I met with my plater to look over some parts that he’s in the process of chrome plating. I’ve been working with him for over a decade, and he’s become pretty familiar with the details of Ferrari parts, but there are always new issues to look at. Once the original chrome and nickle layers are stripped, he needs to surface finish each part and polish the parts before reapplying the plating. Sometimes he has to confirm which surfaces are seen to save time buffing and polishing a side that will never be seen.

The door handles were made out of a pot metal, but he adds a layer of copper before surface finishing. You can see there are still some imperfections on the edge of the handle receiver that needs just a little more work before this part moves on to polishing and plating.

I took the finished trunk lock back to my shop to install on the car. Speaking of pieces of chrome that are not seen, the only part that is seen is the ring around the push button lock for the trunk. The rest of the lock body is plated but is just the rough casting.

I made sure, however, the locating tabs were nice and sharp so they would index correctly with the trunk surface.

The trunk skin on this car was replaced, but luckily, the under structure revealed the original placement of the notch.

I carefully filed out the notches so the trunk lock would fit perfectly back in the hole!

Seeing the progress on the chrome plating, I needed to get to work cleaning out some of the fixtures that the chrome pieces will mount to and one of them was this license plate light fixture. A quick trip to the media blast cabinet, and there piece were cleaned and ready for service.

I’ll have to find a replacement lens, however, as one of them was cracked. I have a good one to copy if I find reproductions are not available.