Hi everyone, I have the exterior door handles for my 33 Plymouth. They are somewhat pitted and need refinishing. What are the options? Is there someone out there that can make them look new and shiny again? Thanks
pictures? If you send them to one of the fancy expensive chrome shops, you might get them fixed right. Most chrome shops seem to not be too concerned about buffing the detail right out of a part, if it's pitted. Good luck....
no easy answer, no cheap answer - search for chrome plating shops in your area and see if they can recommend someone to dismantle them and and do some of the prep before taking to plate shop
Thanks for the replies! I wonder if the pits could be filled in with something like silver solder or something else before plating? Any other options? Besides paint.
Advanced plating can make the door handles look fantastic,Steve did a great job on my pitted parts. HRP
One of the handles does have a lock, but I don't have a key to it anyway. I also have no idea how to remove the cylinder. Why do you suggest removing it?
Best and cheapest option is to buy reproduction or NOS if you can find them. The old ones can be repaired and rechromed but it is labor intensive and EXPENSIVE. It is possible to do them yourself, and other small parts, with a kit from Caswell Plating. The process is, strip the old plating off clean them and polish, grinding or drilling out the pits to sound metal Copper plate Fill the pits with solder file, sand, and buff smooth Copper plate again Polish and buff. If they are perfect you can now go on to nickel plate. If not, go back to copper plate, polish, buff, etc. Nickel plate Chrome plate All of this takes time, talent, and money. If you have time and talent you can buy the kit for a few hundred $$$ bucks and do all your small chrome parts. If you pay someone to do it, $$$$$ time. There is always someone somewhere who will do it cheaper but you may not be happy with the way it turns out. If you even get your stuff back.
I found NOS for the interior. The exterior is another story. All I've found there look worse than what I have and they want a couple hundred bucks each for them. I ask someone that does a lot of Mopar stuff. His answer was to use Ford repros and slot the holes in the doors and making new tapped plates to weld inside. I may have to try something myself. I'm not looking for show quality, just something that looks good.
After researching options, powder coating and rechroming seemed to be the logical choices. Emailed pics of the handles to several places. Had 3 reply, 2 powder coaters and one chrome shop. The chrome shop quoted the same price as the lowest powder coater. Seemed to be a no brainer and shipped them to the chrome shop. $150 total was the quote. Got a call a couple of days later. There was going to be an extra charge for separating the bezels from the handles themselves. The pitting was worse than they thought by looking at the pic and it was going to cost a little more than they had quoted. There was a crack in one of the bezels that needed repaired, at an extra charge. They had a locksmith that could make a key for me, extra charge of course. All totaled $275. I said do it. Took about 2 months but when I got them back, I was pleased.
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