Disappointment is the mother of all expectation...

I picked up the parts from the metal finishing shop today...about half of them came back looking about like I expected: clean, plated and ready to use.

These ball joint nuts came back looking rather nice.

Pan washers came back looking pretty good as well.  The bolts that accompany these washers were 80% perfect with 20% defects.  Not really acceptable in my book.

 The steering column I'd cleaned only 24 hours before dropping it off came out looking the best.  I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

Likewise, the caliper brackets for the CSP front discs came out looking decent as well.  I wish I'd gotten them plated before I installed the brake kit to save myself some rust along the way.

 These bolts show the inconsistency of the work that was performed.  All of these bolts went in looking the same - wire wheeled to bare metal yet they came back looking very different from one another - inconsistent coating, missing coating, poor coating.

What the fuck happened to quality control?

 These clamps were cleaned the same way the steering column rod was cleaned - they looked pretty good stripped bare.  I think they look worse now than they did when I dropped them off.

I paid a 'strip' charge to clean the bolts of all dirt/grime to ensure a good coating.  Perhaps they should have told the guy doing the work that the customer paid to have it done right.

I'm going to call them either tomorrow or Wednesday from California to see if we can work something out - this inconsistent quality is a problem that I shouldn't have paid for at all.  The lesson here is that, regardless of what the shop told me, I should have cleaned the ever living shit out of every single piece before I took it in to get plated.  I have a feeling this stuff is going to get plated again in the future for the final restoration.  The benefit I'll have in Chicago is that RediStrip is nearby so I can use them to get everything perfectly clean before it's dropped off for plating work - no excuses from the plating shop!

I'm hoping to be able to start putting the front end back together next week - there's a lot going on around the house right now so I might wind up being pushed back another week while the dust settles.