Whats cheaper?

[scotjell]

All as you know or may not I'm doing a rebuild but as you can expect a lot of the fasteners are a little ginger! Whats cheaper replace or does anyone know of a plater to coat them zinc or whatever?

[porndoguk]

would be cheaper overall to buy a zinc anodising kit from ebay for about £50-75 for decent ones,

ive just about replaced all my bolts and parts for stainless, alloy, titanium and it hasnt been cheap,

there are some fine pitch bolts i had to have made, some i had to order, bespoke parts made by kayla, and then batch made hub, wheel, yoke and pinch bolts.

so in the long run it would be far cheaper and easier to do the anodising your self,

plus it doesnt stop there, there are loads of little brackets and bits and bobs that will benefit from the coating too.

hell once your good at it, you can offer a service to people too.

[scotjell]

Cheers Ricky. All the bits are off to powder coaters like subframe fork bottoms yokes brackets screen brace etc. It's just knowing where to stop. I'm not looking at Ti replacements as money is an object lol. I think I'll just put a list together as I see something where necessary I'll replace with SS but if things like disc bolts etc are important then I'll stick with OEM.

[marcus57]

I agree with rick , i have spent an absolute fortune on titanium and stainless bits. I bought a load of stainless nuts bolts and washes from ebay and then divided them up in little tubs so as im working on the bike i slowly swap the old bits out for new ones .

Although having a few nice ti bits does look nice .

[amorti]

The best restorations will use original bolts, and replating often is the only way to sort NLA parts. In a lot of cases I find stainless cap screws to be just ugly, and also they're not ideal in a bare alloy thread. That's before you go into the different size of the heads and load spreading versus effects on torque values.

Get a copy of classic motorcycle mechanics (interesting read anyway) and flick through the service providers in the back. This sort of stuff is probably still best found this way than on the web I reckon.

Other than that, every local industrial estate will have someone doing this type of work. You might be better getting it done locally to dodge shipping fees, and give you less risk of postal loss or damage.

[Morespeedvicar]

Stainless bolts and plenty of copper grease. Dont know why you'd want to replace with new standard bolts just to go rusty again. Unless your going to build a concourse bike of coarse....
Cheers
Ian

[Neosophist]

If you dont knacker the oroignal bolts getting them out then replating is an option.

I knew a few people who do old restorations for hobbies and it takes somre proper work to get a good finish on replated bolts.

you need to strip all the crap off them, polsih them smooth then zinc plate them otherwise all the crap shows up on the plating.

Can be done but its not easy.. unless your going for original factory restore then some decent not ugly aftermarke bolts, or even some non rusted ones froma broken bike might be a bette roption.

[thunderace]

I tend to replace all fastners with A4 marine grade stainless steel wherever possible. I don't bother with the over-priced titanium shit there's just no point, there's no benefit on a road bike apart from making your wallet a lot lighter. In fact, I can't really see the point on a race bike either, the weight saving is negligible.

I don't tend to use ally either. Anodising just doesn't stand up to the use and it's no more than 18 months before they want replacing. They are also far too easily damaged by an over-exuberant hex key weilder.

Things like critical engine bolts however (ie; head bolts) I will only ever use OEM but if I'm doing a full resto, I will not only buy new ones but I will also vapour blast them then have them plated.