You’re in the final stages of assembling your newly built street machine when you realize the old yellow zinc-cadmium coated bracket that seemed okay before now shows its age in your newly refinished engine bay.

Don’t fear! The folks at Caswell, Inc. have you covered with complete lines of at-home electroplating solutions.

We’ll admit that we were anxious to try out some of the complete plating kits offered by Caswell, and one glance at their website had us dreaming of all the possibilities. Their list of plating kits included just about anything you could imagine. Tin, black oxide, nickel, copper, brass, chrome, and even gold were on the list. We had a brief discussion with Lance Caswell, during which he encouraged us to get our feet wet first before diving into the deep end. After giving the idea some more thought, we finally decided to focus our efforts first on their Copy Cad & zinc plating system and later their nickel plating system once we felt more adventurous.

Yellow cadmium plating (or yellow cad) is common on many production automobiles. Yellow cad is in a class of metal coatings known as “sacrificial coatings.” When exposed to the elements, these coatings are designed to sacrifice themselves in order to protect the underlying base metal. The bright yellow cad fades to silver then to a chalky white coating.

Yellow cad plating on parts like power brake boosters often fades away, leaving restorers to figure out their own method of duplicating the finish. Most plating shops tend to shy away from yellow cad, as the materials used to produce this coating can be highly poisonous and strict regulations are in place for those who work with it. Other solutions include spray paints designed to emulate the look of yellow cad, but the outcome rarely looks correct and the paints fail to duplicate the iridescent quality of true yellow cad plating with its subtle shades of yellow, green, and orange.

Follow along as we explore zinc electroplating and cad like coatings with the step by step process to the right.