$1K 68 Sportomatic

[Carl S.]

Gotcha! The tach is already out- will try reaching trough. Thanks!

[Carl S.]

It has bee a while since I had an update. I had this idea that there was a opening in the Porsche marketplace.

Seems that it is hard to find a good restored door striker and hood latch.

I decided to take this on myself. Not a easy task. It has been a month now. Dang!!!.
I had some problems with my chemicals. After a few weeks of testing I figured it out.
Needed to add an extra distilled water bath to eliminate the trace transfer of muriatic acid to the plating solution. Thus lowering the PH and stopping the plating process. Yes, this is is the short answer to my issue.
Now to the plating. I tried 20 minutes with a turn in the middle. looked good. Then I left one in for 30 min. Looked even better. DANG!!! Now I don't like the others.
So, I have gotten the striker plating down.

I am pleased that I can now offer a plating service that is spot on and can be proud of.

Need Small batches plated? I'm your guy.

I have been collecting parts to swap the Sporto to Manual. I will be posting them soon.

[Carl S.]

This was a heck of a time getting these to work out.

First, I could not get them to plate. Not at all, they were grey and rough. After many days of trial and error it turns out that my PH was low. So the solution was to add ammonia to bring it back up. That worked and my PH was now at 5.85 which is perfect.
NOPE, still not working..... DANG

Long story short, once the PH in the solution dropped below 4 the starter chemical stops working and will not start back up.

New chemicals and a fresh restart and now good to go.

I added an extra water bath and changed my order of plating and all is good now.

Here are a few pictures of my newly plated and restored strikers. These are bright zinc, I will have some yellow and blue chromate ones as well.

Hopefully, now I can get back to the 911.

[frederik]

That looks great, but I'm anxious to see how you're going to weld that body shell back to life!

[Carl S.]

I hear ya,
I am trying to get $2500 to have the shell dipped once it is stripped. I finally will have a little time to start removing parts in a few days.

I think it is worth the $$ to have a clean rust free slate to work with. Yes, no rust, just a lot of holes. Will save me a ton of hours of grinding and stripping.

[911TES]

Hi Carl.
Great continued work! I've read through your plating posts a few times. I'm interested in zinc plating at home. Mostly clear zinc to start (sometimes called blue zinc) - same finish as basic hardware nuts and bolts. There's a plating business not too for from me in Oregon, but I have the "small batch" problem - even single pieces. As an example, I want to zinc plate the following piece. - the unplated one - to achieve the result of the plated one. The bracket is 9 inches long.

Could you write a brief summary giving me some direction on what to buy and basic do's and don'ts?

Thanks so much.

Regards,
Bill

[Carl S.]

Hello, it's been3 weeks now working on getting the plating correct. I pretty much nailed the zinc and it looks great. Now plating for 45 minutes and rotating about every 10 minutes or so. Turns out the was the easy part. I tried to make some yellow zinc strikers and ran into a major problem. The yellow Chromate was not sticking to all of the strikers. It took a bit to realize that it is great on #2 and #3 strikers. BUT, does not adhere to the #4 strikers. The #4 strikers is a thicker plate due to safety. Talking to 911TES today, It cam up that it might be made from an alloy of some kind and thus reacting with the chromate. DANG!!! I went and checked the other and they are just fine. ONLY the #4 are having the issue.

How did I not notice this earlier. So, did some more research and discovered that Nitric Acid is also used as s etching bath. Orders some from Texas and will give it a go.

Three weeks on this and this is the issue. Good thing I have been doing other house projects as well.

I am making an entrance to some lawn steps I built last year.

Check the plating...
Dig up some dirt...
Check the plating...
Dig up some dirt...
Check the plating..
Cut some pavers
ETC...

You can see where it was scratched. I did that with my thumbnail. The other striker is just fine. Weird!!!

[Bullethead]

I am making an entrance to some lawn steps I built last year.

Now, you must bring us shrubbery! A path! A path!

Nee!!!

[Carl S.]

I contacted Roger the Srubberer and he recommended these. WE may now pass.