Mid way through restoring my 1968/9 365 GT 2+2. And getting to the suspension and brakes. Should calipers and the little nuts and bolts in the suspension be plated in the zinc that finished looks a slightly gold champagne colour. i have seen some 275s with these calipers and assume it should be the same ??
Calipers in the older Ferraris (250/275...) were normaly cadmium plated. I believe the 365 is still cad. That looks a little bit like zinc yellow but not as yellow and somehow ,softer’ in shine. Difficult to find someone doing it today because chrome 6 is poisonous. Where are you from? Here in Germany I do have a company still doing it.
Change of model... Does anyone know... What the original colour caliper should be on a 1986 328 GTB? Mine have been painted silver colour in the past, they do blend in with the wheels though.
I’m not very familiar with these details on 365 GT 2+2‘s , but based my limited experience and observations of 365 GTB/4s, caliper main components were usually finished in silver cadmium, their hardware along with those on the suspension had variety finishes, including cadmium, nickel, zinc & paint in various colors including clear/silver/white, yellow/gold, black (flat & satin), all mixed together depending on their application/location in a car’s undercarriage and/or specifications suppliers of the component used or hardware manufacturer produced them in. Clear as mud, right ?
You might have better chance/luck finding accurate information by searching for this topic in appropriate forum section dedicated to “308/328” models or post your question in there.
Just some additional info. Different platings do have different properties and therefor Ferrari did use different plating processes depending on the parts usage. Most platings we are talking about here are used to protect from corrosion, but there are better and less effective protections in different media (electrolyts, air, etc.). Some plating processes change the part in metalurgic terms, e.g. a part can become brittle through hydrogen embrittlement. Special heat treatments after plating can be used to counteract on this. In general cad is very often used for brake components while nickel was often used for steering components or latter zinc yellow or blue (silver collor) was often used for suspension components. For the 328 I would assume that calipers were either cad or zinc plated. Cad in my opinion is a very good protection and very thin in terms of thickness of protective layer.
