Popular Post tomble Posted August 15, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 15, 2022 By the way - not pictured is hours of reading and prep, making sure the containers are all scrubbed clean and rinsed with demineralised water, creating summarised instruction cards for each container (got the idea from a guy on YT) and measuring and mixing everything out. The main bath itself took a long time to dissolve all the salts into - lots of mixing and bain-marie-ing to help. The steps are actually pretty manageable; the stuff prior to the bath is just making sure the part is chemically clean. Wire wheeling and the acid bath are usually "enough" prior to degreasing, the sandblaster is required for the nooks and crannies. The acid is great at removing existing zinc plating (essential) as well. --------------- NOTE: I wasn't sure whether to show my journey, or just report on what I've found to work. I feel like this is more of a journal, so that's the direction I've gone. I'll make sure to summarise what I've learned at the end. --------------- Enough talking! First attempt! 1. Wire wheel to steel* 2. Acid for 15 minutes, fun to watch! 3. Degrease with parts clean and toothbrush. Rinse. Attach copper wires. Degrease again because that's what the manual said (???). Rinse again, then separate rinse in demineralised water. No pic, use your imagination. 4. Turn the bath current on, hang parts in the bath. Adjust current, 1A per 160 cm^2. Honestly I just eyeballed it. Cook for up to 1 hour. 5. Pull it out and rinse the feck out of it - being very careful not to touch it. Umm, this isn't looking so great. Sorry for blur. It's pretty gross - I guess I didn't wire wheel it well enough. At this point you're done if you just want zinc, dry with a microfibre towel. But for passivation... 6. into the metex IT. The zinc gets suuper bright, and uhh.. the rest of it.. is it getting darker?? 7. Rinse the dirty words out of it, then 30-90 seconds in the black chromate. Apparently the longer you spend the darker the colour and the longer it takes to 'set'. 8. Quick dip rinse, then 9. into the JPK Aqualac (lacquer) for 10 seconds. No pic. 9. Shake the excess lacquer off and hang for seven whole effing days. Not going to lie... ... this doesn't look so great :\ The next day is much worse. Patchy finish. Didn't get rid of all of the rust to begin with so that's still there... But more rust appearing?!? Wtf! (in hindsight this is funny but yeah pretty discouraging) Nevermind. There's not a huge amount of info online about troubleshooting zinc plating. Most say patchiness = too much current. The next attempts involved the sandblaster, playing with the amps (mostly lowering them) and playing with the amount of time in the acid. They don't really go very well. Here's a montage of failure. A bunch of blasted and pickled bolts: The kind of patchy zinc results I'd get out of the bath: These translate directly to passivated finishes... Many of the bolts (especially the worst ones) I just took back to zero with the sandblaster and such and tried again. Here's my "ugh" / rejects pile as it stands today. The white stuff is the lacquer. It dries on the part and leaves this grossness. It's exacerbated by the patchy zinc though. You're meant to shake the lacquer off, but I found it difficult to do without flinging a freshly plated job that isn't meant to touch dirt / grease / hard objects into some unknown part of the garage. In time I figured out how to wire stuff so that it can get a vigorous shake without joining Girlface's car keys. To cap off this credibly frustrating stint in the valley of despair, here's the final attempt I made before things started to get better. I blasted the absolute fuck out of four bolts and wire wheeled them down. Then somehow, 5 bolts made it into 15minutes in acid. I decided "fuck it" and continued anyway. Here's the difference sandblasting made to the result after plating: Note that this is a crap zinc finish anyway but we'll get to that. I threw the crap one out. Of the remaining bolts, two were strangely crappier than the others once passivated... almost like they hadn't been zinc plated at all... and it seems like they even started rusting in the bath? The next day: Yeesh. 10 1 3 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 read on the interwebs that 0.1A per bolt was good so I gave that a go - that last attempt was my lowest amperage thus far, and I'd been slowly creeping lower and lower over time having read that higher amps cause patchiness problems. So fuck it let's just blast higher! I doubled the amps to 0.2A per bolt. ... and... hey they actually came out reasonably okay... Still cloudy the next day but I didn't really flick the shit out of them at this point. These went on to connect the diff and the torque tube in a previous post. But the next day... This happened. I wish I took more pics because... ... these are gorgeous! I was BLOWN AWAY by how shiny these little guys were! Excuse the pitted heads. The dark top right bolt wasn't plated properly for some reason, and the top left is also a little flat compared to the others, but these are the first bolts that expressed a bright and brilliant zinc finish - one of the reasons to use this curated pick of chems! I was excited a.f. A few hours later... cloudy and black again but they still look so much better. I re-blasted and re-plated the rusty one and these went on to secure the diff cover in a prev post. I figured there was just one dumb thing between me and success, and I thought I'd found it: too few amps! Unfortunately it all just seemed to return to crap directly afterwards. All parts were patchy and dumb. At least they weren't rusting any more, but still crap. By this point I've probably plated about 70 or so bits of hardware of various size, some multiple times. I got in contact with Jane Kits guy who very patiently attempted to trouble shoot with me. Some learnings: The final finish determines what it'll look like after zinc plating. Therefore the order should be acid then wire wheeling and other polishing efforts. Acid time should be treated with care; blasted parts probably only need a couple minutes in it. He was resistant to my breaking from the 1A per 160cm^2 rule but didn't have any explanation for why higher amps were working better for me, we tried things like looping the copper wire around the rods more, ensuring the rods were scuffed properly etc but nothing really changed things. If the results after zinc aren't right, the passivation won't look good either and is a waste of time. Get the zinc right first. Messing with parameters and changing shit up is basically the way to improve! Here's a chonky boi that has been blasted (twice) then acid'd for 2 minutes. Then wire wheeled to a fairly consistent shine. And out of the bath she comes... hmmm not shiny... Patchy too... And a few days later... Jane Kits man says that this is totally normal as unpassivated zinc is a sacrificial layer that will oxidise quickly. He suggested that I'd run out of brightener; 10ml was added when I first mixed up the bath and I assumed it'd last a lot longer than it did, but I guess I did plate a fair number of things. After adding 7ml more I got another shiny result! One washed is duller than the others, a recurring theme for sure, but the others are great! There's some scuffing that was present prior to the bath so not worried there - it just goes to show that preparation is important. After polishing with a cloth wheel. They're still shiny a week later. Throughout troubleshooting I learned a few things. The finish before going in the bath is SO important. I go back to those earlier pics and cringe at the prep of some of those parts; the inconsistent blasting, skipping wire wheeling sometimes, I get that I was experimenting but yeah it's really obvious why they didn't work in hindsight. 1. If you can't wire wheel every nook and cranny, sandblast it. Sandblast it goooood. 2. Acid for 2 minutes - longer if you suspect traces of zinc are left. 3. Wire wheel until it looks like you want it to look when it comes out of the bath. Smooth, consistent, clean, bare. 4. Clean it to an immaculate level. All grit out of threads etc. I don't think I really had an issue here but it's worth repeating. Grease or dirt will kill it. 90% of the improvement in my results has been unintentional: just me getting more and more careful over time with the prep. I'll explain this more in a little bit but the amperage is critical. I was consistently getting it too low and I still have some dialling-in to do. I've been getting closer to 1A per 120cm^2 and I think I'll likely settle closer to 1A per 80cm^2. I can't explain why this differs so much to the manual but it's what is working for me. Flick the shit out of that lacquer! Secure parts such that they can be flicked - don't just wind stuff around the part, actually hook the end of the copper wire around the other wire to create a secure grip. 13 1 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 Now I'm regaining confidence again and hit up the passivate again after plating a batch of 9 small nuts. This time I secure my parts for better flickerage and make sure the amps are at 1.5x what they should be. This is where I start to connect some neurons. I didn't get any pics of this but, as usual, after 60 minutes were up some of the nuts were outliers compared to the rest; dull, or seemingly unplated. Just like the above pic with the shiny bolts. So, as I've learnt to do, I took the shiny jobs out first and left the others to cook a little longer. This seems to work I've found but I couldn't explain why it happens. Next up is a batch of 8 small bolts. Something else that happens is when I dunk multiple parts, one or more of them fizz much more vigorously than the others and this was no different. Historically it doesn't matter what I do - move them around, clamp the wire tighter to the bar or reposition it, doesn't matter. Depressing but whatever, progress right? But I noticed that after a minute, the fizzing parts had stopped fizzing and another pair had started. I watched them closer and sure enough after a minute the fizzing had moved on again. After 60 minutes was up I came back. Two bolts weren't done yet so I left them in. A few minutes later I came back and only one of them was fizzing. Infuriating but whatever. Once I was happy with fizzy boi I took him out to let the last remaining bolt take the current. It didn't. In fact, the power supply read 0A. I tried moving the part, clamping the wire tighter, wrapping it differently, scuffing the wire, nothing would make it plate - I didn't want to touch the part (any grease will mark jobs black at this stage) but the copper wire itself was also plated indicating that it had been plating at some point. Imagine my surprise when I removed the part and found that it actually had been perfectly plated - I just hadn't noticed, I was too fixated on the lack of bubbles! I didn't understand it at the time but I've got a good running theory now and I feel like I've broken the back of this shit. I've asked for clarification from Jane Kits man but I'll share my Greater Zinc Electroplating Fuckery Theory here first anyway. Tom's Greater Zinc Electroplating Fuckery Theory* 1. Zinc won't plate onto zinc. When a job isn't drawing any more current, it's totally plated to the point where it can no longer receive any more zinc. I assume this depends on the thickness of the zinc and the resistance of the circuit (maybe higher volts or amps will let it plate more? Don't care). 2. Plating prefers the path of least resistance. As a part is coated with zinc, it becomes more resistive to zinc. At some point this resistance becomes greater than another job on the circuit, so plating shifts to that part. 3. My set up is dumb and things take longer. Something about my kit or set up is shit and the suggested 60 minutes is not enough to completely plate all jobs at the normal 1A per 160cm^2. I theorise that if I just leave it without touching it that it will complete within the next 30 mins or so, assuming that 1 and 2 above are correct. This would also explain why higher amps results in a better result for me; it's able to cram more plating into what is otherwise too short a time period. Conversely it could instead be the opposite; I'm not giving it enough juice (for whatever reason) and thus it takes longer. *this could be as worthless as homeopathy. Take with chunks of crystallised sodium. Also I flicked the shit out of them and they look much better! There's some minor clouding on the underside where the lacquer gathers, not sure how to solve that, but it's a vast improvement. 10 1 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 (To be clear, the contents of this post are the very last platings I did and were done before the above epiphany - still, I think they came out great!) The bolts that connect the rear hubs to the subframe are massive and won't fit in my black passivate / lacquer containers. So I decided I'd do mix up the gold bright passivate in a larger container. This is also an experiment in not using the blaster (it was being a dick). Wire wheel part to remove rust and crap. Acid for 15 minutes. Wire wheel until happy with finish. Scrubbadubdub. 5. Plate at 1.5x amps. 6. Take it out. Looking good! 7. Metex IT and rinse steps are dumb but I'm able to slosh it around enough to get the job done... 8. Gold passivate :O :O :O. This is 25 seconds in the passivate. I also did 15 seconds for the bolts' nuts - more subtle but it's nice too. The other one came out great too Not gonna lie, I had some serious buyer's remorse, but now I'm excited again. There's a metric arseton of hardware to get plated so I'm approaching it from a "how to eat an elephant" approach: one bite at a time. A batch takes about 20-40 mins of prep, then 60+ minutes to plate, then about 10 mins to passivate and pack back down. It consists of anything from 8-10 small pieces or (as above) 1-2 large bolts. I've been doing it almost every night after work for the last month, and several batches per weekend. And while it's been frustrating, it's very rapidly turning back into rewarding territory and totally doable when I think back to how many parts I've managed to get done in just one month. I can easily turn this into routine and if I keep it up, that's like 200-300 pieces of hardware per month. Chances are I can increase that output as I get more comfortable with the process and figure out the limits of the bath size. Hopefully the right mix of informative and entertaining, sorry if that was too long winded! I'll post some bro shit later about CV shafts. 29 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted August 18, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 18, 2022 I bought this back in March sight unseen after it had languished on Trademe to a somewhat reasonable price. It's another deregistered early starion japanese import non-runner, 1982. Someone's swapped the turbo out for an NA engine, I assume from an earlier starion, haven't really looked too hard. It had been in storage in Nelson for (if I recall correctly) around 20 years. Lines up with carjam. I originally got this primarily for the front frame rails to replace the main starion's buggered ones, and the extras on it made it worth buying. It's in a poor state... lots of dings, lots of surface rust over everything, a visible rust hole in a rear quarter, the engine doesn't actually run right now (it can run really rough with some starter fluid but the whole thing needs a proper service and probably more), two of the four brake calliper pistons are totally seized (made it fun getting it into position before we realised), there's no brakes otherwise (master cylinder is empty), radiator is empty, misc stuff is unplugged around the place... She's a manual so it has all the stuff for that conversion as well as an intact reference for how it should all hang together. A good backup reference overall really, in case I left something out of my disassembly photos! She's rather shabby overall but I lucked out; between the good parts on this car and the good parts on Stella (1983 Starion's working name), I think we'll have one good car come out of it. Window trims, grille, interior, etc. Additionally there's some stuff on this car that is simply missing on the other, like the centre console storage, relay cover, fender mirror plugs, just little things like that. People keep commenting on the wheels too. They're growing on me, but uhh I have plans... Once done with her the idea was I'd either have a bunch of spare parts or I'd sell off what I could to try make up the deficit. But once I got her, I felt really bad about cutting her up. Yeah she's rough but it's on the same level as Stella, so I instructed the lads at the panel shop to try and see if the frame rails can be fixed without donors. The new idea is to swap bits between the cars and let this car go at the end to be someone else's project. Unfortunately, that is not this car's fate. The front cut replacement on Stella was sleeved on then tac welded into place. I am told that this is, and I quote, "Totally Illegal". The value of repairing the frame rails to certifiable spec will exceed the value of the parts car and then some. So, poor 1982 is driven away to what is likely her doom. As she was getting offloaded, a bystander poked his head out between some parked cars, whistled, then disappeared. The bois will have a look and see what the options are. We're leaning towards taking the frame rails out of this one and putting them in Stella as I have no doubt that this shell will be rustier... and in any case I'd rather avoid the faff of stripping it all back again. Especially because storage is at a premium at our house - we have car parts scattered throughout the home However, using 1982 as the new base isn't off the cards. I'd definitely get it stripped to the frame again, maybe acid dipped this time to avoid sand, there's just so much surface rust and I know there are gremlins hiding under that paint. We'll just have to see... 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSk Posted August 25, 2022 Share Posted August 25, 2022 Tomble, Most impressive plating and I hope I can learn from your very detailed posts above on this subject!! A couple of things: Since your Mitsubishi Starion has been de-registered you will need to have her certified if you want to ever register and drive the car on NZ roads again. I've just been through this, well nearly done, and you ABSOLUTELY should contact them NOW as the way it is supposed to work is you work with them while you make repairs. They guide and approve as you go. The process is not designed to work with you showing up with a shiny restored car and wanting them to certify it at the end. This might not be an issue if all the metal work repairs are done by a professional shop ... ? How did you get your Yellow Chromate for your plating please? I have a Caswell kit and to get it from Australia, even for the tiniest amount, is $1000 due to shipping of an acid issues. So I'd really appreciate some insight here, or even maybe to purchase some from you ... ? Love you and partners work Pete 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted August 28, 2022 Author Share Posted August 28, 2022 One of the other things I was putting off was disassembling these. The boots have some life left in them but with a desire to make things shiny and without a service history I figure it's best to clean them up. \ Screwdriver the clip up and cut the boots off, then follow the manual for disassembly. One end is off. All looks okay. But... the other end can't be disassembled :(. It's either to be re-packed and re-booted or the shaft is to be replaced entirely. Well I guess which direction I know I'm going there, but it does mean that I'm not going to be sending it off to blasting/powdercoating. I wouldn't trust that there wouldn't be any grit that gets in there, and the powder coating pre-process would cook any film of grease out and leave it all susceptible to corrosion. So I'll just have to c-c-c-combo break and paint it myself. I thought about whether to paint it first or re-assemble it first, and the idea of everything just sitting there collecting rust and dust while I mess around with getting a top coat thinner etc didn't sit right with me, so reassemble first and paint later. But first there's a critical problem: Two of my rockauto boots are grey despite saying black on the package. Oh no! So off to BNT I went. The price of OCD is approx $44. I sandblasted and wire wheeled the metal back to back to new, borrowed my mate's boot clip installation tool and got dirty. The universal quality of the boots meant that they had a little more length to them than the old boots; I was expecting to have to cut them much shorter but I was only one rung away from the max diameter it'd fit. Not really much to say. Some youtube videos got me through and reinstallation of everything was messy but painless when I realised the boot length thing. The other side followed in short order. I greased 100% of the surface and now they can sit on a shelf waiting for me to buy that thinner and go through the faff of painting them... but I'll wait for the pieces to pile up and do a batch painting job. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted August 28, 2022 Author Share Posted August 28, 2022 As a newbie one of the most confusing aspects of this process is "what the hell do I do with the struts?". I learned fairly quickly the basics of what the bits do... the purposes of the shocks and the springs. You can lower cars with smaller springs but that the springs themselves aren't linear in nature - some of it is stiffer than the rest - and so you can't just lop some of one end off (not sure how true this is for this car but whatever). Then you also need to get inserts appropriate for the new height or they'll be too stiff (unless that's what you want). I think that's right anyway. As a dumbass who took all the suspension off first, I don't actually know what height I want this car to be. I can look at the red starion for reference, but I also have some new wheels I'd like to put on it which are much wider than stock that have no tires on them as of yet - so not sure how that affects things as I'd rather not roll the rear guards if I don't have to. And I'd rather not get new tires for wheels that are not a sure thing right now as they'll need spacers which means cert and all that. Anyway less rambling. I took all the struts apart to see what I was dealing with. Stella's shocks are absolute toast, leaky and they don't really seem to dampen anymore. The fronts are bad, but the rears might as well just have hollow tubes. I read on the interwebs in many places that whilst the front struts can easily accept replacement shock inserts, the rears are a sealed unit and the whole body has to be replaced. I cracked open the fronts easy enough with a pipe wrench. The inserts have been replaced at some point in the past, unless Mitsubishi subcontracted to Monroe. Not pictured: lots of oil that had filled up the housings. However the rears have a different style gland nut that I just couldn't crack. I didn't want to round anything off or explode oil in my face or whatever so I left it. So things are lining up with internet observations and it also explains why the rears are so bad compared to the front; they're not as easily serviceable. Because this may shock you: the rear strut bodies don't exist new anymore. I'm sure some OK ones exist in some enthusiast's stashes but hunting for 40 year old "good enough" gas struts just doesn't sound like an appealing path to me. So: - The rears on this car will fail WOF, but I can't get new ones. - Therefore the rears need modifying (cert needed) or replacing with aftermarket coilovers (cert needed). - Therefore I will need cert no matter what. I'm not married to authenticity with this resto; if I have to replace something stock with more modern technology I'm not going to cry. Insert justifications here - bottom line is that's my attitude towards what I'm doing; YMMV. Coilovers sound like an excellent route; they'll solve the gas issue, make the "what height do I want" question obsolete, and I'd like to be able to dial in my stiffness. There are three well-known budget coilover brands I found that are advertised as working with the Starion: XYZ, D2 and KSport (they still need the fronts modified to get the spindles on them). Reviews of these brands appear to have been very poor in the past but they seem to have improved over time to "fine I guess". There doesn't really seem to be a step up from the budgets for this car, at least not one that my dumb ass can see. My mate has fortune auto coilovers and swears by them so I got in contact with NZ's distributor, MLP. They've got a welding service for old RWD cars' fronts and they were happy to provide that service for me. But the rears? Not so much. He wasn't confident he could get it done up to cert and didn't generally seem interested. I made a post over in the tech talk forum which was very useful. @Bling mocked up what I suggested and pretty much says what I was expecting. The fortune autos have a threaded bottom which are paired with bottoms made for various cars so the idea would have simply been to cut mine off at the bottom and thread them. Didn't seem like an overwhelming task but I'm also not a certified welder or aware of certification rules. My mate even had some spare bottoms that were mis-delivered to him he gave me that I can throw at people for reference. Again, seems totally doable to me, ugh. So anyway, I pointed at a lovely fellow named Malcom Lovett who said that he'd had Autolign modify his rear struts ten years ago with new Bilstein inserts. So I packed it all up and went off to Autolign. Now the first thing I will say is that the guy at Autolign in Petone (I forget his name) is a top notch bloke who genuinely had my interests at heart. He spent a solid half hour with me essentially deflecting any attempts I made to self-upsell and save me from myself. We talked about modifying the housings to behave like the FA housings so I could fit new FA coilovers. He either dismissed that idea so fast that I've forgotten the reasons why, or he misunderstood, "you want coilovers? We can do it but it'll be spenny". He talked me through the process for essentially fabricating coilovers from scratch and put a rough estimate out there that was.. spicy. I thing the conversation may have shuffled on too fast and we lost each other in the confusion, but also he really knew what he was talking about so it's hard to believe he didn't understand what I was suggesting. I might still pop by again in the future to discuss this. He pawed through the Almighty Tome of Shocks and found that the starions' front inserts aren't being made anymore. But with a bit of fiddling he determined that there are some MR2 ones that would essentially fit. He was adamant that the gland nuts on the rears could be removed by an engineering shop and there'd be a replaceable gas strut inside. I raised my eyebrow. He then did a quick bit of research and changed the tune to "oh.. yeah we can modify them to take new struts, would need to add a spacer...". He confirmed that he could ship them up to Auckland and they'd be able to do it all, but he actually advocated taking it to a shop first to disassemble just to cut down on shipping costs for me. To confirm what I already knew, yes this'd be certification territory even if it's essentially just restoring to factory condition. Likewise he also asked if I intend to lower the car - as these are not adjustable, I'd need to go in with a specific ride height in mind. Not much point in me paying to get them shipped up and modified only to have to ship them back up later when I decide what I want right? When asked what he'd do, he said he'd get XYZ coilovers, they'd be perfectly fine and way cheaper than a bespoke thing that likely would be just as performant. Autolign doesn't stock these and he was clear that if he got them in they'd be paying retail price and passing the margin on to me, as I say, really looking out for my wallet. Overall a bit dejecting, I was hoping to get this cloudy aspect of the rebuild checked off, but I guess that'll just have to wait. So the plan now is to initially get the car back on the old shitty struts and figure out the wheels and ride height from there, then get the rears modified (involving cert guy from day 1 as suggested to me) and figure out what the hell is happening to the springs if I intend to lower her. Probably jumping the gun a little here but I cleaned it all up to go to the blasters/powdercoaters (or in the case of the rear strut bodies, just cleaned). Here the batch is just after parts wash, looking deceptively non-rusty. That was a few weeks ago, they'll take another couple weeks to get back to me and I'll just keep on carrying on with the myriad of other things that need doing. If anyone has any alternate ideas or information or advice or suggestions please do hit us up. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bling Posted August 28, 2022 Share Posted August 28, 2022 NaN Admin delete please, posted in wrong fred. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted September 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2022 Plating's going well - I figured some stuff out. My anode connections suck and my old theory is wrong. My theory is bullshit. It'll keep plating no matter what. When the amps are 0, something else in the circuit is bad. I thought it was the job itself, but it turns out the main failure vector is the connection to the anode itself. I found this out when I noticed that bumping the stainless wires would often create sparks and little puffs of steam if wet. The stainless steel wire tends to not want to conduct with the aluminium rod, I'm not exactly sure what it doesn't like but there's a fair amount of salt that builds up on the rods? Idk. I regularly cleaned off the rods every few batches but after figuring this out I make sure the connection points on the anodes are scuffed, and I pay attention to the voltage. No matter the job, 0.8v seems to be the sweet spot - so first I hand-smoosh the anode wires into the hanging rod to ensure a proper metal-to-metal connection on all four anodes. It's surprising how important this is because the voltage on the power supply usually noticeably dips after each anode jostle - indicating that I've improved the circuit such that it doesn't need as much voltage to push my desired amps. After the jostling I adjust the amps on the PSU until the voltage is 0.8v, which always makes the amps line up with my napkin maths, hence why I reckon it's the sweet spot. I also put additional alligator clips onto the rods and wires to help out but I'm pretty sure they get a bit fucky as well. How could this be improved? A lot of the DIY solutions have only part of the anode submerged and an alligator clip or similar attached to the non-submerged part of the anode. I reckon this would eliminate a lot of the problem - something to note when/if I need to get some more zinc, I could try go for some big long strips or something. I accidentally fixed the black passivate clouding issue. I use an immersion heater + bain-marie to heat the black passivate and the lacquer to 30C which is within the ideal range of both substances. One very cold day I forgot to turn the heater on until the zinc plating was done so I got impatient and just tried to get it as warm as I could. I estimate I got it to about 23-24C (still within range). The resulting parts came out almost perfect - no clouding at all, and the temp was the only difference. So I set the immersion heater temp to 23C and since then have had perfect results. No clouding at all! I have no idea why this is the case as the ideal temp for the passivate goes all the way up to the early 30's??? I also don't know if it's the black passivate or the lacquer that is the issue - I'm guessing the lacquer actually as it seems like it's the most likely thing to result in a cloudy finish... Here's a comparison of some 30C and 23C passivated parts... I've gotten better at bulk plating. I find that if I just string up a huge chain of parts by wrapping a single long strand of wire, and connect it to the rod at both ends (maybe with some suspension wire if it's too much), I can plate a lot of stuff at once without sacrificing quality. The jane kits guy said not to crowd the bath but doing it this way I've had no issues! To compare: It took me over a month to get all of the rear subframe hardware done. It only took 6 batches to get the front suspension and steering hardware done, less than a week. The pile grows! This pile is actually missing half of the rear subframe hardware as I started assembling stuff... and has grown a bit since I took the pic too. I won't be re-doing any of the cloudy stuff because (1) it's purely superficial (2) I'm being anal enough and (3) the remaining hardware is much higher priority to clean up! 17 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted September 24, 2022 Author Share Posted September 24, 2022 I finally stopped being lazy and spent the last hour resizing and reuploading all the images on page 1 and many on page 2 to fix the slow download issues. Page 1 went from 498mb to 30mb! And wow what a great reminder of how much we've already done. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted September 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2022 Once all I'd finished enough of the rear subframe hardware I assembled what I could to offload my brain. I bought a bunch of stuff from rockauto last year and it's finally time to crack out the rear link bar bushings! ... only to find out that they're proably a little too tall thanks to an extra-protrudy nipple, there's a little slop once assembled in the subframe that might come out from torquing but I decided to be prudent and visit BNT for some alternative poly. Dark blue is new. The rockauto kit was also missing a bushing washer thingy on each side, so I quickly blasted and plated it - one advantage of having a kit right there! I wanted to assemble ASAP so I didn't passivate it, I just gave it a quick buff and put it on. I also gave an exhaust hanger vibration thingy that attaches to the subframe a quick blast and spray. A split second on the buffing wheel really brings the appearance of the rubber back to life too. All arms, bushings and bolts greased fitted and torqued to spec... where applicable. I also have new torque tube bushings which re-use the metal from the old ones, so I burnt off all the old rubber then blasted, plated and passivated the metal. I uhh, had to talk to MKS to figure out how they went back together - but they're back together Lightly fingered into place for now until I'm ready to attach the diff/tube. I also ordered in some new diff mounts from MKS... ... and I won't order anything else from him any time soon... I'm leaving the diff and torque tube off for now for ease of manoeuvrability. The rear hubs aren't back from the powder coaters yet but I'll also be leaving them off for the same reason. What a load off my brain though! It's tricky going through a bag of bolts, pawing through year-old photo albums and figuring out where shit goes. 12 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted September 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2022 Frameland is progressing slowly but steadily. The crew took out red's NA engine and I got it home. This was a misunderstanding on my part, they wanted to check it out and asked that I bring red over to inspect, so I did - but I didn't realise they were expecting me to ultimately take the engine out. However I worked out in the end that this was half because they knew I could do it and it would save me money. The cost and faff of transporting the car back home, taking the engine out, then transporting the car back wasn't appealing so I asked what they could do. In the end they were able to drop the engine without any fuss. I could have saved a little money if I'd removed it from the start but gotta just roll with the punches. Doh. I was under the impression that the drive shafts for auto and manual were the same but I guess not. Some more work to do when it's manual swap time. Oh well... They were happy with what they saw with red's frame rails so are proceeding with the original plan of transferring over to Stella. They've already taken the frames out of stella - apparently this was a huge pain in the arse as the previous repairs were mig'd in so they couldn't just drill out the spot welds, but it's done. They also took the front off as it makes things easier in the long run, and the previous work looked terrible. Some tidy-up still to go but progress is progress! They were well underway removing red's front and frames out when I was there as well. Seeing progress on the shell after a year of nothingness is glorious. 26 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted September 28, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 28, 2022 Red's back home after her dentistry. The shop welded a bar to the frame for ease of carrying - but under-estimated the weight of the car. Took them 4 guys to get it on the trailer, fortunately I was able to round up some neighbours and it got off the trailer a lot easier. The towie wasn't too happy about the surprise of towing a 2-wheeled car, which I feel awful about. He still gave me his frequent flyer rate though so I guess it wasn't too bad. The frame rails are now at the blasters, then they'll tack them on Stella, send it off for a proper body alignment, and finally get it back and properly weld it all in. 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted October 11, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 11, 2022 Delightfully devilish! That'll be the last batch. I'll re-assemble with the old gas shocks for the initial rebuild, see where things sit and decide what to do from there. Hopefully Red has better shocks, I haven't touched that yet. Either way those struts will be cleaned and painted by me, I could get them disassembled then powder coated but that seems like putting the cart before the stallion... which I've already done by having the springs etc painted but whatever Speaking of powder coating, I did a whoopsie with the first batch. The steering drag link is meant to have boots. I didn't know that, and once the link went through the oven, some hidden schmoo schmoo'd out... A facebooker got me set on the right path, turns out this sort of thing is bread and butter for power steering repair services. It's hard to know what you don't know but relieving when problems turn out to have simple solutions. I shipped mine down to HBI Engineering in Christchurch - and it turns out they'd just repaired another starion drag link the week prior! I just got it back last week and it looks flash. Can't even tell where the cuts happened. In Stella news, I trundled the doors and fenders over to them while they were waiting for the frame rails - they need them to assist with the re-alignment and there was some warping in one of the rear panels from the blasting. I didn't take any pics but they're making progress on the rust patches and have started the fairing process <3 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted November 24, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 24, 2022 I got this blurry pressie yesterday via MMS... 21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted November 30, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 30, 2022 Options are hard. Given a blank canvas or piece of paper a lot of people will just fall into decision paralysis. They could do literally anything. I too suffer from this pretty hard. As you can imagine, choosing a colour for this car promised to be a difficult undertaking for me. There's a bunch of fun colours I could do, like a soft hello kitty pink, or a crazy multi-faceted colour that changes based on your viewing angle, but this car deserves something more serious. Black was the knee-jerk first choice because it was originally black and that's what she should be at an emotional level. However, black means bodywork perfection - and when even the panel guys are warning you not to choose black because $$$$$, it quickly gets ruled out. So we're back at decision paralysis hell. Or rather we would be, if I didn't know myself any better. There are ways out of the hell: 1. add constraints. It's much easier to make a decision when there are fewer to make. The easiest one I could think of here was to start with the original set of Starion colours. I don't mind straying beyond 1983 colours. 2. genuinely listen to opinions. To this end I made a facebook post and got a ton of suggestions. One kept on coming up, which was one of the OG colours. 3. pick the first thing that sparks joy, sleep on it, then stop looking if it still makes sense in the morning. I'd actually run across said colour before and really liked it. Every time I came back to it it looked just as good. Why look further? Panelbois made me up some samples but realistically I'd already made my decision. I mocked it up against the parts car - really hard to visualise by the way! I informed the men and they put that colour to work. Having completed the frame rail repairs they wanted to do the underseal and engine paint themselves to make sure that the seam sealing was just right for future certification and I can't argue with that. She got home yesterday! They've done an excellent job with the repairs as well as my untrained eye can see. There were some issues I didn't know about, like one of the deeper frame rails had been impacted and needed pulling back into shape. The engine paint job looks pretty good considering I wasn't paying for show car quality. The panel work on the inner fender will be 90% covered by the fenders once they're on. Where there was some let down was in the other work. We'd agreed to fix all the rust on the car before it came back to me but that got lost in the noise. Three of the rust repairs on the rear of the car (the very first repairs) were half executed - probably forgotten after switching jobs - and the interior side was left to rust back through to the point where it was visible on the other side. There were a few forgotten bits of rust. The half-finished stuff is fine, it's covered under their warranty, but I thought I'd paid for all the rust at this point - sucks I'll need to shell out even more money for the forgotten stuff. The other side of the above They tickled the worst parts up and sprayed a quick protective coating. Again not too worried about it as they'll fix under warranty later but kind of brings the mood down from where it should be you know? Still, the car looks ducking awesome and it's time for shit to go back on 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomble Posted November 30, 2022 Author Share Posted November 30, 2022 Earlier this (Nov) month I got reassemblin'. The rear hubs were the first target - everything was powder coated and I had the shiny new bits for them. The blind bearing would have been a pain in the arse to get to the bottom of this shaft as I have no pipes or anything but fortunately the metal sleeves (one pictured here) could be stacked on each other to create a good surface for a race drive to sit on. The key would be to make sure both shafts have been bearing'd before continuing, otherwise I'd only have one sleeve and wouldn't be able press the other bearing on. Wouldn't that be silly! ... So uh anyway here's one of them done! All greased with wheel bearing grease and torqued up. The nut unfortunately requires stupid amounts of torque, more than I can apply with it freely on the bench. It was a massive mission to remove those nuts in the first place, getting good leverage on the hub without marring the paint is probably impossible with what I have so I'm going to have to do it later when it's on the car somehow. For now it's just dakka dakked real good. Um... and the other hub is here! Just as easy, yup! 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted November 30, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 30, 2022 Also earlier this month a wonderful fellow called Stefan messaged me on FB - a fellow Starion enthusiast who had seen this thread and wanted to trade knowledge and pep talk. And red's engine. He came offering knowledge of how to rebuild the rear brake calipers and where to source their bits from. Up to this point I'd been avoiding the brakes. Hell I avoid everything really. Probably not the right attitude but my already-shitty memory has been trying to juggle the location of every bracket that I ever had to take off this shell over the last year and losing. I compartmentalise what I can and the easiest way is to just put something off until something is fixed and I can free my brain up for it. Stefan gave me a nice firm little burst of momentum to get the brakes seen to. Fine. Here are my rotors. Gross. I've been trying to find replacements for them with no luck. Facebook lurking already informed me a while ago that these things are no longer available. Everything online is super generic ("oh yeah here's some front rotors for an '83, don't mind the 5 studs in the picture"), I'm suspicious as hell of all these rando ebay places claiming that they're actually going to fit the car and that they're of reasonable quality. So I just decided fuck it let's try and get them resurfaced. But first I should get the rotors from red too - that way the brake guys can mix and match a good set for me. The calipers will be good to get a hold of to mix and match as well. So, what better thing to do on a sunday than to wrangle another 40 yo car's dirty supension out? Oh and some more shocks to look at too! I don't really know what I'm doing. Red's rotors at first glance seem thicker but they actually have a good mm or so of bedding and are only thicker on the very edges. The Brakemen will know! I took it to MP Autoparts in Upper Hutt after multiple recommendations. Really good blokes, Gary is really helpful. They too weren't able to find new rotors but were able to salvage a good set from mine. They also offered to do their best to seal the rust for the right price so I took them up on that. One of the rear rotors is not too far from being out of usable meat but I got a good set and that's what matters . Problems are for future Tom! 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomble Posted November 30, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 30, 2022 The front calipers are pretty chill, and I didn't end up spraying too much brake fluid around using the compressed air method to get the pistons out. Okay I did spray too much fluid but I wiped it off the stuff that counts. The pistons cleaned up pretty well with just a paper towel and some elbow grease. There's some rust pitting around the lip but it shouldn't affect its performance (ha look at me talking like I know). The piston walls themselves are scratch- and rust-free. The housings are also in good nick. I'll jump forward slightly to state that the rear's pistons are also good. 4/4! Saves me a few hundy! While I was there I also disassembled red's calipers. In stark contrast, almost everything on these calipers was munted. ---- Anyway. First order of business is to get the caliper bodies sorted while the parts get shipped from Aus and the UK. They had some little unhappy bits here and there so I put them in a safe rust remover overnight - later replaced with a fresh batch of evaporust as I think this one got all used up saving the fuel tank. I took one through the sand blaster. Man fuck that sand blaster. Let's not get into it. It's time to get going. Step 1. Blast the exterior to nice, fresh bare metal, and air blast to get rid of most of the dust. Step 2. Wipe down with grease remover and watch it immediately start flash rusting. Step 3. Brush with metal prep, oh god the rust. Wait 20 minutes for it to work. Step 4. Rinse well under hot tap and airblast + towel dry. WHY IS IT BROWN Step 5. Brush thinly with rust preventative. Not that I had a choice - this stuff is thin. Don't worry btw, this stuff is rated for high temps; the caliper paint actually recommends using it Step 6. Two coats of that It went well enough. I hate flash rust, the rust preventative is OK with being applied to actual full-on rust so I'm not worried now, but it just gets to me. Step 7. Happy with that so let's do the rest Step 8. Sand with 320 grit until no longer shiny Step 9. First thin coat of caliper paint. Also super thin! Step 10. Second "thicker" coat. Not sure how they expect thicker when it runs so readily. Even after the second coat there's grey visible in places - but good enough for a mallowpuff! Anyway the Aus kit arrived - this is for the front calipers! Good timing. I cracked out the pin bolts from their hiding spot - glad I remembered where it was. They're in good condition, some very light surface rust in places so I just wire wheeled back to a shine, the grease should keep them happy. I have four backups from red as well. I got some brake fluid for lubrication but in hind sight I should have just used some super light high temp grease. The fluid collected around the lip of the rubber and affected the paint a little. Nothing noticeable so I just cracked on. The kit comes with some grease but fuck all - fortunately I foresaw this and bought some more ahead of time. All greased to spec. I got no pictures of my wrangling, but I eventually figured out how to properly seat the boots on the pistons while installing them. I needed to reassemble the first one a couple of times to make sure the rubber was in there properly and everything was greasy and good. I also cracked out my new nipples and their new tassles. Et viola! Not sure why I was so intimidated! ... oh ... 19 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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