Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Brakes rebuilt , and fitted for a dummy strut build

Beautiful! What colour is that on the calipers? Who makes it?

The calipers are zinc pasivated

Nice work!

Did you do that yourself?

Yellow zinc in just another option, like clear. There are kits that are available for the do it yourself person. I have used yellow on a bunch of items, like suspension components. Does not hide problems like paint or powder coating. It could be the plater I used, but I have some problems with the yellow turning dark and dull. It does not stand up to time as well as cad plating. The largest piece I ever had done was a live axle rear end housing. The nice thing is, it is easy to keep clean.

Shaun,

Who did the plating, and where are you?

I am also working on rear brake calipers at the moment, and am encountering so many problems and poor quality that I could cry. I have just noticed that the hand brake pads do not touch the discs uniformly and have traced this problem to the swinging levers (if that is the correct term) that are so poorly made that they do not touch the back of the handbrake pads evenly. I could file these levers to get even contact, but would then need to have them re-plated. Is this what you have done?

Richard Hawkins

These yellow tinged coatings are usually a Di-Chromate Zinc conversion coating, which is a microscopically thin rust preventative layer deposited in a room temperature chemical bath. "Clear" (light gray) chromate zinc conversion coatings are also available, and you often see these on brake disks. Conversion coatings have a very limited life, and in weather or salt environments they quickly corrode away. Zinc electroplating or hot dip Zinc galvanizing each provide much more protection. Sometimes the surface of a Zinc Plating layer is converted with Chromate or Di-chromate to increase corrosion resistance, and increase the time before the zinc layer becomes powdery. Now days some restoration shops use a paint layer that is roughly the same colour as di-chromate to simulate the look and increase the longevity of the surface. You see this under the hood of many restored 1960's Mercedes now days, but to my eye it looks very odd.

Hi Shaun

Everything's looking good a part from the bolts. No offence but you can not use high tensile bolts that have been zinc passivated they suffer from hydrogen embrittlement - its a serious problem if stressed your caliper it could just fall in two.
That goes for any other passivated high tensile bolts you may have used on the suspension etc

Change the caliper bolts for 12.9 cap heads with the correct shank length.

Regards
Steve

I don't see any retaining wire thru the bolts

All bolts are only nipped up , fully tightened when assembled on chassis . Thanks for the info on the zinc plated bolts