I am refurbishing my suspension and steering and was wondering how to rust treat my steering joints.

Click to view attachment

I will media blast to get down to bare metal.

I could zinc plate, powder coat or prime and paint.

Thanks.

George

In production, plating would happen to disassembled component pieces and then joint would be lubed and pressed together.

I wouldn't mess with the assembled U-joint. I can't imagine sand blasting and subsequent plating operations in de-greaser and acid baths will do it any favors. Any risk of grease oil contamination coming out of an assembled and lubed U-joint won't be good for your plating bath's either.

Although Phil is right, Plating isn't the right thing to do unless you disassemble the u joint, I have wire wheeled them and sent out for plating. They come back looking great and work fine, with the caveat that I have not taken them apart and looked at the grease. The next batch I do plan to take apart (youtube videos show you how) just because I think that would be best practice.

If you powder coat, you have to keep the splines bare, which sort of defeats the purpose. Painting with Cerikote would work great since it's so thin it won't change the dimensions enough to matter.

@mepstein

I have four of these, three of which seem perfectly fine but the fourth one grinds and sticks. I looked on YouTube but couldn't find info on how to disassemble the joint. Only videos on how to replace.

Looking at them, it seems the only way to take them apart would be to drill out the pins holding them together.

If you could provide a link to the YouTube video that would be awesome.

Thanks.

George

Mike's restorations - Amazing series of restorations. Very detailed. Here's the one for steering joints.

Only thing for me is he uses a lot of POR 15. I'm not a fan of that product but many people are.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe1rPkbdYjI

How about using an ultrasonic cleaner, then relub the bearings

Steering shafts were black oxide. 914 joints were painted black. Later 911 joints patterned after the 914 ones were yellow zinc.

Joints in Mark's picture are early 911 up to 74, then they went to small ones like 914.

Wow. Thanks for the link to that YouTube series. I have subscribed.

My steering joints look different from the ones in the video.

Just like this one: Click to view attachment

Since one of mine is crunchy, I guess I'll poke at it with some tools and see what I can figure out.

Thanks.

George

Was it black or plated OEM?
If I had the time, I would take it apart and send it out to be coated like oem….do it once

They were zinc plated.