# 65 restore



## SIXT5GTO (Mar 9, 2010)

The wife has a 65 hard top that needs some work.
Has anyone had the center counsole rechromed, if so what does this cost on average, and where do I send it.
We are trying to do a little at a time.
It will be driven quite often but would like it to look as stock as possible.
thanks


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## Rukee (Feb 8, 2007)

Call ThePartsPlaceInc dot com.


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## johnnylightning03 (Nov 27, 2007)

you can call pauls chroming in evans city pa for a quote, but they are pricey. i was told over the phone about 1200 to do my 66 4 spd console . 800 245 8679/ Welcome to Paul's, the world's Premiere Restoration Replater. instead i purchased a pot metal repop from ames perf instead and used my base. didnt look what they offer for 1965 but most people i spoke with didnt seem to confident with pot metal restoration. good luck with you 65


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## Too Many Projects (Nov 15, 2008)

We have a local plater who does this work. I went thru the shop a while back on a club tour. It is very labor intensive work to repair and plate pot metal. The chemicals and the temperature needed just to strip the existing plating are very close to the melting point of the metal and needs to be monitored constantly during the process. Once it is stripped, any pits from corrosion need to be hand drilled out to prevent them from coming back. The holes are then hand soldered shut with silver solder, again the melting points are close and is touchy. If the piece survives those steps and is solid, all the soldered pits are hand filed/sanded to match the surrounding metal and then buffed/polished in preparation for the nickel bath and final chroming stages. As you can guess, none of this is cheap. If you want to get an estimate, here is a link to their contact info. Good Luck...
About JR Custom


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## FNG69 (Nov 15, 2009)

Wow Mitch, that must have been interesting. My local bumper rechome shop closed it's doors cause owner got tired of the EPA always costing him more & more!! LES


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## Too Many Projects (Nov 15, 2008)

FNG69 said:


> Wow Mitch, that must have been interesting. My local bumper rechome shop closed it's doors cause owner got tired of the EPA always costing him more & more!! LES


It WAS. Jeff, the owner, has been doing this his whole life and when he opened this shop, he knew the quantities of chemicals and size of tanks to fly under their radar. He doesn't do any production runs where he needs big tanks and large quantities of liquids around. Everything is pretty much piece work restoration. He said he might not open the tanks for a week while he's working on getting parts ready, so his emissions are not enough to regulate. He had a set of 65 GTO tail light bezels that he was working on at the time and he said it was going to cost the owner a pretty penny, but that's what the guy wanted. He is fairly well known in the antique car business too because he rebuilds hood ornaments that can't be found in any condition. 
The other guy, Rob I think, does more trim restoration and polishing. It was amazing to see some of the stainless pieces people sent to them for repair. Stuff that looked like it should be thrown away but can't be found. They meticulously hand tap it all back into shape, sand the high spots and then polish it till it looks better than new.


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## geeteeohguy (Feb 2, 2008)

The thing is, we're trying to repair pot metal items that were NEVER intended to be in use 40 plus years later. The true craftsmen in California are being regulated and legislated out of existence, just like the middle class. My take would be to find the nicest original piece you can afford if the price of the replate is too high. On another forum, I saw a set of ruined '66-'67 headlamp bezels that were nice before the chromer got to them. $500 later, they looked like chromed wax that had been left in the sun. I knew pot metal was a real pain, but did not realize the knife-edge margin of error on temps and media. No wonder it's so damn expensive.


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