1972 FLH plating / paint

[jmorgan]

Restoring1972 Harley FLH......and curious if anyone knows if the plating on the steel parts is zinc or cadmium.....and if anyone has found a spray paint that matches closely to the correct color and sheen?? I am NOT getting the parts plated. The Eastwood Detail Gray is too dark.....and I have not tired their silver cad yet....but would be my next step. I see that Rustoleum and others have a Cold Galvaning ZINC coating......but not sure if that is a good option...does it stick, does it look correct???

[Saddletramp]

jmorgan,
I purchased some of the Eastwood Silver Cad but haven't tried it yet. I'm interested to know how it turns out.
I painted a couple of small hardware parts with Rustoleum "Peppercorn" gray which very closely matches some of my factory parkerized parts. But now I set myself up to do my own parkerizing.
I will mostly be doing Magnesium Phosphate parkerizing. Though I may do a couple of parts with Zinc Phosphate solution which gives a lighter gray, though still not as bright as Zinc coating or plating.
This is probably not helpful but let us know how the Silver Cad works. I won't get to spray mine for a month or so.
James

[otis71]

The parts would be cad in 72. I wasn’t happy with Eastwood spray cad. Looks too shiny in my opinion. Harley Davidson hi temp silver looks better to but still not like real cad. Real cad is fairly inexpensive but I’ve been having trouble in recent years with more than one vendor with it prematurely turning black.

[jmorgan]

As I said,....its not worth it for my intended use of this FLH, which is to ride it alot, to worry about attaining an accurate reproduction of some cad plating....and as others have reported,...there are many versions of cad, so unless you find the original and accurate version, everything is a fake. I am okay with fake. I want it close, and that is good enough. Eastwood Silver Cad paint is on order and will do....whatever it turns out to look like. Most of the parts are barely visible on the bike, hidden behind parts, behine covers, etc. Thanks for the input and sorry to the purists.