Re Silvering Headlights

Got a quote today to get 2 headlight reflectors re silvered and it was a bit more than i expected $120 each, Has anyone else had this done and if so by who and at what cost.

Trevor

Trevor, A couple of years ago two 1927 Chev 4 reflectors cost me $80, was advised they should be silver as chrome came in later, think it was 1929. David.

Trev - Resilvering is a very expensive process. Early style reflector silvering involved plating with nickel, then silver, and then polishing.

Later style silvering involved coating the reflector with aluminium, whilst in a vacuum environment. This is a costly process because of the work involved.

The reflector is suspended in a special tank, above aluminium coated tungsten filaments. A vacuum pump removes all the air from the tank, until a near-perfect vacuum is created.

The tungsten filaments are then electrically heated until the aluminium is vaporised, and the gasified aluminium atoms are expelled from the tungsten filaments .. to shoot across the gap between the elements and the reflector, and attach themselves to the reflector face .. thus leaving the absolutely brilliant reflector surface we see on new reflectors.
This surface must not be touched in any manner (trying to polish it) or it will dull.

Some companies carry out resilvering of metal reflectors by electro-plating with nickel, then chrome, and then polishing. This is a satisfactory surface, but not as brilliant as the aluminised reflectors.

I've never seen anyone produce a cheap method of resilvering metallic reflectors yet. Chrome is now very expensive, platers are being pushed out of business by environmental demands (plating results in some pretty serious amounts of toxic by-products) .. and factory-produced chromed items are cheaper to buy, than getting something re-chromed.

The kind of prices you are being quoted seems about the going rate. I know that NOS metalised reflectors bring big $$$'s. They ask huge money for any NOS (metal) reflectors for my WB Holden ute.

Slos Peed
Gudday M8

If u jist need silverin
why not try chrome bright in a spray can
nothing ventured nothing gained

many year ago @ a car swap meet there twaz a joker hand n out cards n his claim twaz he could chrome
Steel,Aluminium,Plastic n just about anything th@ iz smooth

Me thort he twaz from Bendigo

May B Midlands rep from Bendigo nose more
What say U Sarge


LOL
Cya
[ch9786]

David

Where abouts did you get yours done.

Ron
I new it was going to be expensive but thought maybe $150 for both, i took them to a chrome plater but he said that if you chrome them they will not reflect enough and would not be legal.

Swishy
Thought about the spray painting but again it would not reflect properly, chrome plater can do it but again would not reflect properly.


Trevor

Trevor - Nearly everyone has heartache over resilvering reflectors. The original process of plating with nickel, then plating with silver, and polishing, is what is regarded as the most economic solution, and it's what most "resilvering" people do.

However, silver tarnishes, and the coating is also very thin .. meaning that any polishing has to be done very carefully. Properly done, a resilvering company will put a protective coating on the silver when the silver surface has been polished.

A British company, Ashford, specialises in resilvering, but they talk of

on my mercedes truck when i bought it i drove it home from melbourne even on hi beam ..the sun would of shone brighter out of the average mans . . . anyway i just figured the wattage in the globes was to low or something ..when i finally got her home (for a 1982 model turbo mercedes she was awefully slow down to about 40kmh on some hills and 85kmh top speed so much for german technology) anyway i got around to pulling the headlights apart and yes all the plastic chrome was extremely faded . . being stingy i tried the chrome spray in the can .it helped but not much !

Trevor

Try Huntingdale Electroplaters read on another forum they were pretty good and do resto stuff.


Graham

Huntingdale are great, but not cheap reckon the quote you got was pretty good trev

Will be getting a quote from Zues products the bloke rang me today and i missed the call so will talk to him in the morning.

Need all the help i can get with these lights as they are mounted back on the Cowl.



Trevor