Quote:
Originally Posted by tempest1964
John V., is there any update on this project?
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About 10 days ago I finally got a good casting for me to use in my '64 GTO. I am waiting to get a pic of it installed before offering them for sale.
It has been a struggle to get to this point. Since my last post, we tried a couple different materials, suffered thru a bad batch of material that didn't cure and effectively ruined the mold, then reprinted the 3D mold, etc., etc. We continue to struggle to get good castings but my guy thinks he finally has a technique worked out to eliminate air pockets.
When the previous mold was ruined, it wiped out a couple hours of tedious hand sanding that I had expended to try to reduce the appearance of the 3D printing lines in the mold. That was the bad news.
The good news is that we were able to modify the ribbed section of the boot portion of the mold and this time rotated the parting line 90 degrees so that this portion of the casting has the parting line in the same place as the original.
We did not change the parting line in the lower section so that remains different from the original. But for my purposes, it will work fine. Once installed, I think it will be hardly noticeable but waiting for mine to get installed so I can show you all what it looks like at the firewall.
I did spend another couple hours hand sanding the new mold to eliminate the appearance of the printed lines as best I could.
I'm attaching a pic of the one I will be installing in my car with my original retainer which has been replated.
I have already ordered 12 copies. They take about a day each to cure and we only have one mold but the first dozen should be ready soon.
I am not going to sell them until I see mine installed to be sure it will be functionally correct and so you can see what it looks like installed.
I will contact everybody that has indicated an interest in this thread by PM (in the order posted) once I am ready to offer them up if all goes well with mine. I will advise pricing at that time.
I am not able to offer the retainer at this time. I was told that it would be too expensive to make a die to stamp them out. However, I will be sending an illustration (a tracing) showing the dimensions of my retainer so you could make at least a crude facsimile.
I have thought about contacting Ames to see if they can supply the retainer currently available WITHOUT the cut-out for the boot. I haven't reached out to them yet, but if they can do it, this "blank" could pretty easily be cut to the smaller dimension of the 3 rib boot opening I think using my tracing as a guide.
Stay tuned. I may have pix of the boot installed in my GTO perhaps by the end of next week. I'll post them here as soon as I do.
Thanks for the interest.