Am I mad?

Alex(Tenerife)

Alex(Tenerife)

True Classic
So my most recent project is to clean up my wheel bolts.

So a long soak in evaporust, I found some they would deliver here so wanted to give it a try.

Then paint the centre "cups" with enamel paint.

Then a final file, sand and polish on the outer parts.

Effort is quite low, but elapsed time is about 3 days. I am doing 4 bolts at a time so I don't have to take the wheels off.

20240416_180753.jpg


Here you can see the before and after.

Am I mad or should I just have bought some now bolts?
 
Alex(Tenerife) said:
So my most recent project is to clean up my wheel bolts.

So a long soak in evaporust, I found some they would deliver here so wanted to give it a try.

Then paint the centre "cups" with enamel paint.

Then a final file, sand and polish on the outer parts.

Effort is quite low, but elapsed time is about 3 days. I am doing 4 bolts at a time so I don't have to take the wheels off.

View attachment 83734

Here you can see the before and after.

Am I mad or should I just have bought some now bolts?
Click to expand...
No, but it does suggest you are retired... :)
 
No, you are still a long ways away from being mad. Now, a past member who is no longer with us, Mike Mittlestead, now this man was detailed focused. He use to polish the float bowls of the carburetor. He use to tell me about how if you can't be the fastest, you can look the best, and his car was always spotless. Acorn nuts for the strut tops, polished everything he could, the attention to detail was really amazing. One time I went by his place with Mark Scholz and we caught him cleaning his garage. This included a wash down of the garage floor, a scrubbing of it and then squeegee it out to remove all the water.

So take heart, many of us have done this, or much worse. ;)
 
No need for a kit. All you need is a couple of pure nickel plates, vinegar, salt, water and a cheap power source.

www.instructables.com

High Quality (and Safe) Nickel Plating

High Quality (and Safe) Nickel Plating: Just like my popular copper plating instructable, the aim of this is to do high quality, low cost, and safe electroplating. We will also be making our own electrolyte from scratch instead of buying chemicals online. If you've looked at my copper p…
www.instructables.com www.instructables.com

There are many DIY videos on the web.
 
Results are amazing but I wonder if the bare steel will start to rust right away. Not mad at all, typical of the type of nonsense I used to do when I had time on the weekend and no money to spend on my Fiat. I like the fact the wheels themselves are still a bit skuzzy.

I cannot tolerate rusted up wheel bolts/nuts.
 
Thanks, I will let you know if they start to rust again. Obviously early days yet.

The wheels certainly need a clean - a lot of that is dust/sand but probably not all. On some the clear coat has blown. But this is somewhere on the list.

All part of the fun of gradually bringing the car back to how it was when I parked it up 10 years ago, and try to actually get it even better.

As they say over here, poco a poco
 
Alex(Tenerife) said:
Am I mad or should I just have bought some now bolts?
Click to expand...
The ‘mad’ part goes without saying. You do own a highly modified X1/9 and you are polishing steel wheel bolts.

They do look very nice and assuming they don’t suffer too much abuse at your next tire change or corrosion at the hands of on shore salt fog from on shore breezes, they look great.

So, you have demonstrated you are mad and at the same time maintaining the tradition of X owners being a bunch of tight wad bastidges.
 
You do understand the different platings, and what you get?
The classic "triple chrome" plating is layers of copper, nickel, and chromium.
Copper gives a great, smooth bonding base layer.
Nickel makes it the reflective "shiny" that we see.
The chrome is actually a transparent protective layer.
So nickel plating that you can do at home will give the chrome look, without the nasty chemical process for chrome.
Just without layers one and three.
Lido bumpers, anyone?
 
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