Reproduction parts

[ozbox]

i would like a broad opinion on what people think of the quality of the repro parts available...

doesnt have to be for vans/utes in particular ...

[stickthis]

Well I guess I can mention all the different types of decals on the market. Many are digital printed (designed for office books) very few are screen printed.

Many are imported and not many made in Australia. Here is a pic of a decal. China import. A bloke fitted it to his car. tried many many times with new ones. All from the same supplier. Who will remain unnamed.
He was cleaning it correctly etc etc. No reason why it should have have stuck. It was a freshly painted surface even. He would stick it. It would look great. Then when he came out in the morning this is what it looked like. Seems its made from poor quality vinyl is all I can think.
I gave him a couple of mine to try. First one stuck and hasn't come unstuck since. He did nothing different with application.

I guess Im biest but thought I may as well share it.


On other repro parts. I find some of the larger companies like the Rare Spares, their parts seem to be good. But it seems they do not have the time to get every little thing 100%. Which is fair enough. Some of the little guys out there specializing in a curtain style of part being plastics, rubber, decals, etc you see to be able to get a better quality part. Sometimes you pay a little more, sometimes they are cheaper.


Cheers
Jason

[Absinth]

Some parts are good, some are not so good and some... like the decal above ... are crap.... Overall most are definately better than nothing at all.

Many seem to complain about poor fitting..... I find this amusing as we are talking about 30+ year old cars here that have been pranged, driven hard over poor roads and generally well used.... even genuine Nos GMH parts fit poorly on most of these cars and need some tweaking.

In 83 I bought a new floor pan from Holden to replace the rusted out one in my 72 HQ tonner... I had to trim here and hammer there to get it to fit properly.

In 99 I re-built my HJ ute using a HX donor ute.... try as I might I could not get the complete GTS dash out of the HJ to fit properly and all line up in the HX...... I also had to cut and modify the rear tail light section to get the tailgate to fit properly....

Making parts fit correctly is all part of restoring an old car......

[stickthis]

"Making parts fit correctly is all part of restoring an old car...... "

very well said (notice this guy getting used heaps lately so thought id though it in there too!)