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73 Javelin brake and suspension project |
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LakesideRamblin
AMC Addicted Joined: Dec/21/2015 Location: So. California Status: Offline Points: 2692 |
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Those sleeves are perty! Never have seen how you or anyone else zinc coat parts. Would you mind showing a picture of that process. Very curious. Thanks.
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LakesideRamblin
69 Rambler 360 73 Javelin 360 "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month." T. Roosevelt |
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pit crew
Supporter of TheAMCForum Joined: Jul/08/2007 Location: delete Status: Offline Points: 5341 |
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73 Hornet - 401EFI - THM400 - Twin Grip 20 |
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billd
Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: Jun/27/2007 Location: Iowa Status: Offline Points: 30894 |
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Well honestly I have come to EXPECT that sort of attention to detail and those fun little things in the stuff you do.
For the plating, you start with lots of cash - Nearly $700 for the plating rectifier or power supply (in my case, a programmable digital power supply) About $1300 for certified 99.99% pure zinc bars which I cut into slabs to fit my anode hangers and will fit into the anode bags. About $25 for anode bags - special filter bags the anodes are placed in before hanging them in the solution - it prevents zinc sludge and crap from getting suspended in the solution and making the plated surfaces rough. Hangers and stands to suspend the parts to be plated from - in the solution. I made my hanger stands and made the hooks and racks using brass and copper which you MUST nickel plate to prevent copper contamination of the plating solution. Some have their racks coated with a special plastic but I did the nickel and then powder coated them to seal the copper and brass away from the plating solution. About $800 worth of chemicals - 200 of that is common ammonium chloride, zinc chloride and potassium chloride I order from various sources and the other is the proprietary chemicals I buy from an international plating chemical supplier. I work with their chemists, etc. when I run into any issues. These can only be shipped via freight and to a business address due to their nature. Then there's a supply of ammonia and HCL to keep the pH of the bath at about 5.3 - add acid if it gets too high, ammonia if it gets too low - doesn't happen often but there's "drag-in" from the pickle bath or metallic and other contamination that can happen. I've had to balance the pH a couple of times in the last two months or so. A supply of disposable rubber gloves, plastic aprons (remember, it's ACID), goggles and such. Tons of water for rinsing between every step - DISTILLED water for many steps. An acid bath for stripping zinc, etc. A special caustic cleaning solution run at about 180 degrees to clean the parts of any grease, oil or other similar substances. A few hundred bucks worth of the various chromate or passivate solutions - yellow passivate, clear/blue, and black are mostly what I use. Each has to have it's own "tub" or container and the yellow I run at about 100 to 120 degrees. Parts must be beyond perfectly clean and pass a water-break test - water must NOT bead up on the cleaned metal surface. It must evenly wet the surface and not bead. So you strip all rust, dirt, whatever and get it so clean you can't see a speck of rust anywhere. You soak it in the cleaning solution, then rinse it, then remove any prior plating using acid, rinse the heck out of it (and I double-check after this, often going back to the caustic hot solution) then sort of depending - a judgement call IMO, a pickle solution consisting of a special mild acid that activates the steel or iron or cast zinc item to accept plating more readily. Then the part gets hung from my hanger on those special hangers and rods and hooks I've made and put into the plating solution/bath. I apply the power to the zinc anode racks and to the part/parts to be plated via their hanger/rack - I have to know the surface area of the part so I calculate that and apply a formula so that I apply roughly 15 to 18 amps per square foot. Now on smaller parts - I do end up using a calculator and often work with power in the tenths of an amp. The two sleeves I ran at 3 amps for 40 minutes (programmed my plating rectifier for that) and the clamps I ran at just a bit under that, but close to 3 amps. I've done small parts at .25 amps and as much as 14 amps. I can go as high as 25 (I think it's 25) with my plater. Once plated, I rinse the part, NEVER TOUCHING IT, run it in the passivate - the sleeves in yellow, the clamps in black - and do a very light rinse then hang them for 24 hours to dry and set. The passivate is very fragile at first and if you touch it or mess with it at all you start over. I haven't calculated my total costs but it's in the thousands. Oh, I nearly forgot - you have to circulate the plating bath and filter it constantly. ANY fine material in the solution can cause roughness. So I have two small filters and three pumps circulating the solutions. Luckily I can use CHEAP stuff there - aquarium pumps work fine if you get enough GPM out of them. I have to keep the plating tank at 80 degrees and aquarium heaters for for that as long as they are glass or some other very neutral material, and I use aquarium heaters. I have to use stainless steel tank heaters for the passivate as it's harder on stuff. |
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billd
Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: Jun/27/2007 Location: Iowa Status: Offline Points: 30894 |
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Heading back out to the shop soon - got the right lower arm mounted and some of the right side parts cleaned and painted yesterday. The upper ball joints should arrive today. The upper arms are a mess - so we'll see............. even my best pair have rust and a few imperfections and have years of dirt, grease, paint - some multiple layers applied by others, and other crud
Can't wait to get even just one side back together! |
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pit crew
Supporter of TheAMCForum Joined: Jul/08/2007 Location: delete Status: Offline Points: 5341 |
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73 Hornet - 401EFI - THM400 - Twin Grip 20 |
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billd
Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: Jun/27/2007 Location: Iowa Status: Offline Points: 30894 |
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Amen - ain't it the truth. I got the strut nuts cleaned up and plated looking not quite like new because of some minor pitting but still really nice. A few more parts cleaned up painted, etc. Here's the control arms from the right side- I had mentioned earlier that the right sway bar link had broken and was hammering on the ends etc. - you can see where it not only broke but the top part constantly hitting on the lower part and the arm wore it in an interesting way. Also a photo of the Kent Moore tool used to remove and replace upper control arm bushings. A press can be used but is rather inconvenient. I used my press on the lower arm bushings and I use this tool for the upper arm bushings........ pit crew this pic is for you |
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pit crew
Supporter of TheAMCForum Joined: Jul/08/2007 Location: delete Status: Offline Points: 5341 |
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Pretty. Not a show car huh? By the way. If the lower control arm is too beat up check part number Edited by pit crew - Mar/12/2018 at 9:13pm |
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73 Hornet - 401EFI - THM400 - Twin Grip 20 |
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billd
Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: Jun/27/2007 Location: Iowa Status: Offline Points: 30894 |
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I think the lowers are ok, but I had saved the original lower arms from my 70 when I rebuilt the suspension on it and put in a pair of NOS arms I got (with riveted in ball joints, etc.)
The car had only 25,000 miles on it when I pulled the arms - they were dirty and needed a lot of cleaning and so on and wouldn't have powder coated as nicely as NOS but I wrapped and saved them. I cleaned them up pretty good (actually most folks will never see the rough spots) and have used those arms for the lowers on this car. Now to worry about the uppers - which are a mess - rusty and dirty. Ha - with those struts you'll not need to worry about bushings ever again. talk about heavy-duty. |
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CamJam
Moderator Group Joined: Jan/04/2014 Location: Arizona Status: Online Points: 6549 |
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Just did this on my '72 Javelin... new coil springs and all. What a difference! The car was scary over 50 mph before... drives like new now. Everything on my front end is new now except the inner tie rods (they seemed ok). The mid-90s Grand Cherokee steering box is something I highly recommend too. And yes, your earlier front-end rebuild thread was a big help to me.
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'73 Javelin 360 (current project)
'72 Baja Bronze Javelin SST '69 Big Bad Orange AMX (2018 Teague Heritage Award) SOLD |
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billd
Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: Jun/27/2007 Location: Iowa Status: Offline Points: 30894 |
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Here are pics of the strut hardware I refinished. The strut bushings I have didn't come with the concave washers so I had to spend a hour cleaning these up well enough to plate them. Can't even remember where I got these bushings but they are new, not in any boxes, but without the large concave washers so had to reuse my rusty, greasy, thick with flaky rust parts. I mean thee rust was so bad I had to dig out big flakes and scrape and blast and finally use a Dremel with grinder tool to clean them up.
Also pics of the right side partially together - but I have a question - I did not take this apart, my neighbor did when I gave him the drum brakes. I did take apart the Concord I was going to use parts from but it was snowy, windy, wet and COLD when I did that OUTSIDE. I'm wondering about the thick flat washers and the split lock washers. There's only 8 of the thick flat washers and maybe that many of the old lock washers. My guess is that the LOCK washers were used with the drum brakes and the FLAT washers used with the disk brakes due to the thin splash shield. The locks make more sense with the drum brake thick backing plate. The thick flat washers make sense with the thin disk brake splash shields. I have the bolts, nuts and washers from two cars but there's not enough lock washers for two cars and not enough flat washers for two cars. So did these with DISK brakes use only the flat washers - and DRUM brake cars use only the LOCK washers under the nuts? And pics of an original DISK brake car to show which was used?? I stuck both on a couple just to keep things in place but I know that it was EITHER/OR and not both lock and flat on all four bolts - for one thing there aren't enough - but the flat washers show ZERO sign of a lock washer ever having been against it - they are too perfect. So I will guess - lock washers used on drum brakes, flat washers used on disk brakes due to the splash shield vs backing plate material and thickness. |
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