[screamingchief]

Originally Posted by Mr. P-Body

Pacific Performance has a very nice duplicate of the original, but it's 50% thicker and not 40 years old.

That depends on the specific OE tray your comparing it too...

Food for thought.

Standard OE trays are .035" thick (20 ga.).
This is both the 3/4 and the full length trays.

The "5" factory trays are slightly thicker than those,these were the 455 cid trays.
These trays are only available in the 3/4's configuration.
They are .047" thick (18 ga.).

The aftermarket trays like the PPR tray are usually stated as .053" thick (17 ga. IIRC).

In percentages,the "Std" tray is appx. 66% of the aftermarket tray,thus the aftermarket tray is around 44% thicker than those.

And the "5" tray is appx. 88% of the aftermarket tray,thus the aftermarket tray is around 22% thicker than those.

In my experience,the thinner OE trays are much more failure prone than any of the others,also the failures almost always start along the scraper portion,and then "spread out" from there,so many who use those OE trays elect to remove the scraper portion as SOP and nip that problem area in the bud as they say.

And I fully agree these sheetmetal stampings do not necessarily improve with age like a fine vintage wine or such,so the new aftermarket trays make a ton of sense from that standpoint alone,that is if you choose to run a tray at all.

HTH.