Hey Mike - if it makes you feel any better, I still have the 68/69 core support patches you made and I bought in the never opened box you shipped them in sitting on my shelf. Didn't need them then ... Dont need them now for either car and also have a mint '69 core support in the rafters ... but I bought them anyway. Shoot me a real good deal on 10 console lids ... my take on this - guys who know the need these AND are going to do a resto AND have the money should have bought them, along with the resto shops catering to Buick - guys like Mike and Kliener etc who KNOW they are going to need them for a customer in the not so distant future. Do you think there are 10 shops that cater to 70-72 Sky/GS's ? if each bought 3 sets ...
Reproduction fenders are not made. I have listed two pairs of NOS 70-72 A body Buick fenders on V8Buick for 6 months. No interest has been shown. This illustrates the low demand for sheet metal that often needs lots of repair and/or replacement.
Us Buick Fan's have to realize that we're a dying breed. Take a 25 - 30 Year old guy that decides he wants to buy a say '67 Model car. Look's over what's avaiable. Likes the usual Camaro, Chevelle, Mustang. Then see's a '67 GS 400 and fall's in love with it, Want's One. So he peruses the Car mags for a write-up on One. Can't find much even if he goes through a few years of back issues. But still really likes that GS. Then he'll look again and see what is reproduced for that car. Nothing. He will figger, what will happen if he is at a Stop sign and someone looking through the steering wheel plows into his rear end? The car will be totalled. No matter how much he likes it, it's toast. Then he decides on say a '67 Camaro. He'll dig through those same Mags and see all kinds of articles and Repro parts being made for that Year Camaro. Will he still go for the GS? I dont think so. We are going to have to ask ourselves, Is it worth pouring money into our cars and taking a chance on it getting hit? I'll take the chance. I didn't buy my Skylark to sit in my garage hoping it will double in value in a few Years, it wont. I take the chance and drive it. I have an appraised value through my Ins Co of 16000. So if things get so bad I cant find parts for it, I might get in close contact with a country road tree, take the money and buy a different brand car. I dont like the idea of that but what are you going to do? I worked at The Buick for 35 Years and have always had One. But take that money and more than double it, I can buy a new One. I dont like the idea of doing that either. So what's a Buick Guy gonna do? I'll drive mine until it just falls apart and say so-long, it's been a nice ride. PONCH
... my take on this - guys who know the need these AND are going to do a resto AND have the money should have bought them, along with the resto shops catering to Buick - guys like Mike and Kliener etc who KNOW they are going to need them for a customer in the not so distant future. Do you think there are 10 shops that cater to 70-72 Sky/GS's ? if each bought 3 sets ...[/QUOTE] I just put my order in for 6 sets at $400 if they were still $700 I would not be interested. Price matters before they were over priced now they are properly priced.
My take is just that ...when pricing is right sales will be made. When holding out for big money you must expect to sit and wait. I bought a new AMD radiator support for $525.00 delivered off Ebay. I just ordered a set of quarters and outer wheel house, just in case I ever decide to restore my GSX @ $400.00 ....I'm in! Thanks Mark @ Then & Now
Yeah, im pretty much in the same boat. No garage, cheap tools, and every bit of money I come across goes straight into college. Of course, I'm getting a degree in criminal justice, so after I graduate, I'll just be swimming in dough. Every hot rod I ever own is going to be a budget hotrod, so I dont buy new stuff, I make do with old, cheap, secondhand stuff. My grandpa was known for being able to keep a truck running on nothing more than baling twine, wire, and duct tape.(I don't use any of those things, so don't be calling the Buick Protection Agency on me, or anything. :laugh
Jim, Do you still have the fenders for sale and how much for the pair. I have the set that has the archs were welded in flat. Gary
Well this is a really old thread, but that also somewhat makes my point if you'll bear with me - I'd like to see these parts made again. I manufacture product and everything everyone said about dies, manufacturing etc. is correct. We brought our manufacturing in-house in '06 and really didn't start cranking it up until 07 when sharply rising oil and raw material prices preceded the big crash in 08 so what's been said about timing is even more true - It couldn't have been worse for me and in this case for AMD. Capital for small businesses dried up and for many, myself included, our credit was shot too so even as business picked back up over the years, we couldn't afford to finance it and had to come back very slowly. The missed opportunities are the worst part, but we survived to fight another day and things are finally looking better. There were many a days when I didn't know how we were going to get through the next week, but we did. I sold all my cars (70 GSX, 70 Stg. 1 4-sp, 70 350 4-sp, 71 350, 69 Sportwagon 400, 68 Jeep M-715) and my huge hoard of NOS (and used) parts to keep my business alive, not to mention losing a couple of houses (rented for the 1st time in my life) and my wife and I drove junk (I still do). Fortunately my wife makes decent $ and believed in me and and we saved the business. I figured if it went under, I'd have to sell it all anyway & get a real job instead the 80-100 hours/ week I was putting in for no pay. The only solace was knowing I wasn't the only one going through it and I feel blessed to have come out the other side - a lot of people didn't and despite what the government tells us, the economy is still barely limping along. When money was good, I was someone who would (and did) buy parts just to have because I could get them - I loved buying parts and there really were no repros with few exceptions (Thanks to Duane we could get good quality interiors) so we bought every NOS part we could get. So my point here is that not only could I not have afforded to buy the reproduction parts talked about in this thread when they were available, but I was basically out of the hobby totally for the past 10 years and didn't even know about them until tonight! Last I knew Mark Reeves had just come out with a patch panel for RF inner fenders and I think there were some decent quality 70 rear bumper plates on the market (are they still avail.?). I am just now getting back into cars for the first time in 10 years and probably not the only one and I just started coming back on here in the past couple weeks. I've thought about pursuing other makes of cars since I have a clean slate, but always come back to wanting another GS. I'm starting to look for a car and shudder at the thought of buying a car that needs hardly any parts. Back in the day, it never deterred us. I stumbled on this thread while searching for something and upon reading it the first thing I did was go to AMD's website to see if any of this stuff was still available and of course its not exc. the RF inner fenders, which I'll be ordering a couple of on Monday and I don't even have a GS right now. AMD is certainly a capitalist/entrepreneurial company or they would have never done any of this in the first place and they have to realize that their timing was awful. I've looked at projects in the past and am currently looking at developing products where I'd either have to take deposits to finance the project, or would at least want to just to make sure we could recoup our development costs and my customers are for the most part willing to put up the money and wait. Look at the deposits Tesla just took on a car that won't be available for years. I've been watching the market and it seems like the market for Buicks, at least 70-72 GS's, is reasonably strong and getting stronger. I would think, and the only way we'll find out is to ask - On here first and then AMD, that if enough people got together and were willing to put up a deposit and if the dies are still available that AMD would at least consider making another run of these (namely Full Quarters and Core Supports). I think that the resto shops and/or parts vendors specializing in these cars would need to be a big part of the equation. It would have to be some type of group purchase and would take some marketing and people willing to put up a deposit and wait with the shops/parts vendors getting a better price based on qty ordered. I think the GSCA did something like this at one time with M/T repro headers and looked at doing it with 71 grills (NOS were always expensive, even back in the 80's) but couldn't get enough people to commit (i.e. put their money where their mouth was) which as many have noted in this thread is part of the problem, but that's a topic for another thread. If I were AMD and I was approached with this, I would look at the the the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) from my vendor and probably set the MOQ for a group purchase at half that quantity and the pricing such that I would recoup the entire cost of the run and wind up with the parts I was going to keep in inventory (i.e. half the run) at more or less no cost figuring it would trickle out. I have no idea where that would put the cost to us, but that's where I'd start my calculation and then if I thought the price was too high to support it, I might massage the numbers a little bit to make it come out to a workable solution. That's my two cents - Thanks for reading. Thoughts? Anyone interested?
The problem with buying parts and storing them is no way to know if they fit or work until you go to use them. I bought a new in dash tach that never worked, a complete body mount set that was missing two mounts and hardware. When I contacted the parts supplier they made a valid point you bought those parts a year ago or longer. But I gathered the parts to do that particular job. So now I try to wait until I am ready to use what parts I buy. I hope those quarters I bought several years ago for the X will fit when time comes to get them out of storage.
I had it happen too unfortunately - both with some of the junk repro parts that were available and also NOS parts to a lesser extent. I remember doing the body offs on my 70 350 4-sp and my friend's 71 455 (he's on here and was also a parts hoarder) and we'd run into repro parts that we're so lousy that we'd put the best used parts we had on instead and then add it to our list of what to look for and start hunting for and hoarding good used versions of. Back then we could buy Skylark parts cars for what people want for one part off one of those same cars today. From what I read on here, it seems like the AMD parts are darn good and at least in the case of the quarters almost if not on par with NOS which is why we need to support them IF they'll ever do this again. Unfortunately, in their business, even with the market they serve, you have to look at inventory turns (i.e. how long does it take to turn you inventory over). 90 days (or less) is the goal and on something so specialized like this, I would guess that could probably be stretched out to maybe a year, but then that has to be priced into the part considering their money is tied up for that long, which is an added cost. Of course also factored in would be the quantity they are producing per run. As Mike said, in the case of Buick parts, you're only going to order the MOQ. It costs the same amount to set up the dies for a Chevelle quarter as it does for a Buick (maybe more since the dies are used infrequently) so if let's say you're going to make double the quantity of Chevelle quarters per run, your setup costs are half the amount per part (even less because you also have to blank the material) and as such we should expect to pay more for Buick parts - T/A being a perfect example of this but thank goodness we have Mike T. willing to to take that risk. I'm not sure I'd do what he does without some upfront deposits. I sure hope he can sell the Alum. 350 heads - Makes me want to build another 350! Has anyone used their AMD core supports and/or rear wheelhouses? If so, any feedback? Tamraz still shows them (RS only on the wheelhouse) in stock and I was thinking if they're good and they do actually have them I'd pick one or two ea. of them up too (never thought I'd hoard repro parts, but...). I had SO many NOS core supports, 70 front bumpers, and 70 & 72 grilles at one time you'd have thought I was in the resto business, but they sure came in handy when I needed the $. Sorry my posts are SO long.
Hard to justify people wanting companies to stick their necks out to reproduce parts when most people don't put any value on project cars with rust issues.
I purchased one of the AMD core supports, fit good, had issue with one hole location on the drivers side but other than that I would purchase another.
I just installed one/still installing. I have a new pass side inner fender as well. The core support seems good, but the inner fender has 3 holes where it bolts to the support that need to be opened up a little.
TPP took over production of the AMD parts I understand . Or at least the importing . DL Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
