rarity of special chromed vs standard painted items

[holdenutechick]

I'm being pressured to fit chromed pieces to my ute but I like the simple standard look, I'm having trouble finding standard headlight surrounds (I think mine are chromed) also have noticed though I have sourced a standard dash and radio blanking plate these were hard to find.

any particular reason standard trims are hard to find?

[choppedfan]

Not sure how hard standard trim pieces are to find but I do know if it's your car tell people you'll build it however you want,

Your car, your time, your money

Mick

[Trev]

Just paint the special items to look like standard ones.

[Devilrod]

If your restoring it do it how it's meant to be otherwise do it the way you want. Your car your choice in the end.

[reddo]

Yo..
Been surfing back over old posts tonight.
If you are still chasing a pair of standard headlight surrrounds ... i have a pair of Honey Beige ones off my FB van.
Also the van still has the painted mild steel windscreen surround. flakey paint /minor pitting in a few patches but not too shabby.
I plan on respraying the van sometime in the first half of the new year,,,,once i get it back on the road .. been sticking a 5 speed in there and "de-side windowing" it.

Happy to swap headlight surrounds and windsreen surrounds ( screen surrounds wont be available until i start on the rust and respray) for a good complete staino windscreen surround... Your surrounds need to have no creases ...no dings and be all there including the centre top join up clip...
Dunno if i would call emthe standard bits rare.... just that my van has been modified so far from standardnow that it doesnt matter a rats to me now if i onsell / swap the bits ya need .

Reddo.. the mangler / modifier... Hey... My FJ Ute is pretty much stock.. go easy on me.

[MeFB]

any particular reason standard trims are hard to find?

Yep, very few standards were made. Most were specials.

Just ask Steve J.

[holdenutechick]

Happy to swap headlight surrounds and windsreen surrounds ( screen surrounds wont be available until i start on the rust and respray) for a good complete staino windscreen surround... Your surrounds need to have no creases ...no dings and be all there including the centre top join up clip...

my windscreen surrounds is a complete set I even have some extra pieces, if your set is complete I wouldn't mind doing a trade, as far as I can remember (not being near the ute at the moment) the chrome is good I can probably take the pieces with me to the Nationals if you are going and trade there, due to the distance between us probably meeting up in person might be a bit difficult drop me a PM we can discuss it further

[MeFB]

any particular reason standard trims are hard to find?

Yep, very few standards were made. Most were specials.

Just ask Steve J.

Yes in this day and age a standard is a rare car (so are specials), but this is due to these factors, not low production - Steve uses the term 'Rare' loosely in a modern sense to assist with his marketing

Have a look at the street shots in the archive picture theads - no shortage of standards and commercials

It's interesting to look at the production figures that Steve has estimated on his spreadsheet here: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4651&hilit=production+figures

We don't see too many FB/EKs over here in WA of any type

I'll see if I can catch up with Seb when I'm back in Perth and take a look at his FB. Now there's an original condition standard I doubt he's swapped any of the painted bits for chrome

[Aussie Bob]

More work on the spread sheet is happening as I type! The more info we can ad to the spread sheet, the clearer we can identify production numbers. Tim has been a great help here.

The corrections are being adjusted as I go and I am sending PM's to many members asking for chassis and engine numbers.

in conversation, I use the term "Standard" mainly about 215 sedans. I usually call Vans and Utes by those names ... I know they are standards.

By looking at the highest chassis numbers from each town, I can safely guess less than 20,000 215's were made.

The current figures, which are very close ... FB 215's at 10,000 and EK 215's at 6,000 .... 16,000 is a lot of cars, though, at 320,000+ FB-EK's, you can see why there are very few that have survived, when you see how many FB-EK are left now. 5% of initial production were 215 standards. 219 are proving very hard to figure. hardly any have been entered.

That makes them Rare Did I say that

Steve

[MeFB]

I know this has probably been a much talked about topic, but why didn't GMH keep the record from this era? It's just mind-boggling that they don't have production figures noted somewhere.

Did they just throw all their company records in a skip or something?

[MeFB]

D'oh

[EK DAZ]

Hi Folks, I do know that the GMH records for all NZ assembled cars for FE/FC and FB/EK models suvive. I haven't seen the FB/EK records,but have held and read thru the FE/FC ones. These were a hand written ledgers giving colours,body no's,engine no's, the date of dispatch from the plant and the name of the ship the vehicles were loaded onto for despatch as well as the dealers that the vehicle was bound for.At the time I had an FC sedan which was the 47th body and these details listed, matched up with the history that I new of.

[MeFB]

Tell the story, tell the story

[vmx-mxr]

I'm being pressured to fit chromed pieces to my ute but I like the simple standard look, I'm having trouble finding standard headlight surrounds (I think mine are chromed) also have noticed though I have sourced a standard dash and radio blanking plate these were hard to find.

any particular reason standard trims are hard to find?

Allison

You should be able to source plenty of cheap but tired chromed bits although most will have the usual flaws like blistering etc but if they are stripped by a quality elecro-plater (shouldn't cost much for that) you will be back to having the bare bones for what you want for little outlay. If someone in town has a bead blasting cabinet a light going over won't hurt to ensure the surface is paint ready but make sure they use glass bead not garnet or aluminium oxide as it may be too harsh for the old alloys in the parts.

There is no reason you can't use the parts you currently have for the above so they are all prepped the same.

Dave Mac