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Plating, painting and polishing,

2/14/2016

1 Comment

 
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Had a great Saturday day off spent puttering away on various parts for the B. Among other things, I cleaned and polished the intake manifold and the breather assembly. There seems to be some debate as to how the intake manifold was originally finished, some say they were just left bare aluminum, others say they were painted engine colour. My car showed clear evidence of engine colour being sprayed onto most of the other engine components: the starter, generator, some over spray onto the gearbox bell housing, even the distributor body! However I wasn't able to find even a spec trace on my manifold, so I decided just to polish it. If I am proven wrong I can always paint it later.
I did repaint the top plate of the breather in grey hammertone as was on there originally, and zinc plated the wire hose clamps and the breather support bracket.

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I also spent some hours cleaning up hardware on the wire wheel and zinc plating them with my new electroplating system. Here you can see some freshly zinc plated parts like the fuel filler neck, the wire hose clamps, and the hardware for the gas tank and fuel pump. These items can be polished to a shine or left dull depending on preference. I've left these pieces dull in this case. 
I also cleaned the fuel pump, repainted its bracket and cleaned all the rubber components in warm soapy water.
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Here's the brake light switch polished, and it's hardware replated in zinc...
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The Radiator and its support bracket, all cleaned to bare metal and repainted in gloss black. The rad I cleaned and by hand with a wire wheel on a drill to clean the tank and sides and a brass wire brush to clean the fins. The bracket I stripped in a glass bead blast cabinet.
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A few more odds and ends, cleaned and painted as original...
I had to find these original horns on e-bay, mine had been replaced with some aftermarket plastic ones. I found this working pair with a date stamp of '64 so they're just right.
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1 Comment
Andy Wright
2/15/2016 08:30:02 am

Hi Geoff,
For what its worth, I have never seen an original intake manifold painted engine colour. All the ones I have seen were just aluminum finish. I hope you cleaned or changed the points and diaphram on that shiny black fuel pump before you painted it! You just know it is the #1 weak point of all 50's thru 70's British Sports cars.
Cheers
Andy

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