Concours questions?

Just my 2 cents. I generally say "clear cad or silver cad" so there is no confusion as to the color. Also be aware that cadmium plating on some cast parts like suspension arms, eventually gets absorbed into the metal.
I'm only now learning that Cad plating is now expensive and getting harder to find. It wasn't back when I did my E-Type restoration.

Don't ever, ever, ever store your car in a garage, bonnet down, car cover on the car....with the battery still in the engine compartment!! The acidic gas venting from your lead-acid battery can do quite a lot of damage to your brightwork. You would be well advised to install a gel-type battery that does not vent gas.

Good Luck!
www.mcload.com

Curtis:

There are many types of cadmium plating (it is spelt cadmium). The "clear" cadmium, which is a plating of the elemental cadmium to a thickness of about 5/10000 max., is then coated with a clear chromate coating and seal which looks dull grey/silver to almost shiny grey-blue silver. The "yellow" cadmium, which is also an elemental cadmium plating, is then sealed with a yellow chromate conversion coating and seal, which gives it that yellowy-greeny look. Other colours possible are blue, green, red and black.

Generally, nuts and bolts were zinc plated, most everything else, such as suspension parts, brackets, etc. that were plated, were all cadmium plated. One exception to this is that the carburetter linkage parts were all nickle plated.

Cheers, Mark Roberts
Ottawa Jaguar Club

Mark,

Thank you very much. I was talking about the balance links with springs but may have misidentified the worn plating. "cadnium" to me would have been the rich gold/yellow color. If I don't know what "clear cadnium" is may be that I have misidentified the dull grey residual coating as worn zinc on a few other parts as well.

Curtis:

For a 3.8l E-type, it is correct to have the subframe mounting bolts blackened rather than zinc plated. It was the (later) Series 1 4.2l E-types that had zinc plated bolts.

The nuts should be zinc plated for both cases. Take note, the nuts are a bit longer than any nyloc nuts that you can get these days, unless someone has found a supplier for the correct length nuts. I've re-plated mine.

I am suprised that you said the bonnet pivots were plated, if you are talkig about the pivot points at the lower part of the front subframe that mounts with the lower part of the bonnet, also known as the hinges. These hinges are aluminum, and the front subframe is painted body colour. The pivot bolt should be natural blackened along with it's thick washer.

If you are talking about the balance links with the two springs per side, then this should be cadmium plated, clear cadmium, not the yellow cad that you see on North American car brake boosters. The clear cadmium plating looks very much like zinc plating, and since cadmium plating is hard to find these days, most people just re-plate in zinc anyway. The springs are black, the special stepped mounting bolts are zinc plated, and the washers/spacers are native brass.

If your car is truely a 9800 mile original car, please take lots of pictures of it as you take it apart. Low milage original cars are getting harder to find, and someone may want to look at those pictures for reference in the future.

Cheers, Mark Roberts
Ottawa Jaguar Club
December 1963 E-type, 889652