I know everyone likes pictures so I thought I would post a side-by-side photo of one of my intake manifolds that I just finished restoring. The one on the right is next in line. The new Jaguar V12 manifold motif still has the clear protective covering so it doesn't look that great in the photo.

For those who are interested, all parts were cleaned in my blast cabinet first then I covered the manifold itself with a satin clear paint. The linkage was plated by me using a Caswell plating kit in my garage. This is the first time using this kit and I am very happy with the way the parts turned out. I had to experiment a little in the beginning, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it. The nice thing about being able to plate your own parts is you can do them at your leisure instead of taking a big pile of parts to a commercial plater and then having to figure out how they all go back together when you get them back.

I have the motor out of my car for a reseal and also to detail everything under the hood. This intake manifold was the first part of this project.

 

youngd,

Looks great, well done! I have the same to do myself on my pre-HE.

A couple of questions, if you don't mind:

- What medium did you use in your cabinet? I'm going to change mine and am interested in what people are using these days.
- Any pics of your plating set in use? I have an old unit that I made many, many years ago using light bulbs and switches to control current flow and a plastic fish tank. I need some motivation to start using it again!

Cheers

Paul

 

Which Caswell kit did you buy? Any tips? I see you used a yellow/gold passivation also. Looks nice!
Jon

 

Hello Paul,
I used #10 Glass beads on everything. It produced a nice smooth finish on the metal parts and cleaned the aluminum manifold very well.

I'm at work right now and don't have any photos of my set-up. I will try and post some either later today or tomorrow.

 

Hello Jon,
I used Caswell's "Copy Cad" 3-gallon kit. I also purchased their Yellow Chromate and Blue Chromate solutions. I haven't used the Blue Chromate yet.
If you are going to consider this there are quite a few YouTube videos online to watch. The instructions that come with the kit are a little intimidating but after watching a few videos I felt more confident with the procedure. The good thing is if you mess up a part you can simply throw it back into the blast cabinet and start over. I did all of the linkage parts in one evening. My first couple of parts came out a little dull and blotchy but by the time I was on my last part I was quite satisfied with the result.

 

Very purr-ty!

 

Here is a photo of my Caswell setup.