mjs-13 Posted January 26, 2003 Share Posted January 26, 2003 I spent this weekend in COLD Florida at the NCRS (National Corvette Restorers Society) Winter meet. Next to me in the swap meet was Neal who owns Michigan Corvette Recyclers. Neal is a retired GM engineer (28 Years) who spent much time at the tech center. Neal currently manufacturers a lot of old Corvette/Chevrolet parts with old GM molds/dies or from actual GM blueprints. It pays to know the right people and where to go to get the information. We were talking about our current project cars and I mentioned my Monte Carlo Convertible. Neal then mentioned that several years ago he got a call from GM that they were going to "scap" a bunch of molds/dies and come look at the molds. All 500+ of them! In the bunch were the 4 dies for the Monte Carlo fenders! Since many of these molds/dyes where of no "commercial value" to the restoration market, he passed on most and they were scrapped. By "commercial value" he meant products that could make a profit by reproduction. He said there were some dies for original GM sheet metal that were already reproduced in Taiwan that were now retailed at such a cheap price the reconditioning on the dies would cost more than the potential profit. In this lot of molds/dyes were the original 1st generation Monte Carlo fender dies for left and right/inner and outer dies. He DID tell them to keep those as he wanted those for reproduction since nobody did anything with Monte's. Now, here is the BIG kicker, When the scrap company cleaned out the building they got the 2 inner dies for the left and right fenders that were on one pallet and left the pallet with the outers! When he found out this information he when to the scrap dealer who had already disposed/melted/scaped all the molds/dies. Since the outers were not any good without the inners, he told GM to scrap those also as they were now of no value without the other half. The cost of tooling to make new inner matching dies would not have been ecomonically feasible to invest the money with any payback given the limited market interest (at that time) in 1st generation Monte Carlo's. SO OFF TO SCRAP YARD WENT THE OTHER HALF OF THE DIE! Is this what happened? Knowing Neal I have no doubt this is true. Neal was a design engineer in his career at GM and knows what he is looking at concerning molds/dies. Neal makes all the reproduction Corvette chassis frames/part and many other parts with the original GM dies/molds and gets the GM prints. You can actually buy his reproduction Corvette frame through you local GM dealer as it is available through GM parts. How's that for connected! He has new repo products now in the pipeline. So can we expect Monte fenders to ever be made again with the GM dies. Apparently not! I thought everyone would find this interesting! ------------------ Mike Strinich Nashville, Tennessee 72 Monte Carlo Convertible Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 26, 2003 Share Posted January 26, 2003 That is a very Sad story ------------------ My 1970 Monte Restore Pages LLOYD@FIRSTGENERATIONMONTECARLO.COM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 26, 2003 Share Posted January 26, 2003 I know what I'm doing this year. I'm going to locate all the front fenders for these cars I can and repair them! Thats story just plain sucks! What a let down. I guess the only repo fneders that would be available now would have to be in fiberglass. Man this kinda bums me out, I was hoping that GM down the road or someone would pick up where GM left off, guess not now. Would'nt GM have more than one set of molds though? Jon. ------------------ Go Mizzou Tigers!!! 1970 Monte Carlo Jaguar Racing Green Buckets with Factory Tach 406 s/b, Vortec Heads, Edelbrock Airgap RPM Intake 350 Turbo Trans. Eaton Posi Ten Bolt 3.73 gear 13Sec.@103MPH. 1/4 Mile Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KLASSIK1 Posted January 27, 2003 Share Posted January 27, 2003 most likely the dies were worn and not repairable in most cases the dies that make reproduction parts were remade from existing NOS parts after millions of hits the dies are just plain junk ask anyone in the tooling business , i measure car parts for a living mostly new stuff but right now i am reverse engineering a 70 mopar grille from a NOS part and new tooling will be produced from this part , so no big deal if anyone wants to make a die for 70-72 fenders let me know and i will gladly measure a NOS fender for them , i just dont believe the demand is there to cover the cost of tooling and liscensing thru GM i may be wrong but i believe they would have to get 500-700 per fender if they did ,at that price 2000 thousand fenders sold would not recoupe the investment Leo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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