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The original hinges, hood latch and safety catch are all a phosphate coating that ends up somewhere around a dark grey.
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I believe this was the original finish. I also believe this was the same manganese phosphate finish that was used on military firearms. You can get the chemicals from any good gunsmith supply and refinish them yourself. It's a simple stovetop process and none of the chemicals are particularly hazardous. That is if your wife doesn't mind you boiling truck parts on her stove.
This is an interesting hinge because it wasn't stored properly so it was about half covered in rust. I dipped that half into a solution and it removed the rust but left the phosphate where ever the rust had not taken over.
Here's the used ones off the Ranger.
And the ones still mounted on the white F250 4x4
Once they get covered with dust and crud it gets a bit harder to tell what they were. This is slightly left of the above photo.
Here's the NOS hood latch in front of the one on the white 4x4
And the safety catch - NOS in front of the one on the white 4x4
Ford wasn't the only one doing the phosphate plating. GM was doing the same. Here's the NOS hood latch for my 1971 Trans Am.
And the NOS hood hinges for the Trans Am, too.
Once they started to rust it was not uncommon to hit them with some paint
Of course, they aren't talking specifically about Ford, either.
High-solids enamel duplicates the charcoal gray zinc phosphate plating on inner and outer tie rod ends, tie rod adjustment sleeves, center links, some spindles, hood hinges and latches, sway bars and some shift and carb linkages.
Where did you find that stainless steel bucket? I am going to try and redo my hinges after I have then restored by HoodHingeRepair. Got repops on there now and they are already having trouble keeping the hood up.
You only need stainless steel for the Parkerizing solution the other containers can be mild steel. I use a couple of old beer kegs with the tops cut off. Also you can skip the oil treatment if you intend to paint the part right away. After the final rinse in flowing water I submerge the parts in boiling water for a couple of minutes then blow dry and apply paint. I only oil them if they aren't going to be painted.
Good job on the hinges Eastronaut, an the rest of the truck looks good too!
I was talking about the flat clear coat that eastronaut put on his. Parkerizing won't hold up as well in a wet environment as paint will. Unless you keep it well oiled. But it does make an excellent base for paint.
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