Pagoda SL Group
W113 Pagoda SL Group => Body, interior, paint, chrome, and cosmetic items => Topic started by: StevenF on April 22, 2022, 20:46:32
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I had my Bumpers re-chromed back in 2016.
I won't say by which company, but they are one of the company's spoke of on our site
Has anyone hear/seen or experience "peeling" of the chrome?
My car is garaged 365 days year
Will chrome peel due the composition of our bumpers?
Steven
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Steven,
I had all of the chrome re-plated on my car when it was restored 20+ years ago. The bumpers were done by an unnamed plater in Toronto, through a bumper repair facility, long gone, which was in Windsor Ontario. The majority of my trim was done by Graves Plating in Alabama. Some of the other pieces and parts were done locally to me in the Detroit area by places I don’t even remember. All of this plating looks flawless today even 20 years later. It has all seen the same kind of care that your car and plating has.
If your chrome plating is peeling then it was a bad plating job and any indication otherwise is absolutely wrong and an excuse. That being said there are any number of reasons why the plating has failed. The reasons why can stem from improper preparation of the base material, improper copper and/or nickel strikes, improper pH, improper current flow, and any number of other things all of which are the responsibility of the plater to control. It is extremely doubtful that any of this has anything to do with you.
To use a tired old adage, that’s why they are paid the big bucks. It’s their responsibility to prepare the base material, and ensure all other aspects of the plating process are controlled.
So sorry this is happened to you. No matter where you had it done it was not done cheaply for certain and you should have had much better results for a much longer period of time.
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I would take it back to where you had it done in the first place. They should redo it. Chrome is never meant to peal just due to age.
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Original Mercedes chrome triple plated. First in copper, then in nickel and finally in chrome. I heard some less expensive platers just use a double plate process.
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Original Mercedes chrome triple plated. First in copper, then in nickel and finally in chrome. I heard some less expensive platers just use a double plate process.
I have numerous plater’s work on my car. One of them in Michigan used a quad process, with a dull nickel followed by a bright nickel strike between the copper and chrome.
I’ve seen another plater in the UK that uses two copper layers.