volksjune99

Pics 7 and 7a: with the thicker steel items, like bumpers and overiders, the polishing process started with coarser belts, such as a 6o or 8o grit. Progressively finer polishing belts (120, 180, 240,320 and 320 glaze), are then used before the parts are'brushed up to a mirror shine. Again, much of the skill here is in knowing which belt or combination of belts will provide the right results.

We later discovered the overiders had been coppered first and, as Alan had previously explained with this process, the copper reacts with the steel to accelerate any corrosion. The only course of action here is to cut it away with coarse grit paper first before they are finish polished.

With items such as bumpers, if they were to be wired for chroming through the bumper bolt holes, marks would form on the front and ruin the finish. To prevent this, Marque Restore soldered the copper wire to the back first. This can easily be removed with no trace after the chroming process.

After polishing, each item has to be cleaned with vienna lime, to remove any traces of polishing compound, and then individuatty copper wired again for cleaning and to go into the plating tanks.

The cleaning process starts by hand brushing in an industrial cleaning fluid, followed by a dip in an electrically- charged cleaning tank (see picture). This removes all oxides from the surfaces plus the instant tarnish that occurs as soon as bare metal is exposed to the atmosphere. Next, the parts are run through Marque Restore's 'counterflow rinse system', or cleaned in their series of progressively cleaner fresh water swill tanks, to give it the less technical term. Finally, they go through a 'sour rinse'- a io% acid solution which neutralises any sticky deposits left over from the cleaning processes. Although this sounds like it takes a long time, speed is of the essence at this stage of the process, and unfortunately Atan wasn't able to hang around between tanks while we set up arty shots for the mag - sorry!