Yellow passivated bolts

[Mr_B]

BMW use these it just about every application on its cars. Doing a bare shell restoration job on a rusty old BMW means I need rather a lot of them and don't want bright zinc plated bolts off eBay and the like.
Now you can order every nut and bolt direct from BMW via the internet and have it delivered to your home, which would be nice but they can take the mickey charging a lot of money on single small things, so I assumed buying packs bolts would be easy and much cheaper, the only problem being no one seems to sell a selection of yellow passivated bolts. BZP is a one shop deal for everything. Anyone know of a place or know why it' seemingly only BMW using them ?

Edited by Mr_B on Thursday 1st October 00:22

[TooMany2cvs]

They're widely used, and not hard to get.

Just one supplier :
http://www.metals4u.co.uk/search/search-results.as...

[battered]

Frost (and others) will sell you a spraycan of lacquer to make BZP bolt heads look like whatever the yellow plating is. They do cadmium colour lacquer kits too, since Cd coaying is now illegal AFAIK.

[InitialDave]

You could have someone do the yellow passivation for you, or use the lookalike paint/spray, but I seem to remember you can buy small home kits to do it yourself. That may be the best option.

Example: http://www.classic-plating.co.uk/index_files/zinck...

[sim16v]

As said, you can get the originals re done.

Where abouts are you based?

A friend has just had a big bag of 1950's nuts and bolts done and it cost less than £50

[OldGermanHeaps]

You can buy a passivating kit off ebay, time consuming but works a treat.

[Mr_B]

TooMany2cvs said:

They're widely used, and not hard to get.

Just one supplier :
http://www.metals4u.co.uk/search/search-results.as...

Promising. Thanks. Not sure why they didn't come up in a Google search before.

I have looked at a passivating kit for various small brackets and the like, but didn't want to reuse bolts and spend a lot of time on items like bolts which I thought would be easily replaceable and cheap.
I have seen some impressive results with these kits, this VW build being one of the best. Very bling !
http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.p...

I'm in Dartford,Kent and always keen to hear of a local platers that could take a bucket of parts and plate with a yellow finish, as i have a set of brake calipers I'm de-rusting that need this too.
Thanks all.

Edited by Mr_B on Thursday 1st October 00:45

[Evoluzione]

Ask the platers if they will strip the silver BZP as it is a simple chemical process, buy your new ones and have them change the colour.
Alternatively strip them yourself as again, it is very easy as you will find many of the 'de-rusting' solutions (I use and sell one) will strip zinc just like they do rust.

[droopsnoot]

I've got a plating kit to get exactly that finish. It's pretty effective, as long as you can get the original piece clean enough - any pitting that you can't properly clean will result in black marks on the finished item. That shouldn't be a problem for new nuts and bolts.

The only issue is that a decent kit with all you need is about £150, and you can get quite a lot of plating done by a "proper" company for that. I like to be able to do these things myself so it's fine, but if you haven't got the patience to go through the cleaning, pickling, cleaning, nickel plating, cleaning, passivating, cleaning and drying stages then it might be better to have someone do it. A company local to me gave me a "price per wire", which is basically how they hang things in the plating tank - so that might be a couple of heavy items or a couple of dozen nuts and bolts. And they have better cleaning solutions that I can't get hold of.

Doing it yourself is quite interesting though, especially if the results are good. As you can see on these, the spring and the bonnet catch guide aren't so good, but the washers had a better surface.



My kit came from a place called "Gateros plating" who do a range of kits and will mix and match so you don't have to duplicate common components. For a lot of bolts, it might be a time-consuming option though.

[jonny_bravo]

Another vote for finding a local plater and having the old ones redone.

I am finishing my MK2 Escort at the moment,. had a box full of bolts, screws, washers, bonnet stay, door locks and catches done. Considering how rusty some of it was the end result was amazing. Best bit is it cost £25