Things that piss me off during a rebuild!
Its not nice to bitch about some parts and or suppliers that are used during the rebuild of any car. But!
I do not use the cheapest available parts, but do like a good deal. And try and give my customers the best available parts as it reflects on the finished job.
On a rebuild or resto you can not escape replacing most of the rubber seals on the body.
So I bought a "Complete" rubber kit for the wagon at what was a conciderable amount of money, but it came from the biggest suppliers of repoduction Holden parts in Australia. So you would expect that their components should be the best available.
First thing I found when laying out my purchase, and doing a mental assesment, was that there were quite a few pieces missing. I wont go into my conversations with my supplier and the parent company. In the end I had to buy seperatly from them and a couple of other companies what else was needed
Now we get to the fitting of these rubber components. Some did, others sort of fitted, and the remander I reverted to a lot of stuffing around and adding or making pieces to do the job.
One comment i heard a few times was "You would not understand whats involved in producing parts like this" But I do! in the late 70's and 80's we had a manufacturing buisness that supplied repoduction rubber components for a make of car I will not mention. We made everything here in OZ, as we have with everything we have done in the past 30 odd years. And set levels of quality and controll.
Here are some of the things I had to rectify or change
the front screen was in more times that I wish to mention, moulds would not sit properly and the screen would not seat into position as it should. I aquired another screen rubber from the same supplier that when measured was 25mm shorter than the one I was trying to fit. This new rubber fitted way better.
Have a look at the "NEW " tailgate rubber. no way would that ever seal. So another was supplied, over a week later when they could find one good enough to send. Looked and fitted better but leaked like you would not believe. I spent two full days reworking the complete upper and lower rubbers to get better fit and seal. Plus repainting area after removing the first lot of rubbers
And this is time you can not charge the customer for, a s he is paying good money for a component that should only need fitting once
Its extremly frustrating that so much repoduction material is not 100% correct concidering the investment some companies put into production. Almost there is not good enough today with the technology we have. How hard is it to replicate something made 50 years ago. Very hard by what I have seen in the last ten or so years.
