Well, I zinc plated and yellow chromate coated my air horn (it tickled a little) and my main body. They didn't come out perfect, but I'm happy with the end result.
Here were my mistakes on the first attempts before soda blasting them again and starting over.
Mistake 1: I reversed the polarity on the part (cathode) and my zinc plates (anodes_)! Positive goes on the ZINC! Negative goes on the PART! Not sure how I managed that one. When I THOUGHT I had a zinc coating on the parts and dipped it into the Yellow Chromate, none of the yellow chromate stuck. Back to the drawing board.... I used two zinc plates for anodes on either side of a 5-gallon bucket, with 3 gallons of water, 2 "1.5 gallon" bags and cans of part "A" and part "B" from Caswell and one teaspoon of "brightener" from Caswell.
Mistake 2: I didn't leave the parts in the plating electrolyte long enough. I got patchy coverage and very little to no coverage in the nooks and crannies the first pass. I watched a few youtube videos and it seems like the guys on youtube were getting much better results in half the time.
I plated the air horn at about 3.5 amps for 20 minutes. It wasn't nearly enough time. I soda blasted it again and left it in there for a good half-hour to 40 minutes with pretty good results.
I plated the main body at about 5-6 amps for a good 40 minutes to an hour with acceptable results (for me).
Color: I used 4 ounces of Yellow Chromate solution from Caswell in 3 gallons of distilled water. I got the final color with a 20 ounces of muriatic acid in a 3 gallons of distilled water bath following the plating, then a rinse in water then a dip in the Chromate solution with 6-10 seconds of swishing and a rinse in distilled water. Then ANOTHER 6-10 seconds and another rinse.
After drip-drying for half an hour or so, I used a heat gun on low to dry. The iridescence came out nicely after drying with the heat gun. Not sure if the attached low res pick with do it justice.
The manual says .07 amps per square inch of surface area. If you google "how much surface area on a Quadrajet air horn", you're going to find people telling you to use algebra to calculate surface area, cones, cylinders, flat areas, parallelograms, parabolas..... They must be messing with us. I Just experimented and used Harold Demes' video to come up with 3.5 amps for the air horn.
Maybe since Cliff isn't restoring many carbs anymore, he'll tell us the secret! How many amps should we start out with on the air horn and how many amps for the body as a starting point!
Thank you, Sensei.
