Trying to bring back Gold Chrome on Midnight

[thibtyson]

Just wondering what other MNS owners have done to bring back the Gold Chrome on their bikes? The PO polished the gold off on most of the bike. It still has a gold tint, but nothing like it should. Some places it's almost completely chrome. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've thought about using a Gold tinted clear coat, not sure if that would really give me the color I'm after.

[LuckyEddie]

Gold Chrome

My powder coat dude laid on a chrome finish coat with a coat of iridescent yellow/gold over that, then laid black in the lettering and trim, then laid a clear coat over the whole thing. I guess when he cooks it, he gives it about half the normal cure so sucessive coats adhere to each other....... makes me smile!

[CatatonicBug]

I have never heard of anyone getting a true reproduction of the OEM gold color. You can take the parts to be gold powder-coated, but they will not quite be the same. It may help if you had ALL the gold parts done, so at least they would all look the same.

[natemoen]

One guy had everything gold plated with real gold!

[81xsproject]

I will be following and looking into this as well. I have a customer I am talking with right now that is looking to restore and collect several Midnights. He wants to have the carb caps redone so I will be calling around to platers about the 'gold.'

[CatatonicBug]

The tricky part is getting the hue to match that of the wheels. It has to be the exact same tint across all the "gold" pieces. While you can powdercoat the other pieces so they all match, you can't powdercoat the wheels without killing the rubber in the hubs with the heat.

[mack]

Gold

I'm the guy who had it all gold plated, but it was with a brass/ 10K gold mixture. I didn't do the wheels because they were in pretty good shape. Nothing I looked at was close to the original gold that was on the bike, deciding how to approach the gold was the most time consuming and frustrating part of my restore. Rattle can and powder coats all had a greenish tint to them and no real luster. Actual gold plating was the only way to go and finding a shop to do it was even more frustrating. A lot of tree huggers up here.

[haywardguy929]

I did a lot of plating when I lived in the Twin Cites for a circuitboard compnay.
All the plating was done on copper. There had to be a nickle base under it for the gold to adhere properly. You may want to look into anodizing also. My tank had the letters with the gold missing on one side and the other peeled half off. I lightly sanded the rest of the gold off and used a black appliance touch up pen to paint them black. It was a cheap easy fix and I can live with it, I also did the windjammer and side cover to make then match better. The touch up pen came in handy for a few other area as well. My tank is midnight blue and had rust spots and the black blended in enough on the small spots and scrathes. Not great but until I can afford a paint job I'll live with it. I'm not going to any bike shows with it anytime soon.

[thibtyson]

Thanks for all the ideas. Hopefully, I can decide what I'm going to do and get it done. The faded gold didn't bother me at first, but now I've seen pictures of MNS's that have all the Gold Chrome in all the right places and they look good! I want mine to look that good too! I read somewhere that Yamaha made the MNS's to be collector's bikes and if that's true, they need to offer something to match the gold for restoration projects. Maybe I'll get in touch with Yamaha and see what they recommend.

[crazy steve]

I read somewhere that Yamaha made the MNS's to be collector's bikes and if that's true, they need to offer something to match the gold for restoration projects. Maybe I'll get in touch with Yamaha and see what they recommend.

Rots of ruck with that one.... Yamaha lost all interest in these bikes years ago...

[WSL91]

Does anyone know what the original process was that produced the "gold" and "Black" chrome surfaces?

[crazy steve]

Does anyone know what the original process was that produced the "gold" and "Black" chrome surfaces?

That's processes, plural. That's one of the problems with trying to duplicate the OEM finishes as Yamaha used four different finish methods. The wheels were painted, the exhaust and 'gold' steel bits were plated, and the grab rail was anodized. The exhaust can be redone (if you can stand the cost; $$$$), but getting a color match for the gold is where you run into trouble. Not impossible, but expect to shell out a bunch of money.....

It would cost you far more than the bike is currently worth (and probably a fair distance into the future) to accurately reproduce those finishes. IIRC, Mack was quoted over $2K for just the exhaust; he ended up hotcoating his.

[mack]

Exhaust

I went with ceramic (black) with a heat resistant spray on gloss coat over. $450.00 Can finished and ready to mount.

[mack]

Gold

As I said before the gold was a problem. The brass/gold mixture was the only way to reproduce the original look. The brass provided volume and wearability while the gold gave the luster. Needs to be clear coated after for protection. That cost will fluxuate with the price of gold of course. Wish I could tell you what the amount was for that but I had ten carb tops done and two complete sets of air box sides done along with the grab rail etc. My cost after taxes for everything was around $1200 can. If you are restoring one of these to make a profit, stop now. You will never get your money back. If your doing it for the love of the bike, you may proceed.

[mack]

Black Chrome

I went all over Ontario with the LH exhausts. All the black chrome I saw was actually a shiney grey in lieu of the deep shiney black of the original. I finally gave up looking and opted for the ceramic. It has a slight brown look which is fairly dull untill they put on the gloss clear coat. You can see the difference in the picture if you look closely. The main thing for me was to have the original exhausts repaired and coated to last. I tried to match as best I could but the most important thing was to have the original exhausts. These bikes just don't tune and run the same without them.