Chrom Trim ? Thanks Received!

Stan said:
Buy (or barter for) those hard mailing tubes or a long piece of PVC pipe.
Koopman, PM to bfeng as I think he has a piece. When I get home I will look to see if he sent it back to me.
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Hi Stan;
I believe you were looking for the strips. I have two coming in a few days and they will be for you. Also from what I understand is aluminum can be stretched. Someone mentioned that the Bavaria strips are a bit short.
Just a thought.
Koopman
 
Stan provided me with a short sample about 2 years ago. I send dimensions out to a number of domestic places to see what it would cost to have them reproduced. The people who make new repro trim for old American cars were not interested because the market potential was too small. In metal, I found places that would produce these by drawing them out of sheet stock over a die, and then cutting them to length and finishing the ends. I'm sure they could be machined out of solid stock or extruded. Speaking of extrusions, I found one place that offered to reproduce them in chromed plastic. The problem we (Stan and I) found at the time is the cost of tooling. It came out to something like $10-$20/foot if we made an initial run of 1000ft. You can figure the cost increase if we did 1/2 or 1/4 of that. If I were still traveling to China often, I do believe we could get someone to make these up for a lot less. I wonder if there are specialists in Europe who could do this for us. If you can find a way to piece together short lengths, we could 3-D print them (lots of public libraries are starting to provide 3-D printing services cheaply).

John
 
bfeng said:
Stan provided me with a short sample about 2 years ago. I send dimensions out to a number of domestic places to see what it would cost to have them reproduced. The people who make new repro trim for old American cars were not interested because the market potential was too small. In metal, I found places that would produce these by drawing them out of sheet stock over a die, and then cutting them to length and finishing the ends. I'm sure they could be machined out of solid stock or extruded. Speaking of extrusions, I found one place that offered to reproduce them in chromed plastic. The problem we (Stan and I) found at the time is the cost of tooling. It came out to something like $10-$20/foot if we made an initial run of 1000ft. You can figure the cost increase if we did 1/2 or 1/4 of that. If I were still traveling to China often, I do believe we could get someone to make these up for a lot less. I wonder if there are specialists in Europe who could do this for us. If you can find a way to piece together short lengths, we could 3-D print them (lots of public libraries are starting to provide 3-D printing services cheaply).

John
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John,

I'll take a swag at what it would cost to 3D print. The main issue is that the trim will greatly exceed the bounding box of commercial printers, certainly for public libraries (which is lower quality and more expensive than a commercial printer anyway). They do make 3D printers that work like a conveyor for long pieces. The cheapest option for this would be to
print in plastic and wrap with chrome vinyl which is sold by the yard. I bought some gold chrome to play around with and it's tougher to work with than I anticipated for small parts.
 
sounds like the best way to go as everything is plastic chromed tape these days
and it works really well.
 
it seems to me that the original configuration really allows you to put the clips wherever you want to - by sliding them down the trim. this allows you to move the holes if your door panel card is damaged. in reality if you look at the holes in 2 cards from different periods, the holes are not in the same place ... at least this is true in the ones that i have.

luckily the long trims that i have are in good shape ... i also need longer rear trims. the thought has occurred to me to cut down some damaged long front trims and hide the cut ends behind the arm rests.

it seems to me that the originals are extruded or roll formed, then plated. the ends appear to be press molded or hammered in a form. it does seem that the extruded solid idea could be good with small tapped screws on the back side - the thought is you would need to find a small screw with a large head (to keep from pulling thru the board.
 
I was thinking of one solid piece of aluminum. Use that blue painter's tape to locate the strip then, when the door card is removed mark the locations of the holes on the strip with a marker (make new ones if they are all torn up) bore shallow pilot holes then screw on using a washer to prevent tears.
Of course step one, make the strip, is still not done
 
Markos said:
John,

I'll take a swag at what it would cost to 3D print. The main issue is that the trim will greatly exceed the bounding box of commercial printers, certainly for public libraries (which is lower quality and more expensive than a commercial printer anyway). They do make 3D printers that work like a conveyor for long pieces. The cheapest option for this would be to
print in plastic and wrap with chrome vinyl which is sold by the yard. I bought some gold chrome to play around with and it's tougher to work with than I anticipated for small parts.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was pretty excited to hear I could do 3-D printing at a nearby library for only the cost of the actual materal (something like $5 for a plastic part the size of a coffee cup). That's really cheap. But yes these printers are limited in size. When we do bigger parts at work, we still run into size limitations and sometimes have to "assemble" smaller parts into larger parts (e.g. glue together). Is 3-D printing really viable beyond doing a few sets?

When Stan and I looked into this a couple years ago, I considered throwing $10k at funding an initial run of trim, but there just didn't seem to be enough interest here to make it a break even proposition. Ditto on reproducing complete, high quality tail light assemblies or rear bumper under-riders. Besides, now that I'm dabbling in racing, the hobby fund seems to always be a little short of funds, and I'm no longer in a position to make a big investment like that without knowing the entire run is spoken for.

I experienced the same thing with old Alfa's. I had a guy lined up to make a run of 200 chromed brass grills for 750 series Alfa's. The price at that quantity was going to be nearly 40% less than any of the existing commercial vendors, and the part quality would've been equal or better. Guess how many takers I got? Less than 50 people.

John
 
Markos said:
You could probably use metal thumb tacks instead of the steel tack strip. You'd have to snip the heads square... Admittedly, I'm a little nervous that mine are so buried. Hopefully they aren't bent. I need a place to store all of these fragile aluminum bits!
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Buy a length of pvc PIPE and store them in it.
 
Stan said:
Buy (or barter for) those hard mailing tubes or a long piece of PVC pipe.
Koopman, PM to bfeng as I think he has a piece. When I get home I will look to see if he sent it back to me.
Click to expand...
Hi Stan:
I just purchased a roll of the waterpoof chrom tape used for ducts and pipeing. I tied a piece on molding I had and wrapped it with a piece of this tape and believe it or not it looks like new.
I will send you a photo once I do a longe piece and tr to use heat to take out an wrinkles.
Koopman







I
 
Koopman said:
Hi Stan:
I just purchased a roll of the waterpoof chrom tape used for ducts and pipeing. I tied a piece on molding I had and wrapped it with a piece of this tape and believe it or not it looks like new.
I will send you a photo once I do a longe piece and tr to use heat to take out an wrinkles.
Koopman
I
Click to expand...

That tape is made of aluminum if you got the good stuff.
 
Good thread on a sorely needed part for many guys.

On one of my cars, somebody cut speaker holes right into the door card splitting that piece into two shorter pieces, I would imagine not unusual in the 70s.

While this certainly won't make any difference to your decision making. But, If any of you kind gents do manage to make a run of these, count me in for two pairs, I need one set and its always nice to have a spare for later.

Maybe worth asking the question of the forum, how many would be interested, before you all spend a great deal of time on it?

Pete
 
Thanks for pursuing this Stan . I too would be happy with something that simply looks appropriate/similar and more robust than the original trim . Unless one is headed to Pebble Beach, our cars are often put together ( or held together !) with compromises. Simon
 
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