Quote:
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Originally Posted by diqmayer
Strife,
Hold on, hold on. I took my 1 dull bowl this morning to Standard Plating in Cleveland, Ohio where Jim told me the following:
1. It is not chrome plated. It is actually either paint or powder coated.
2. He could remove the existing coating and chrome-plate the bare metal.
3. It would cost $30 and be ready in 1-2 days.
Granted, this is only 1 of the 2 bowls and I did all the removing and disassembling, but this is a hell of a lot cheaper than what you are talking about. Am I missing something here or are you getting shafted?
Rich Mayer
82 500 SL
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Before reading the bottom response, a question to all readers who have Euro headlights in very good, unrestored, unmolested condition - are the reflectors shiny like a mirror, or dull like silver paint? Maybe they AREN'T supposed to be mirror shiny!
1. Mine are probably in MUCH worse shape than yours.
Because the seals were shot when I bought them, the
bottoms are fairly seriously rusted, to the point
where large flakes and chunks are coming off of the
steel. If there was any other way I could obtain these
in the US, I would definitely toss these and not
pursue the repair of them.
2. Some previous owner (i.e., clown) actually painted
them with aluminum paint, which might actually have
worked for some time, except that they didn't bother
removing the rust, and they used a brush(!). This is
now also popping off from the rust. I'ts possible that
the previous owner of your car painted them and did a
much better job!
3. The process for these as described to me is:
cleaning (paint removal), rust removal, several
platings of copper and nickel inbetween buffings to
get past the missing steel, and then a final plating
of silver, buffing, and then an antioxidizing finish
(which I'm guessing is similar to telescope mirror
making - basically, silicon oxide-quartz-flash
vaporized in a vacuum and deposited on the silver).
Given these facts, and also that I have heard that
"normal" chrome plating peels of on reflector bowls
after a few years probably because of the extreme
temperature shocks involved, I'm probably going to
stick with this. Steve's told me that they have never
had one of these come back. And I don't want to EVER
do this again!! This is why I'm buying new glass
seals, etc.
I've also read that these can be done with "flash
metallizing", which is sort of what I described above
for the silicon overcoat, except with fairly large
amounts of shiny metal (chrome, etc) instead of
quartz. The infamous "chrome" seat mechanism covers on
the 107 SL are done this way. With a reflector in
perfect shape this might work, but mine are not good.