid parts wash, ready to mask up once it dries. Phew! 24 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted August 15, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 15, 2022 I'd like to re-use as much of the old hardware as I can, but it's very often gross and rusty and I don't like the idea of just hitting it with clear coat or something. For that reason electroplating is a very satisfying idea to me. Take crusty bolt, clean it up, plate it so it's pretty and like-new and will last another 40 years? Hell yes! The local electroplaters are affordable know what they're doing have bulk methods like barrel plating for misc hardware are good people Therefore I spent $toomuch on a plating kit from Australia to do it myself at a relative snails pace with inconsistent results and high time investment. Why myself? I figured it'd be fun, create a greater emotional connection to the job, and the reduced barrier to plating would allow us to do small jobs that wouldn't otherwise be worth taking to the platers. Why a kit? Reduce the guesswork - I get the right chems, equipment, faffy bits and a nice plating manual. In hindsight I've no doubt I could have done this MUCH cheaper if I gathered the bits myself, but also in hindsight I'd be faffing a lot more to get worse results. Additionally the Jane Kits guy is a fantastic bloke who puts a lot of his effort in his product and making sure his buyers get a good result. Maybe a bit of foreshadowing there... The kit provides everything except for containers and demineralised water. The container part is actually kind of tricky to get right. They need to be large enough to fit the largest parts you expect to plate, but also small enough to fit the quantities of stuff you have. Sure I bought the 10L kit but if I had to fill 5 rinse baths with 10L of demineralised water or buy 10L of black passivate... and find storage for all the containers... yeah, not feasible. Here's the containers required for zinc + black passivation: Acid cleaning bath Degreaser / parts wash First wash rinse Second wash rinse The main zinc plating bath Zinc plating bath rinse Metex IT chemical dip (preps metal for passivation) Metex rinse Black chromate dip Black chromate rinse Lacquer dip All but the first rinse bath should be demineralised water, and all but the black chromate are concentrates that need bulking up with demineralised water. I'm not buying 100L of demineralised water! I bought a variety of containers, a few 10L's before I realised the math involved and a bunch of 1.5-2L containers. They're mostly ok. Even the main bath container was a bitch to get. I've got a 10L kit and therefore need something like 11-12L, rectangular, plastic, sealable and transparent. There are 10L systema containers but they are spot on 10L, no space for parts or head room for the rods (ask me how I know). I ended up getting a 19L container from the warehouse but it's still not ideal; there's a huge drop from the rods to the bath and the supplied aluminium rods aren't long enough to span it. I fixed this by threading some bolts into the rods. I also made some braces for the rods to sit in so they're harder to knock around (it's bad to cross the streams). Later on I simply replaced poured off (stored) 1L of the bath and put the remainder in one of the surplus 10L containers I had. Saves on copper wire and it had the same footprint as the 19L. The kit comes with an agitator to move the bath water around (good for popping hydrogen bubbles that settle on parts) and I raided a pet store for a thermometer and aquarium heater. Our garage isn't breaking 10C very often right now so this is a necessary step to get the bath up to temp for hours (25-30C). The black chromate and lacquer also require a specific temperature range so I've "borrowed" Girlface's immersion heater... Then it's just dangling the zinc anodes in the bath and hooking up the supplied PSU (good deal on that btw). The manual is very wordy but thorough. It recommends "plating out" the mix for a couple of hours with some scrap metal as the bath will have some initial impurities that cause black specks etc on jobs. So I cleaned up one of the fuel blanking plates I'd restored the fuel tank with, degreased it and dangled it in there for a couple hours. Wish the bath water was easier to see through. Two hours later: a speckled crappily plated part. Alright it's time to plate, what could go wrong? 14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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