I would like to restore as many of the sheetmetal and bumper fasteners as possible. Any tips on restoring these bolts to keep them from rusting in the future? I was thinking of soaking them in muriatic acid, phospho, or metal ready. Then applying a black oxide coating. Anybody ever done this? A company called Caswell plating makes a cold black oxide solution for plating mild steel.

TIA, Kevin

I bought new bolts that were plated.
Not factory, but factory rusted pretty quick unless they were black anodized. If you do anything to them it won't be original, so why not go stainless or plated if you can. You can buy new black anodized sheetmetal fasteners.
Ground up sells a kit for the front clip for around 50 bucks. Has every bolt in the sheet metal from the firewall up.

Dave,

I don't care about originality. The black oxide coating is not anodized, but it should prevent future rust from occuring. I was just wondering if anyone restored rusted bolts using this method.

Kevin

Never tried it, but I'm with Dave. I bought the front end bolt kit from Chevy Restoration World for about $34.

Do youself a fovor and purchase the front end fastener kit from the supply houses. You will spend less time, less money in the long run, and have all new fasteners with good threads and no rounded off heads. Also in my kit the bolts were labeled which was a HUGE help. smile.gif

On the other hand,some people just want to use the original stuff. I had some dark gray phosphate(sp?) paint custom made and put into spray cans. Bead blast,paint,then bake in a toaster oven I got for 1 dollar at a garage sale. Use anti-seize when installing and are good to go for years.