Still bummed about the recent setbacks, I settled in to a Friday night’s worth of hardware blackening. I've talked about it before and I will continue to promote the Eastwood metal blackening kit. Again, it leaves an authentic black surface of the treated part that, for the most part, is permanent and protective. The pile of suspension related parts took me about 2 and half-hours to do. I did have a little problem with the last group of small bolts, as there were areas on the surface that didn't blacken. These spots must have had something on them to block the chemicals... I didn't figure it out... I actually wear gloves when handling the parts after bead blasting. Anyhoo, the bulk of the parts were blackened while I chose to tin zinc plate the nuts for the struts and lower control arm to the K member... no real reason, it just seemed right. A few pieces I took over to the plater that I had used before to have zinc dichromate coated. That's the gold color with the red and green iridescence look to it. These parts included the "U" shaped sway bar bushing brackets and the big-ass bushing washers used with the lower control arm struts. Since I was having this done I threw in the nuts that hold the front seat to the car and the heater box nuts that are visible on the firewall. The guy had them done the next day and they looked pretty good.

With all the front suspension parts spread out on the floor it was easy to plan out what colors/finishes I was going to use for each. For anything that is a chunk of cast steel I didn't see any other "economical way to go other than a "Spray Gray" type cast iron paint. I know there are some really fancy methods of getting a cast iron part to look natural and stay that way but my patience with the front suspension was getting thin. I wanted this stuff together, no more fartin around with decisions like this. An example of what I'm talking about here. I had bought a POR15 product called "Metal Mask". The ad and pictures show a cast color paint and brag about a hard POR15 like coating after it's applied. Well after brushing just a few strokes on one of the lower ball joints it was clear that this was NOT a cast color but more in between cast and bare steel. I finished painting the lower ball joints, caliper brackets and tie rod ends anyway thinking they may darken as they dry... it didn't happen. I thought I could maybe spray on a quick coat of Spray Gray while the Metal mask was still tacky but that just reacted poorly and caused some ugly cracking in the finish. I only tried that on the ball joints so the other parts dried OK. That was a couple of months ago and the parts have long since dried. Not one to just cut my loses and just spray the things with Spray Gray and be done with it, I had the idea to somehow darken the Metal Mask to look more like cast steel. I emailed the folks at POR15 and asked if there was any problem with mixing regular black POR15 with the Metal Mask to darken it up. The guy tells me that Metal Mask is a urethane based paint and POR15 is not. He suggests mixing another urethane paint with Metal Mask but doesn't guaranty if it will work. I picked up a very small quantity of black urethane from the paint store and thought I was all set. Before I messed up the can of stack Metal Mask I decided to use it as is on the swaybar, lower control arm struts and center link. They looked good and will contrast well with the rest of the parts. Back to the mixing. I started mixing up the 2 paints and everything looked ok... but then the mixture started to look like bad milk with lumpy crud floating around in it. It wasn't working. So what did I do? I slapped the lid on the can and tossed the whole thing in the can, along with any other fancy ideas, and grabbed the can of Spray Gray!!! Going with the thought that the Metal Mask would be a great base coat for the gray, I just hit all the parts again with Spray Gray and wouldn't you know it... they look fine. Funny thing is, I could have been done with all this 2 months ago.

I have also flip flopped back and forth on what to do with the control arms themselves. I think in the last update I said I was going to quit worrying about them and have them powder coated. You think I did that? Hell no. I kept thinking about it and they were still sitting on the floor developing a nice coat of surface rust... again. What I ended up doing was using a silver enamel that has a very good stamped steel look to it. I hit the parts with the bead blaster (again) and proceeded to give them a coat of epoxy primer before the color. I had a good bit left over from the last body panels I prepped so no expense there. I primed the arms on Saturday and sprayed the color on Sunday. To get a true steel look to the part the paint is supposed to be flattened some 25-50% but when I cracked open the can of flattener it was in a state that I didn't think I could get it thoroughly mixed back up. It had been sitting in my shop for about 6 months so I guess that was too long. I sprayed the parts with the silver anyway... unflattened and with hardener. Let's just say I have the shiniest, show quality control arms around. I didn't care... all my parts where refinished and nearly ready for assembly.