By now I needed a break from all of the hammer/slapper/dolly rust hole filling type of work. So during one of our trips down to the hot country, we hauled all of the large exterior chrome pieces down to Tucson to be plated at Royal Plating. On the way back home we stopped at KC Auto Paint in Phoenix to look at paint colors.

1st Batch of Parts for Plating

I had decided on using Royal because the have been in business for over 30 yrs and have an excellent reputation all over the state. In particular they do an excellent job with restoring die cast parts. Considering the amount of repair work and plating that had to be done RJ was very reasonable with what he charged me. The other nice thing was the quality was excellent and the work got done in a reasonable period of time. When we went down to pick up the plating, the young man that did a lot of the die cast parts was dying to know what the chrome fins were and where they went on the car, he had never seen anything like that before! 🙂

Paint Color Samples

KC is a PPG dealer, I had planned upon using Matrix, but the store up here in Show Low went out of business so I decided to go with PPG. More expensive but with well known quality. To save a bit of money, I decided that since I was working with solid colors, I would go with single stage Concept rather than BC/CC.
Michelle picked out a 1968 Ford Mustang Madagcar Orange for the darker of the tutone colors and 1954 Cadillac Driftwood Beige for the lighter color. Barry at KC mixed up a couple of 1/2 pint samples for me to shoot out on one of the 1982 Olds front fenders that I had kept for the purpose. The Concept sprayed and flowed very nicely and the colors look great!

2nd Batch of Parts for Plating

I had not intended on getting any of the interior chrome pieces plated, but after all the hours and hours of work I have in getting the body repaired and straight and how good all of the outside chrome looked I had to have the stuff that I look at all the time plated as well. Since the 1st batch of plating came in well under what I had budgeted I asked RJ for a quote on these pieces as well. What he quoted me still brought the plating in under what I had budgeted so we went ahead with it. Actually, we didnt have to go to Tucson. RJ was going to be in Scottsdale when we were down for the Goodguys car show so he agreed to meet us at Paul & Judy’s house to pick up the parts. When they were done, he UPS them back up to Show Low. Nice!