Before I send my Bees bolts out for plating, is there a source for new ones? The search here brings up some very dated threads.
I don’t have one for every spot on the car, but enough to place where sharp-eyed pains in the butt will spot them and go “Ah, very nice”.
Also, can someone recommend a plater that’s bolt-friendly? I pestered 2 and got the slow no, they’re too busy.
I’ve not found a supplier here in the UK, it comes down to finding old guys with bins of old fasteners and you might get lucky. All the replacement kits I’ve seen for sale are UNF, which would be useless for me as my car is mostly BSF. Must be a lot of restorations out there with cross-threaded wing bolts!
For plating, I run mine through my blast cabinet then plate them myself for a black finish. There are suppliers here in the UK who sell bucket kits with everything you need - they work well. Must be some in the US, I’d have thought.
Muncie Imports has an on-site guy that plates bolts and suspension parts for them. The day we were there, he was doing some very small batches - half dozen pieces
A tip - if you do decide to plate them yourself, use a stainless steel kitchen sieve to hold them in the blast cabinet. I hold them in a 6" one with a 4" one held over the top to stop them getting blown out and down into the hopper, then just blast through the sieve. Jiggle them around a bit and you’ll get all the surfaces.
I usually use a vibratory tumbler. I might bead blast very large bolts. Use triangles first, then fine media.
I have to ask …why do you want to get any original XK usage BEES bolts plated ???
Apart from one or two only limited engine bay locations, overwhelming majority of BEES bolts were never ‘plated’ but instead at least for those with an ANF/UNF thread were given a chemical conversion blackening process that does not add any thickness to say the threads, as you get when you plate or paint bare bolts. Some of the blackened BEES bolts, after assembly were then painted over…
There is no yet known exact demarcation, but earlier BSF threaded BEES bolts appear to have had a red-oxide wash finish over bare steel, that after assembly was invariably painted over in black paint, albeit with weathering in under car chassis locations can readily now see the red-oxide remnants remaining.
Regardless, if you PLATE, what’s the point of sourcing original BEES bolts if you are going to give them a non-authentic plated finish
I hear you Roger. Some bolts and assorted fasteners were painted post assembly, some were treated and installed after assembly, some were cad (or similar) and installed after assembly.
When I see a car at a show after checking out the paint, bodywork, upholstery, etc, is the finish on hardware. You have to admit, we’ve all seen cars with decent paint and rattle can paint treatments inside the trunk, engine compartments, fenders, chassis… Not the hallmark of a quality job… paint everything in sight so it looks like it’s been restored, or at least brushed and painted.
Engines with paint on everything including the head gasket might be 100% original, it looks like someone didn’t take it apart and just rattle-canned it to make it look good.
I like to see bright or black finished fasteners. On my cars I like to see them inside the door jambs, bonnet hinge fasteners, deck lid hinges, bumper fasteners, engine, etc.
100% original, maybe not. But at a car show, nobody walks away from cars having to guess whether I bothered to disassemble them before spraying. My rear shock bolts (March '53) had a red-ish/orange finish.
If you look at these pictures (even if most of those should be blackened) it looks as though all of those parts were disassembled and painted prior to reassembly. You can think there’s no rusty metal hidden between parts.
I assume the bonnet latch plate should be painted black, it was on both of my MGAs, same plate. That looks like silver paint here.
I’ve done some zinc plating. Fairly simple and fast.
Just to resurrect this, I’m happy with how my fasteners are turning out. I’m giving them a fairly gentle blast in the cabinet, then bright zinc plating followed by a black passivate application. I’m using a home plating kit, which is rather laborious and very time-consuming, but I think it’ll be worth it eventually.
I did a bit of zinc plating for the TC. A nice diversion from pounding on fenders 'n such.
Somewhere, squirreled away in a box, on a shelf, in one of the barns, I have about 10 or 20 pounds of NOS Jag hardware, still in the little paper bags with the early part numbers penciled on the outside. I remember the bolts were red oxide. One of these days, if I ever come across them again … well, you’ve heard the rest of that story before. But at least I have a cell phone / camera now at the ready.
Phil.
My car is early 1955. When dismantling, I noted that many of the bolts, including the BSF threads on those holding the rear wings and the UNF suspension bolts, had a matt red finish in evidence - but only on the threads. The hex bolt heads were either body colour or a satin black finish. This red doesn’t look, to me, like a period red oxide finish as used generally at that time - it’s more ‘red’, to my eyes. As (on my car, at least) it never appears on the hex head of the bolt, only on the thread, I’m wondering if this is a period threadlocker of some sort, maybe.
I dont have definitive/exact advice, if indeed it was exact…
But it seems the earlier BEES bolts with BSF threads were mostly/usually given a red-oxide wash type protective treatment, which usually got painted over black in many chassis locations, but if not painted over remained red-oxide until weathering off to bare metal.
Later UNF BEES bolts as found predominantly in XK140 and later were Black-Oxided/Oil Sealed finish which again could be painted over, or if exposed eventually weather back to bare metal…
I cant say 100% whether it was an exact BSF to UNF change of protective treatment, or whether it was age related just happening to coincide about same time dominant BSF usage was overtaken by dominant And then UNF BEES bolts/setscrews, but close enough for me to keep things simple as being a BSF to ANF/UNF changeover…
Note photo of Karl’s Throttle Stop - its a very late BSF bolt and with red-oxide, but this bolt dates from 1954 when the old D steel grading was superseded by the same steel, but now graded as R…
Most BSF bolts found are of old 45D55 steel grading/marking, with very few BSF bolts found with 45R55 grading… Sort of makes me think that the BSF (red-oxide) and ANF/UNF (black oxide) is not far off the mark, although not so sure about the ANF ones…
Yes, we’ve been round and round the red bolt question a few times over the years.
It’s a very thin wash job, not what you would call a coat of paint in the normal sense of the word, and certainly on the threads.
My observations on my three cars have been that I have only found red on ANF bolts used on Mark V and XK120 chassis, front suspension and brakes, and ANC bolts inside the XK120 engine aluminum sump holding the baffles.
I have not found a single red bolt with a BSF thread.
I have not found a single red bolt on my '38 SS, which if course has no ANF fasteners.
What does it mean? We have theories but no factory documents to explain it.
So it’s still a mystery.
Mark V steering box bolts.
That’s why we call this archaeology, the study of old stuff. 
Like the archaeologists, we report our findings. We are cautious about drawing conclusions.
That’s interesting, Rob - good photos, which may go some way to clearing up something that was puzzling me. Some of the chassis fasteners on my early '55 140 were red, as in your photos, which I had put down to the car being originally finished in Carmen Red. I couldn’t work out why there might be body colour on these as I assumed the body was painted off the chassis - and it’s unlikely to be overspray from repairs because (as in your photo) the nut would be red, but the split pin not.
This car has BSF fasteners (tapered tip) retaining the rear wings, some of which did have traces of red on the threads. Unfortunately I’ve now blasted and replated these, so can’t show photos.
That exactly what I thought as I had many red bolts on a car painted red (1955 140 )
One of the unknown factors in this red bolt investigation is how long they continued. We hear of a great many on Mark V and XK120, some on Mark VII, but few on XK140, and none on XK150.
So like the discovery of the Codex Sinaitcus and the Muratorian Fragment, we await the discovery of some bit of paper tucked away in some drawer which will explain all about the red bolts.
Nicolas Cage is working on it.
