I......... eerrrr........... borrowed this from another forum, but it's good useful info.

Metal plating is something of use to 4X4 owners and now it has come within the reach of home platers due to plating kits coming down in price where you can start up from under £100 for a full kit, and due to technological advances it isn't full of toxic chemicals and fumes as it once was.

Metal plating takes many forms and the most obvious is galvanising but many other forms of plating such as yellow passivate, zinc, cadmium zinc, and even coloured anodizing are possible at home and you are only limited by the size of your plating tank as you need to immerse components to fully plate them.

In addition to this you can replicate industrial finishes such as chrome plating, blacking, and even plate with precious metals ranging from copper through to precious metals such as silver or gold; or if you prefer to anodise you can get a variety of stock dyes for standard colours, or mix dyes for a unique or bespoke colour. If you don't want to bother with a tank to submerge your components in you can even get brush on plating kits so you don't need to bother buying a tank.

Metal plating is a simple process where you clean a component and this is done in various ways and is generally called stripping and pickling as you can strip existing finishes off, clean and degrease components, and de-rust them and etch them ready for plating and this is done in a variety of ways depending on the material being stripped and the finish to be applied. In most cases it is similar to the metal plating process but utilises different chemicals and involves passing a low voltage and current through the component while it is immersed in the plating tank in its stripping chemicals, most stripping process require nothing more than goggles, gloves, and a well ventilated area and the chemicals come as an inert powder you dissolve in water.

Once stripped and pickled most components are etched by the stripping process and while some may require neutralising this is done by running under clean water, or immersion in clean water.

Plating requires a component to be immersed in a tank with a conductive fluid, usually this is a mild acid in which you immerse your chosen form of plate which comes as either a powder form or a solid rod, you can dilute this to any concentration as a high concentration requires a shorter plating time, or a weaker dilution requires a longer plating time and to apply your voltage and current you use a mains transformer to reduce your voltage down to a safe voltage; and better transformers have voltage control, current control, or both so you can increase your plating time using a weak solution, or decrease your plating time by using a stronger solution.

Once you have a basic plating kit you simply choose what type of plating you require, obviously you want to pickle and etch everything to remove corrosion and etch it prior to plating; then you require a kit for the specific type of plating you want to do, a yellow passivation kit differs from a cadmium nickel kit so you select the kit/kits for your specific plating type.

So what benefit are they to a 4X4 owner? a good question, but from my experience the pickling kit is worth it alone if you work on several vehicles regularly as this strips everything clean, and cleans inside hidden or awkward cavities you cannot normally get inside with cleaning materials, and most 4X4's have many vulnerable components which rust and most can be metal plated in some way to improve rust resistance, particularly if covered over with traditional rust prevention materials such as paint or underseals, and coated with Waxoyls or Dinitrol.

Aesthetics are another bonus if you are the sort of person who likes their vehicle to look nice, if you like chrome plating then you can coat non metals such as plastics by simply spraying on a conductive primer prior to plating and plate in the normal way. Recently we have had the front and rear suspension off an early 3.2 and it was totally anodised, even down to the drive shafts and diffs, everything was a different colour for identification, it looks a million dollars as even the bolts and nuts were colour coded and more people look underneath the vehicle than they do at the top.

You may just want to buy cheap unplated bolts and zinc plate them, or anodise them, or just heavy galvanise them for rust protection.


Plating kits, zinc plating, replica chrome plating, nickel plating, bright nickel plating, copper plating and brass plating.

I know they also sell these electroplating kits stateside as well.

Hope it's of use to some.