Chromed Bottom Bracket Shell???
 

Why chrome a bottom bracket shell if it's just going to be painted over?

I was stripping my new PIF Gianni Motta from JYB :) and found a chrome BB shell. All the other chromed parts - excepting the fork steerer - are exposed (left unpainted). The BB shell was painted. Any point to this?

It is easier to chrome the whole frame by dipping it whole into the plating tanks rather than by just one area at a time. The areas that are to be covered by paint are not polished to the same extent, if even at all, as the paint does not stick as well to the very polished/plated areas. The polishing before plating is the most time intensive and expensive part of the process and the BB area with all it's nooks and crannies is very difficult to get polished properly.

vjp

That's all well and good, but it doesn't fit with this bike. The DS chainstay is chromed with just a small portion of the seatstay, and basically only the dropout is chromed on the NDS. There is no chrome on the rest of the frame.

On other bikes I've stripped, you could basically draw a line across the frame at the stays, fork, etc, that would represent how much got dipped into the plating tank. If you try to envision the dip for the exposed parts on this frame, you'd still have to come back and do the BB shell by itself. And it's nice and shiny, just like the chainstay.

Hello I think some companies used to do as a corrision preventive measure as well. a friend of mine used to have a beautiful Austro Daimler (dark purple w/gold decals and trim) only one CS was polished chrome and only on a sdmall strip on the top. when the idiot stripped all the paint off the who,e frame was a rough chrome.