Re-Chroming old pitted bits

[Paul In Ireland]

I have a couple of spare parts that came with my ute. There is pitting on the metal and rechroming would bring it back to quite nice. How do you prepare old pitted parts for rechroming? Does the chrome fill in small pits and leave a smooth finish or do you need to sand back and fill the pits with some sort of filler?

I know it won't help me here but what sort of money does it cost for rechroming? Badges, bumpers, handles etc.?

Thanks
Paul

[RET]

I don't know that I'd advocate attempting to prepare stuff for chroming yourself. A plating joint will dip all the parts to remove any chrome or other material on them anyway.

Shop around for a chrome plater with a good reputation. If you can find one that still uses copper in their chroming process even better. It's worth paying a little more to get a quality job done. They'll be able to look at the parts and tell you if they're salvageable and how well they can be repaired if necessary.

In Australia, it's harder to find places that will do the diecast components, obviously you'll need to research that over there. I imagine there must be a bit of diecast on English-made cars of similar vintage, so presumably there's a market for the work.

And in answer to your other question you can pay 3 to 4 thousand (AU$) to get all the chrome on an FE or FC done. You can also pay less, but you get what you pay for...

cheers
RET