How to Have Your Car Chromed and Plated

People who own show cars or who wish to keep their own car "factory original" often get parts chromed and plated.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Car Parts

Giving Up Parts to a Shop

1. Take photographs and keep an inventory of the parts you give up to a plating shop. A good shop will also take photos of parts as they come in.

2. Send the smaller parts via UPS. However, if you have larger pieces you want chromed and plated, it's more cost effective to send the pieces via a truck line.

Finding a Shop

3. Check the Yellow Pages under "Plating" or "Metal Plating."

4. Look in car specialty magazines.

5. Ask car dealers to recommend shops. Car dealers often send out small items - such as emblems - for gold plating, so they might know some shops that can handle at least the small jobs.

6. Go to car shows. Ask the owners of show cars to recommend platers. Check out the work on their cars.

7. Choose two to four shops you can investigate further.

Contacting a Shop

8. Ask if the shop does plating work for manufacturers.

9. Ask about the process. Usually when the part comes into a shop, the plater first removes the dings. This can be done at the plating shop or the shop may farm it out. Next, the piece is polished on machines with big pads to smooth out the surface of the metal. If the part has a lot of pits, the shop may have to do an acid copper-plating process to fill them in. Then the piece is nickel-plated, and then chrome- or gold-plated.

10. Tour the shop if possible. Look at samples of their work.

11. Ask for references. Look for magazine articles that mention the shop.

12. Ask how the shop keeps track of pieces it gets in. The shop needs to be efficient to handle all the pieces they get in from around the country. Remember, small parts are easy to lose. In fact, some shops are reluctant to take in small parts for just this reason.

13. Ask about the quality of the work. What kind of gold or nickel does the shop use? For example, some shops use cyanide gold because it is easy to work with and thus keeps the cost of the work relatively cheap.

14. Choose the shop where you are most comfortable.

Tips & Warnings

• Usually a plating shop will not give you an estimate until they see the piece or pieces you want plated. The shop wants the opportunity to see the condition of the part.
• If you have a piece gold-plated, remember that gold can chip off.
• Don't take your car to a regular car wash - the brushes can buff off the gold.

on 11/22/2005 When having small bolts plated - perhaps the ones for valve covers etc., be sure to tape the threads of the bolts up so that they aren't plated as well.