Bellow freeze point outside (-5C, 23F), garage was very cold.
It took a while before I got the baths to working temps.
Finished the pair of mounts, and placing them next to the chrome version that I have on the 73.
Aside nickel being a tad more yellowish, pretty pleased with what my cheap green soup did. 
Time for a blue soup. Because some of the hardware are pitted. I tried add copper prior to a second pass of nickel to see if i could get a layer so I could polish in between to fill the damages...
Got some copper on them, but that's all I can say. It was not even near of the expected. Bad dark color and did not stick to the surface. I could remove the entire layer with my fingers.
Some readings told me, the alloys prolly being some mix of zinc and nickel (brass), I needed to use either one of the elements. Ideally, I should first do this, then try copper on top of that layer and then again nickel.
I will return on the copper later on, as the brown deposit aspect also tells me there is a prob with the bath. Temp, PH or power?? So will try plate some scrap bits to define what gives me the expected bright pinky result.
I'll prolly try an alkaline solution vs acidic in the next couple of days.
In between experiments, I could see the 73 was jealous, so mounted the bling bling hood latch lock on her and went prep the rusty grey painted 73 for the 71. End of the day, the 73 to become 71 was done. The bolts are cooking and I'll plate them tomorrow.
Then it was time to try zinc, (the electrolyte is greyish practically transparent) and also try to see how well that all works on a larger group of parts. Because zinc is much more durable with a chromate layer, most durable being the yellow chromate, the blue(white) and black being just a tad more corrosion resistant than zinc alone. I tried something else. The chromates for zinc passivation are of the dangerous kinds. The kind that is not even really known how dangerous they are for our bodies/health in the long term. As I don't want to touch this kind of stuffs, I went to plan b, that is first a layer of zinc and then nickel. A dull dark grey layer went ok on them. (I will try also an alkaline solution to keep it lighter) Then the nickel. I suppose some kind of "brass" alloy got created and it was not the lighter result that nickel alone produces on steel. More like some dark brass.
After cleaning & soft brushing, it was lighter and I could see that the deposit was strong. Just not the color I'd expected. The whole process took 2 hours, 1/2 for the two metals. Not the light clear result I'd wanted, but I know these will not rust again for a long while, which is the point of the whole thing. Keep in mind the above were very badly corroded/rusted.
and then it was really too cold in the garage... I got victims ready for tomorrow so called it a day.
