Carburetor Plating Cadmium Dichromate

okay today I'm going to do a video on plating a carburetor parts a lot of people are wondering how how it's done how you get the chromate finishes on there so I'll show you my small plating tank setup that I've been running for I don't know ten twelve years and you know basically you can see the the bench I built sketch storage underneath that's my pump to keep moving the fluid around also has a filter on it this is my rectifier I picked this thing up years ago on eBay on the cheap and the tank tank is a I think it's ten eleven gallon tank in here and this is the plating solution so what we'll do is uh I'm going to fire up the pump you can see that the solution starts circulate you can see when you're plating you got to have movement of though of the you know the liquid and keep it circulating and also this particular outfit filters it at the same time so I'm basically to do is we're going to do a Quadrajet body now this body is this is the top it's all been prepped you know first I cleaned it and carburetor cleaner and then I put in my beat blast cabinet which I use a very fine pottery grade glass bead so it it doesn't make it too rough so first thing we're going to do is hook our our hanging devices in this one here is for the anode the anode is the material that's actually going to be plating on to the carburetor and they call the Archer plate non cathode soldiers I'll hang that in the solution this is the anode zinc plating would sink here and I just know got these little bags to keep all the crap from falling into the tank as it uses up this plate hangs on hanging on to here take my negative lead clamping on the cathode which is the top the carburetor positive lead goes on the anode and what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn my rectifier on power this is the output and right now I know it's late on constant-current and just you know this dis amperage and voltage I would consider myself at the bolts I'm looking for the amps and this is a you know fairly large piece so I'm going to crank it up to about three and a half inch to start the plating and you know all this stuff that you know I've been doing this for years and I there's formulas for calculating how many amps you should be running on you know square inches and you know I just I eyeball this stuff I've been doing it so long I know just about where to set it you don't want to plate this stuff too fast otherwise it'll start you know getting pimple bubbles on it and usually you can tell that when you start seeing a lot of bubbles forming on the piece your plate but the piece is already starting to to get some color going on it and what we'll do is we'll leave this plate for a while and the reason that I have to plate the bodies is because we're going to we're going to put a dye chromate conversion coating on here that's where you get the that yellow color iridescent looking color on there people always call this CAD iam but that's not correct the conversion coating is uh is applied on the item after plating and it's just an additional corrosion inhibitor the reason why people used to gave it the name chaddy and plate it is because I'm using zinc to plate this materials and they used to use on all the metal parts and stuff these use caddy and plating which is a another metal and it plates out shiny like zinc or tin and it's a it's actually got a better corrosive property than zinc does they kind of got away from the CAD iam because it's a cyanide based solution and most of it all went to a zinc plating and still using the dichromate conversion coating on there so when people start talking about caddy and plating you know they're thinking of that yellow color or the bluish colors on their it said has nothing to do with the with the caddy emits a it's a conversion that's going to be applied after the item is plated now originally when these bodies were cast they're cast out of something they but I found what they call it as a Mac three zinc formula I guess it's got zinc and a little bit of this and that and they're predominantly zinc and then they dye inject these so they can get that super fine casting without voids when these were were newly cast of the zinc was real shiny and prominent on the outside layer so they would after they made these carburetors and did their machine work and whatever on them then they were just taken immerse them in the dichromate solution and it would take to it but what I found is that these castings have gotten so old something has went on where the zinc isn't present and I can't just directly clean them and dip them in the dichromate and what it doesn't adhere so what I do is I put a coat of zinc I plate over the body material and then it accepts the dichromate which I'll show you how that's done after this place I okay while we're waiting for the carburetor to get done I'll tell you about the sodium dichromate conversion coating chemical basically what it is sodium dichromate is a powder you can buy you can find it on ebay it's really cheap and I've got about I don't know gallon and a half in this bucket I've had this bucket the solution for I don't know six seven years and the only thing I ever do to it when the color is inviting good I add just a little bit feel like a half an ounce of acid sulfuric acid to it and that kind of that's what's kind of making it grab but the formula for this is is use 10 ounces per gallon and read this from my notes of sodium dichromate and that's per gallon and half an ounce of sulfuric acid per gallon sulfuric acid nose battery acid you can buy that in containers from Napa and that's the mixture so if you want to make two gallons you double it and the two gallons is good because for carburetor bodies you know you need a little depth to go in there and uh what I'm going to show you is this is a part that I've previously completed this is the bracket that holds a choke pull off and goes in our fridge to choke now this is was bead blasted and plated it's all ready so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to immerse it in the chemical I just put it in swash it around a little bit you see I pull it out let the stuff drip off I usually got my rinse bucket right next year but I got it on the floor so I'm gonna rinse it this is an effort wrenched that's the color now what I'll do is I'll let this dry and I'll show you a picture of it when it's it's dried off and you start seeing those iridescent colors on there I took this part outside so I hope the colors show up what I'm talking about you can see the hues reddish yellow in there and that's the dichromate conversion coating let's put on there and like I say this code Ian was strictly put on there for an additional corrosion inhibitor give that coating up first and we give up the zinc ore CHAdeMO was below but that's how you get that that part to look like that okay we're checking our tank progress and I'll pull this up a little bit you can start seeing how the the zinc is taken under this usually takes you know I'm gonna probably say you know with the size of my tank and so it's probably about a 15-minute process to get it coated really good and yet them keep moving it around changing positions you know sometimes I put to a nose in one on the backside move this towards the middle and use a jumper wire and you know that makes it a little bit quicker I didn't want to set up the second a no it'll work with one just takes a little longer but I keep moving around because you get reflections off of these different angles and the plating will go like kind of flat so the object is to keep moving it around and and changed with a reflection angle from the current to make sure it all plates good okay as we're sitting there watching the part plate like watching grass grow we just go over a couple things you know to do this plating is it's not a cheap thing to do you know the small setup I have here with you know the chemicals are very expensive tank pumps and all that stuff I probably have close to $1,000 here and like I say I've had this system for many years the solution is original I bought the solution from Caswell plating shipped back probably when they first started and I've never changed the solution all they do is when it starts evaporating I add distilled water to it just to keep the level up and you know these anodes are kind of expensive they go a long way but you have to use you know plating grade a no-reserve through it's the purity if you just take a piece of zinc bar for from you know a bolt or something like that it played plating will be really coarse because there's a lot of impurities in the in the anode so you have to use plating anodes and this zinc solution periodically you have to add this brightener to it so it plates bright otherwise it will plate real flat and that brightener is pretty expensive it's 40 something dollars a quart but it goes a long way I mean you can do a lot of parts with that a lot of carburetors No the the other dichromate color you guys have probably seen you know GM used it sometimes was a it was almost like a bluish color blueish silver now that I used to have that solution mix-up a long time ago I said haven't had a much call for it so I don't even know do it let somebody would want it but that solution makeup is point eight ounces per gallon of sodium dichromate and use nitric acid versus the sulfuric acid and the nitric acid is like three point two ounces per gallon they don't let four to two gallons and because that different acid will give you that bluish color versus the sulfuric acid and those chemicals are the same thing once you mix them up chats well sells a conversion coating on dirt and I tried some of that years ago and it didn't last I mean it was pretty expensive and after I ran it for a week or so it lost its ability to do it and I found this formula an old plating book and mixed it up their way and I've been using it like I say seven years and I've never I've never added no more sodium dichromate powder to it just a little bit of acid here in earth okay what we're going to do is we have the top of the carburetor plated I've got in my rinse bucket down below you got to rinse it really good but that's basically with the zinc waiting on it so we're going to do is on these uh carburetor bodies usually dunk it really quick like that shake it off go to my wrench tank they can see the color on this I want it just a little darker so I go in a second time this is basically the color I'm looking for right here I'll dry this off and leave it harden up and you can see the color on it if you go in like a third time it'll start getting too dark cause it's like she's darken up a little bit as it set sets up okay what I've done is I put the main body of the carburetor in there it is and I've added one more anode it'll-it'll plate faster and it'll get rid of some of the reflections of your plating just from one direction you'll suck it in shadows around parts that are protruding so I add secondhand oh it a little plate quicker and it should give me a more even finish but I'm constantly you know I'll change positions of this you know tighten the wire up I'll add a hook wire and pull it this way or that way you know for the plating just you know so it it all plates evenly I'm taking this piece outside it's drying up pretty good just to show you guys the color of it now you gotta let this stuff pardon up for about a day there's otherwise you start pawing out and you'll start you know robbing it off yes so kind of like adhere to the metal so I usually you know you usually let it sit around about a day before I start assembly news and stuff and this also you know this shininess of it it'll die down it won't take long you know two three weeks and it'll tone down and color okay we have the body plated I've got a quart of zinc plating on it we're going to do the same process as we did the top I'm going to go in once swish it around and go to my wrench tank we go one more time that's basically our color you got to make sure that you do each piece the same amount of time otherwise one's going to be darker than the other and you can also if you buy like bolts from Ace or wherever and you wanted to dichromate them because they're all st. plated this is a bolt from hardware store the other thing I do with these is I take a piece of scotch brite and I go over it all and scuff it because the zinc plating they put on here you know these things have been sitting around for who knows how long they form a little oxide on them so when you scuff it you knock that oxide off so that the dichromate will bite into the zinc that's really all I got doing kind of nuts and bolts and washers and stuff you buy from like the hardware store okay this is uh pretty much the carburetor body finished you see the color on the top and bottom or good these are all the parts linkages and stuff that have been plated and chrome ated you know the springs are just zinc plated and stuff but it came from the factory but this is how you get the color in the bodies and the all the other metal parts like I say this is not a you know something you can brew up from under your sink chemical wise and start doing but just for people's knowledge this is how it can be done

Channel: Back 9

Views: 595,568

Keywords: Cadmium (Chemical Element), Carburetor, Dichromate, Plating, electroplating, 454 LS5 LS6, L88, 427, LT1, 350, Engine, Rochester

Id: Nmn94B5UUuU

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2015