There are two things that are commonly found when working on old motorcycles, one is cadmium plated parts that are faded, rusted or discolored somehow, and the other is broken or cracked mounting tabs on plastic parts such as air boxes or side covers. Today we’ll learn how to do a reasonably good job of creating cheap fake cad plating with spray paint. Then we will tackle a minor repair of some ABS plastic parts. Most of the black plastic parts on motorcycles are ABS and on some such as early sport bikes such as EX250 or 500 Ninjas the bodywork is also.

Cheap Fake Cad Plating

Let’s start with this steering lock that goes on my 1982 Honda C70. In the picture it doesn’t look too terrible, but this was after washing it in the parts washer with a Scotchbrite pad to get rid of some light rust.

Once it was dry I taped off the key slot and sprayed on a couple of coats of adhesion promoter.

After giving the adhesion promoter about 8-10 minutes to dry I gave the part a couple of coats of metallic “chrome” paint. This paint doesn’t really look like chrome but it really is a very bright silver.

After allowing the chrome paint to dry thoroughly, take a can of the metallic “gold” spray paint and from 18-20 inches away lightly fog the gold paint over the chrome. Just do one or two light coats. the idea is to lightly tint the part with gold but not to completely cover up the chrome.

It’s really best to do this in a well lit place so that you can see when there’s enough gold on the part and stop spraying it.

Here you can see my cheap fake cad plating next to one of the well sheltered original cadmium plated brackets from this same motorcycle. Naturally if you plan on having a 100 point national show winning motorcycle, real cad plating is the only way to go, but for your average rider or local bike night hero this is a nice inexpensive way to get a clean authentic look to parts that should look cad plated.

ABS Plastic Repair

A major source of aggravation are cracks in plastic parts and or mounting tabs broken off of them. But since since a lot of these plastic parts are made of the same ABS material as sewer & drain pipe there really is quite a simple solution. Glue them back together with common ABS cement that you can find at any local hardware store. The air box on this little C70 that I’m working on had been reinstalled at some point in the past without the metal spacers that are normally used to secure such parts to the metal frame without damaging it. The result was that one mounting tab was split & the other one was broken completely off.

To repair the cracked side was simple enough, it jut needed cleaning up and having plenty of glue applied. For the other side that was completely broken out I put a standoff with a washer in the hole & gave it a good coat of cement, permanently attaching it to the air box. You can also buy ABS plastic sheet & use that to fabricate repair patches, replacement tabs & even custom parts that can be glued together using ABS pipe cement. Once you are done & the glue is dry it can be filed, sanded or even painted over just like any normal plastic.

Hopefully these two tips about cheap fake cad plating & abs plastic repair will help someone out, until next time.

Peace Y’all