Dismounting and restoring the front drum brake + nickel plating

Some pictures to help out the assembly process later on. A lot of rust but all the parts are present 🙂 Not possible to source any new parts for this rare front brake. Starting with rust removal and cleaning. The chromed parts will be sandblasted for removal of the old chrome and rust pitting. Thereafter I will grind and polish back to a shining look before I nickel plate them using my old nickel plating kit.

Cleaning:

Polishing:

Three of the parts looks quite nice after some polishing. Can be used as is. No need for nickel plating.

Sand blasting:

Sanding:

Depending of the parts I’m using different tools. Dremel, rotating disks or the lathe. Starting with 80-100 grit sand paper until I get a nice finish using 1200 grit paper.

Nickel plating:

The nickel plating bath is 10 years old and is still function well. The cost is like “nothing” compare to shipping parts abroad for rechroming. After some yars I only added water to the bath and bought a new nickel anode (10$ on ebay).

Pluss 4-5V to the anode and minus to the parts. The current is about 100mA and plating time for small parts will be 2-3 hours and more time depending of the size of the parts.

I bught it all as a kit with anode, solvents and power supply. Before the plating start the parts are cleaned in a special solvent and after the nikkel bath I use a stop bath at the end of the process.

Can be smart to monitor the current so you know it’s all working and no bad connections.

If it’s all ok, and the current is flowing the part will turn gray after fiew minutes.

After some hours the part will be covered in nickel and is ready for polishing.

All steel parts has been nickel plated, the aluminium hub is only polished.

The entire process takes only few hours and I’m very pleased with the final results.

Assembly:

Parts for the speedometer gear:

Brake shoes:

The shiny springs are the old rusty ones in a better look.

Almost done:

Before and after:

Before and after

Return spring and clamping bolts:

Done:

The wheel mounted: