Types

Hard Chrome
Show Chrome
Triple Chrome
Nickel Chrome
Black Chrome
Color chrome
Hexavalent Chromium
Tri Chrome

THE BOTTOM LINE: I'll start with this part up front. I have a merited reputation of loving shiny metal. Chroming offers the shiny metal connaisseurs :)like myself the ultimate of this genre with a choice of undertones to deligfht the senses. HOWEVER,  I have found I must turn away from it. Even many Concours competitors, who rarely, if ever, drive their collector cars began to agree many years ago.  Chrome is a lovely metal covering, like paint. It will crack under impact and allow rust underneath. Road debris will make it pit. It is toxic and has been restricted by government with many regulations making it tedious and expensive to repair. There are many shiny metal alternatives now of which the most popular is high grade polished stainless (the Morgan factory often uses lower grade unpolished stainless steel..which is why it stains so quickly. A great pity as higher grade polished stainless costs neglibly more. I favour polished stainless as a chrome substitute. I prefer the glorious undertones achievable with chrome. Polished stainless stell has a yellow undertone which is fine, but not as amazing, but only shiny metal enthusiasts care. Quality polished stainless steel, is a forever product. When impacted, it dents rather than cracks a chrome surface protection and allows corrosion underneath running underneath the adjacent chrome surface. It never (if it is of sufficent quality stainless steel grade) rusts. Happily, most Morgan parts have been copied in polished stainless steel, making ss replacements much easier than it once was. It requires little or no maintenance.  Chroming should be reserved to treating existing car parts that are not available in ss and for non-impact areas and usage. There is nothing that shows a mechanic, professional or hobbyist,  that the owner of a collector car knows little about their car as much as a dirty engine bay.

Chrome is slang for Chromium, one of the 90-odd naturally occurring chemical elements. Chrome is a metal, but it is not useful as a solid, pure substance. Things are never made of solid chrome. Rather, when you hear that something is chrome, what is really meant is that there is a thin layer of chrome, a plating of chrome, on the object (the bulk of the object usually being steel, but occasionally aluminum, brass, copper, plastic, or stainless steel).

A cause of occasional confusion is the fact that people may tend to describe any shiny finish as "chrome" even when it really has nothing to do with chromium. For example, brightly polished aluminum motorcycle parts, electropolished stainless steel boat rigging, vacuum metallized balloons and helmets, shiny painted wheels, and nickel plated oven racks are sometimes called 'chrome' by the lay person. Indeed it's not always easy to tell chrome plating from other finishes if the parts are not side by side. When a decorative chrome electroplated finish sits right next to another bright finish, however, the other finish usually won't compare very favorably.

Chrome plating is more reflective (brighter), bluer (less pale, grayish, or yellowish), and more specular (the reflection is deeper, less distorted, more like a mirror) than other finishes. Put one end of a yardstick against a bright finish, and see how many inches of numbers you can clearly read in the reflection -- you can clearly see the clouds in the sky reflected in chrome plating. And there's a hard to define "glint" to top quality chrome plating that nothing else has.

Chrome plating is a kind of finishing treatment that utilizes the electrolytic deposition of chromium. The thin, decorative bright chrome is the most common form of chrome plating. Chrome plating imparts a mirror-like finish to items such as automotive trim. Thicker deposits, called hard chrome, are used to reduce friction and wear and to restore the dimensions of equipment that has experienced wear. These two types of chromium plating are called Show Chrome and Hard Chrome respectively.

The newest is called Vacuum Metallizing. During the process, metals are vaporized within a vacuum chamber and then deposited on to a surface. Once the vapor deposition process has completed, the substrate emerges from the vacuum chamber with a mirror-like highly reflective finish.The most common usage being with various grades of metal and plastics. Aluminum, steel, polycarbonate, zinc die cast, ABS, acrylic, nylon and polyester are examples of these.

Paints and Coatings are commonly used in vacuum metallizing finishing for a number of reasons: adhesion promotion, surface leveling and protection of the optical film after deposition. These coatings are commonly referred to as vacuum metallizing basecoats, topcoats and primers. It is very commonly used in the manufacture of interior and exterior grade automotive, mirror fabrication and trim accessories.
 
Hard Chrome Plating

Chrome is a perfect plating for longwearing working surfaces because it is much harder than case-hardened steel. Micro-finished chrome will provide a coefficient of friction lower than any other metal when used against steel, iron, brass, bronze, babbitt, or aluminium alloys. It is used for bearing surfaces.  We recommend hard chrome as the best choice for Morgan kingpins. Click HERE. In industrial chrome plating the process is electrolysis. In the process chromium metal is deposited on metallic surfaces submerged in a chromic acid plating bath. The part to be plated is made cathodic by connection to the negative terminal of the rectifier.
 

WATCHPOINT: It is not advisable to us chrome on chrome.

Show or Decorative Chrome

Decorative chrome plating is sometimes called nickel-chrome plating because it always involves electroplating nickel onto the object before plating the chrome (it sometimes also involves electroplating copper onto the object before the nickel, too). The nickel plating provides the smoothness, much of the corrosion resistance, and most of the reflectivity. The chrome plating is exceptionally thin, measured in millionths of an inch rather than in thousandths.

When you look at a decorative chrome plated surface, such as a chrome plated wheel or car bumper, most of what you are seeing is actually the effects of the nickel plating. The chrome adds a bluish cast (compared to the somewhat yellowish cast of nickel), protects the nickel against tarnish, minimizes scratching, and symbiotically contributes to corrosion resistance. But the point is, without the brilliant leveled nickel undercoating, you would not have a reflective, decorative surface .For decorative purposes, the best combination would be chrome and nickel which offers the most protection against corrosion. It will have a mirror finish that will only be as good as the finish you put on the surface before you put on the chrome.

Chrome plating should be uniform in thickness on all surfaces. The plate should be smooth, homogeneous and free from frosty areas, pin holes, pits, nodules, and other defects It is not a difficult process provided that the part has been properly cleaned and the following requirements met:

Triple Chome Plating