• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Plating ?

schimmelaw said:
Dartyppyt - Go nickle on everything you can bead blast (axles, swingarm bolt, shock mounting hardware, brake component hardware, clutch arm, drain plug, special bolt/nuts, yada, yada and yada). Killer finish. Just tap frame post paint/powder. When you get them back from plating, they are good to go.
Jimspac - thanks for the comps. Still piddling w/ it.
Gord - Now that is some very very cool results for a home grown plating method I'm impressed. It would scare the he** out of me to try it but im thrilled to know its doable. (Me, electricity and chemicals sounds like an accident waiting to happen. "....uhhhh Beth, can you take me to the hospital.... I had an accident and can't see......I think I burnt my hands but I can't see....oh! and I smell smoke.....is the shop on fire.....?")
Click to expand...

I am with Schimmelaw, nickel is it! cause we like shiney.
 
Here are couple more pointers plating. On larger parts, make sure your hanger is centered on the part, instead of the end. Also, rotate part 180 degrees for even coating, bout at halfway time.

I will be sending out some larger parts for nickel plating. Just for kicks, I did a rear brake lever and it looks good but I think those should be nickel plated.

Also, if your nylon, blue loc nuts are in good shape and not rounded over. They turn out great, along with bolts and socket heads. For socket heads, I use a piece of steel wool to shine up the recessed allen wrench area.
 
Sh*t...I spent like $30 bucks and put all my nuts bolts axles fittings brackets ...everything... in a tub and got it back all plated... missed hours of fun by the look of it!!
 
suprize said:
Sh*t...I spent like $30 bucks and put all my nuts bolts axles fittings brackets ...everything... in a tub and got it back all plated... missed hours of fun by the look of it!!
Click to expand...

That's pretty darn reasonable. I should do the same. Maybe its my age or passion to restore bikes, etc.... but I do enjoy tinkering and doing it.

What I don't have the patience for anymore, is doing a full resto on another muscle car. Now that takes forever.
 
I like the simplicity of this home made system and I would be keen to have a crack if I do another bike.....
 
thanks darty i have already got mine set up following your design and plated a few parts , its good to know I can always give my parts a new lease of life when the grime and cleaners have taken their toll.
 
Here are some installed parts that i have been plating and polishing, via home done process.

5001_zps918e7e81.jpg
 
I will be trying it soon. I have to get my truck drivable first. I have been soaking rusted fasteners in Evapo Rust because it is less invasive to the metal compared to bead blasting or wire brushing. It only attacks the rust and does not erode the metal. I even use it to remove the rust on cranks as well. Does not harm bearings or rubber
 
Evapo-Rust works great, but the surface is the same as it was before, except now the rust is gone. The bead-blasting levels out the layers of decay, so the plating is flat and even.
 
That is why it is better for derusting anything with a running journal like the crank stub ends, transmission shafts, etc.. I works well on electrical windings that were submerged. Like the 3/4 hp Dayton motor that was near the basement floor when the basement flooded to a depth of 8" plus. I did not catch it for awhile so I was able to save the rusted shaft bearings and it will go back together when time avails
 
Has anyone figured out what to use as a "brightener" for an after plating dip? Caswell sells a brightener to dip in after plating to add a brighter "almost blueish" more chrome-like hue. They also sell an olive green, yellow, & black post plate dips. I need to know what to used for the yellow (spoke nipples) & the brightener would be nice as well.
 
oldbikedude said:
Has anyone figured out what to use as a "brightener" for an after plating dip? Caswell sells a brightener to dip in after plating to add a brighter "almost blueish" more chrome-like hue. They also sell an olive green, yellow, & black post plate dips. I need to know what to used for the yellow (spoke nipples) & the brightener would be nice as well.
Click to expand...

Would be good to know.
 
Yeah, I really don't like paying 4 or 5 times the worth of something just because it was packaged as something more "special" than it is. I'm hopefull some readily available chemicals can do the same thing as the expensive caswell stuff. Someone has to know the answer to these questions through experiance.
 
Cool thread. I just received my plating kit in the mail today. This should be fun or a real disaster. Hoping for fun actually.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top