Technical I hate repro parts that don’t fit

So I am working on my 39 Ford truck so far out of all the repro parts I’ve got only two parts have actually fit it. The parts should be displayed with a disclaimer saying artist rendition of what they think the part actually looks like. Not to scale and major work on it being needed to fit this part including totally remanufacturing it. Pick a brand I’ve used all of them all and none have sent me anything that actually fits without rework. Right now I got around $400 worth of parts in the junk pile because they don’t fit I tried to make them fit so I can’t return them. Plus some of these parts I got a few years ago and they looked good but when it came time to use them the good looks did not translate to a part that actually fits. The latest parts to go on the monument to repro junk is the headlight retainer clips. For a simple piece of wire how did they get it so wrong? May as well have sent me a fork or spoon. The clips they sent me should have a note saying this is what our abstract artist made for you thanks for the money sucker

There is not many places making parts so no mater who I order from I get Bob Drake or vintique and so far Bob Drake is a big fat 0 parts fitted and vintique is 50/50 only because their cut to fit rubber pieces and grommets and half of the door window Chanel kit fitted

 

I had a repop part that fit once and it gave me a heart attack when it did...the misfits just irritated me. I understand your heartburn

 

Pics

 

I put a radiator trim piece on the 32. It did not fit the shell. The emblem bought from the same people would not fit the trim. I filed the emblem until it fit. The next morning I found the emblem on the floor but the soldered emblem mounting screw was still working fine.

 

I've had the same luck with body repair panels for my Model A. They are close, but no cigar. However, I had to replace the lower dog leg by the passenger door on my 57 T-Bird. I got the part from CASCO Thunderbird and it fit perfect and was made of heavy metal. I was amazed.

 

All Chinese junk! That’s the world we live in. Did it to ourselves. Absolute junk!!

 

At least you have something to work with. There are a lot of cars with no repro parts whatsoever.

 

this is a major rant of mine parts that don't fit or bad info in catalogue's I wish more hamb members would review aftermarket parts they buy & install .I think it would help to a lot of us .here is a thread I did
DENNIS CARPENTER 1961 GALAXIE PARTS REVIEW I know drakes 40 vent window locks need drilled out some to go on. second set was way easier to install. I bought some UPAC 32 ford parts all the holes lined up & fit perfect .probably the best repo parts I ever installed.I bought some repo 55 tbird door panels a few years ago not even close to right. last couple days I have installed some old V8 shop running boards not sure how old they were all the holes lined up they were great

 

Sometimes I wonder how good manufacturing was back in the day that you got a new part and it fit perfectly.

 

I wonder how close actual production line parts fit from car to car back then... it couldn't have been very well, all things considered.

 

Yeah I deal with parts all day and I can't get new dealer parts that aren't worth anything sometimes. With today's tech if we got so many issues now. I could only imagine how it was then.

 

Working at a GM dealer ship In late 1990’s and early 2004 i noticed that the OEM fenders for the pick ups took a lot of work to make them fit almost like seconds off the assembly line. But the after market Keystones fit perfect every time. Ford were pretty good. And the Jeep Cherokee you were lucky if you could get a style line to line and the door gaps were terrible . Ever in the late 1920 you could buy after market fenders painted black wrapped on brown paper from places like Fosterer .

 

I can attest to the fact that later model car parts (after market stuff) don't-fit-neither !!!
The (M) word I built is compromise-city....gap here ...hole worng there...can't get part.
Yet it was the MOST built car in one year EVER built!
"Yeah nobody make that re-pop part "... 3 piece window fuzzies over 100 bucks !
The EZ answer is find a 'partz-car'........there's probably 100's of 39 Fords to pick from !!! (YEAH RIGHT!)
Sometimes we just learn "to-settle".
Or walk.
Great thing is most guys today don't know what a 39 Ford pick-up is suppose to look like anyway.
6sally6

 

We got a tour of Bob Drake's operation. He showed us three original Ford hood emblems from the same year/model. All three had different mounting holes and shapes..... so which one do you reproduce?

 

^^^^^yep.

It’s rare I buy a sheet metal part.
I'd rather make my own. To much inconsistency beteeen cars of the same make and year.

 

It’s odd, when I was younger in a truck club, all preTF era doors, hoods, etc looked liked perfect fit. ‘55-9 Chevy trucks were not as good.
Why, I dunno.
But unless the repro place has a complete new untouched (name your car) they base the part off what they get or drawings they come bu

 

10-4 there Anthony,
Customer had bought a Radiator splash apron for his '32 Ford PU..
By the time I sliced and diced that thing to fit,, I could of built one quicker !

 

Having an antique years ago made me wise. Upon seeing parts catalogs for the Model 'T', I quickly tried to make my 'T' tudor complete. That stuff has since lived in my 'archives'.
Any purchase made now comes from another 'T' owners private stash

 

...Good point. Not defending the aftermarket parts, but fit and finish weren't priorities back then. These weren't coach-built cars and stamping dies wore out after building thousands of vehicles. It's no wonder manufacturers changed up cars every year, their tooling was beat up and worn out from the previous model run. And Lord knows, Henry wouldn't throw anything away, just find a way to use up parts inventory the next year! Like I said, not defending the repro parts, some almost fit, some actually do fit and some are complete junk.......Don.

 

Something I've wondered about in the past is how much trial-and-error, remaking, fettling, and fine-tuning is involved in making up tooling for mass production. Whatever there is must certainly factor in tooling costs, and OEMs are as much incentivized to raise those costs as to lower them. While it is in their interest to have a cost advantage over their competitors, it is arguably in their better interest if industry-wide common practice is defined in the most expensive possible terms. Industries have been seeking ever more expensive techniques, apparently for their own sake and counter to sane intuition, for centuries. There are reasons for that.

The seductive question is, if the tooling an OEM eventually uses for production is finished out of Draft 6 of a series of attempts, what happens to Drafts 1-5? Would it be better for an OEM to destroy that tooling, or to sell it off cheaply in the hope that that would result in the market getting flooded with parts made so badly that they cannot even be modified to fit or work? Would that not tend to prop up the prices the OEMs are able to charge for "original" parts — or even reinforce efforts to give them absolute monopolies by banning aftermarket parts?

There is a sweet spot where a product may be made in large enough volumes and for a low enough price that you can break even purely on people buying the product and then throwing it away when it is found not to fit or work or have any use at all. That was most certainly the case with the rear door handle I bought cheaply, brand new, for my DD years ago. There must be some way its manufacturer could afford the tooling for parts which have absolutely zero benefit to anyone except, presumably, themselves.

It would all have been moot if the basis of manufacturing had been that which prevailed in the Edwardian or "brass" era. But we're sitting with the upshot of a long history of industries defining their common practice through the design of their products — hence ever more complex part interfaces, and modern cars' light clusters being all the weird shapes they are. How much code do you need to define that 3D free-form interface? And that not factoring in the effects of thermal expansion, material shrinkage and warpage, etc. in manufacture.

The more complex the interface, the trickier the tooling, the greater the likelihood of getting it wrong. Of course, cui bono from that except the OEMs? But that is what even the most honest repro outfit, operating in the best of faith, has to deal with. They are making stuff expressly designed to be impossible to make, or at least make well, without the OEMs' level of capitalization.

Fixing that would be intrusive as to design and subversive as to intent. In a hot-rodder's universe all part interfaces are flat or cylindrical or, in extreme cases, spherical; and capable of being defined in a few lines of hand-written text (e.g. "five holes tapped M10 on a 100mm PCD") or drawn on one sheet of paper. How ruthlessly would we need to dig into an OEM design to achieve that?

I'd hypothesize, the later the year of manufacture, the more ruthless the needed intervention.

 

Our expectations for quality/fitment of parts after spending serious cash is normal.
Real world....we spin the wheel and take what we get.
So often people will criticize the bank card builds (1-800 re-pro parts on line), yet today the choices of the past no longer exist.
For those of us who grew up with several choices of wrecking yards within an hours drive, pulling off original parts from true viable candidates, it's a tough pill to swallow.
What's the answer?....buy the most complete car/project you can afford, it'll be cheaper in the long run.

 

I make most of the parts myself its mainly the rubber products I buy and hope they are close enough.
I got the headlight retainer clips to save me from making a jig to make them myself. But it looks like I will be making a jig and cutting up some bike spokes

 

So we’re saying 1-800-parts isn’t as EZ as folks say it is

 

Having worked on Chevy AD trucks since 1973 I'd say that over the long run the stamping dies got worn to the point that they weren't that great by the end of the 1953 run. Then it seems that parts from different plants around the country don't always match up with the parts from another plant.
Then you get to what part was used to model the repro part after and how well it fit in the first place.

 

So, you hate 99% of all repro parts!

 

Show us a picture of the headlight retainers that you got, and where you got them so that more of us don't make the same mistake.

 

The only repro parts I've ever bought were for the Studebaker. Classic Enterprises in Wisconsin fabricates them in house and the guys sign them. Are they perfect, well, some fit well, some not as good, but over all I couldn't have formed them as well as they did. If I did another Stude I'd buy from them, although I found there is another guy that doesn't advertise that makes supposedly better parts.

 

on old chevy trucks, from old dealer mechanics who have messaged me over the years, they have told me that the new from GM replacement parts didn't always fit so well back then either.

I dunno if they decide to make a part a different way or what, but it's an age old problem it seems.

 

Too much of what we buy, is an approximation of what it is supposed to be.