I decided to refurbish my brake calipers myself, including the zinc plating and I am very happy with the results. A very simple and cheap setup but seems to do the job well enough. I also plan to re-plate all other items in the rebuild of my 1989 XJR-s. No chance of anything going missing if I keep it all in house.

 

Impressive results.

Please post some details on the preparation and the plating process you used.

Graham

 

Preparation is the key I think. I bead blasted prior to the chemical cleaning and acid treatment and then into a basic acid zinc solution followed by yellow chromate passivate.
Took a little experimenting with current density and number of anodes etc. but it seems to be sorted now.

 

getting the plating original is pretty cool, and realistically if you are rebuilding the calipers you won't do it again for another 20 years, so there is no point in being lazy.

I was just getting out of high school when I rebuilt mine, so I just lightly honed the bores, wire wheels everything until it was clean and then primed and painted with caliper paint.

I've painted another set of calipers before after using a wheel without primer and it all flaked off because the finish is too fine.

Definitely give a bit more detail so others can try this too! Caliper rebuilds for new owners are a common issue