Re: [Chrysler300] Pot metal restoration recommendations?

[George McKovich <george@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ray...
I had mine done by Ogden Chrome for $435 and about 6 weeks. Crappy job, many pits still visible and the cup portion golden looking and not covered with chrome. When I talked to the production manager he asked what I thought I should have gotten... When I told him new like or better, he laughed and wouldn't redo them or make a refund. I took them to a new place here in Idaho and now they look quite nice and are fully chromed... Cost $300 and two weeks. AVOID Ogden Chrome at all costs!

George


On Aug 6, 2013, at 12:53 PM, Ray Melton <rfmelton@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello Group -
> 
> In the midst of restoring my late father's 1957 Chrysler 300C convertible, I
> decided that the door handles needed to be refinished - I originally thought
> they looked good enough (visually about 9/10) with only a few tiny pits, but
> soon the rest of the car was looking so good that it began to make the door
> handles look a bit shabby, although nothing broken and only a half-dozen or
> so pin-hole sized pits and zits on each of the pull-up parts of the handle.
> I sent the handles, minus attached linkage (four pieces: the stationary part
> and the moveable handle part) to a place in Fresno that bragged about their
> beautiful work, particularly on restoring pot metal motorcycle parts - their
> website shoed a dozen excellent before/after examples. I said that of
> course I wanted the tiny pits and zits filled, not just sanded away, which
> would have badly degraded the decorative horizontal ridges in the pull-up
> parts of the handles. Two months and $300 later the parts came back with
> deep, shiny chrome over the totally untouched tiny pits and zits, which
> actually highlighted the small defects! When contacted about the
> unacceptable work, the shop manager said, "I think they look pretty good;
> I'd put them on my car", and refused to refund my money! However, he
> offered to re-do them to a better standard if I would pay him $75/hour for
> an indeterminate number of hours to refinish them like should have been done
> in the first place! Needless to say, I don't want to do business again with
> a shop that harbors that attitude!
> 
> Then I looked in Hemming's and selected a place in Pennsylvania with the
> best-looking and best-sounding ad, and a month later received their estimate
> of $1013! That huge number just seemed so far out of line (I was thinking
> more like $500) that I had the handles sent back to me untouched. To their
> credit, they didn't even charge me for the return shipping - clearly a
> stand-up place. 
> 
> So now I am appealing to the collective experience of other Club members for
> recommendations on where to have this work done, hopefully with a short
> anecdote regarding their experience in terms of work quality and cost.
> Also, I would like to know whether the shop uses the three-step
> copper-nickel-chrome process, and whether they use the old-school hexavalent
> chrome (renowned for its deep luster but severely restricted by the EPA) or
> the later trivalent chromium (less onerous EPA regulated, but said by some
> to not quite match up to the deep luster of the hexavalent chrome). While I
> don't consider the hexavalent vs. trivalent issue to be the priority
> consideration, it would be interesting to know what was used on your parts
> pot-metal parts. 
> 
> Any help will be much appreciated!
> 
> Ray Melton
> 
> Las Cruces, NM
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 
> 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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