I recently took apart my housings to replace a turn signal switch and they fell apart. They were cracked in several places and reglued previously.

Are there any of these available that are in good shape? If not, is there a way to modify a 911 part to replace my original?

Am I the only person who has had this problem?

"supposedly" AA was making repro units....

there might have been someone else looking into as well....

I sent you an e-mail with links for castings as I promised...not the best, but decent info...

Talk to Doug Waters (ein6er)... he has the mold... or knows someone that does.

Don't' reinvent the wheel.

I may be wrong , but I think he is referring to the upper and lower clam shells.
If so , yes the 911 ones will work, Fit to the dash has an extra opening approx. 1x2 inches on the upper one.
The bottom has two holes in it and a flange you have to trim off.
Horn contact ring etc. are the same use 73 and older 911.
not a perfect fit but better than broken ones for time being.

AA has them as well as the "C" clips. I had an email from George Hussey last night promising new "C" clips to replace my defective ones.

Here's a couple of pictures for comparison. . . .911 on the left, 914/6 installed on a -6 column from 9141430335 (saved by Ed Locke before the car was crushed 5 years ago). "C" trim piece installed on dash.

Thanks for the photo's. I know where I can get the 911 parts. Is AA reliable when they say they are going to duplicate part like this?

The clam shells are metal aren't they?

The "C" clips are plastic and should be easy to manufacture.....

The clam shells are both identical and made of the same plastic that the C clip parts are made from. The mold will be more complicated but not that hard to make.

I was actually thinking about patching up the 911 parts (fill the holes and cuttout portions), making a mold and reproducing them using carbon fiber composite materials. I do this all the time for my race car parts such as engine sheet metal and engine air blockoff plates etc. The only thing hard will be the inside tabs that the screws go through. However, they can be metal tabs that are epoxied to the clam shell after. The texture can be sprayed on and paint applied after.

If AA wants a fortune for these, I might go ahead and make some.

[quote name='oemexp' date='Nov 17 2006, 09:11 AM' post='818214']
The clam shells are both identical and made of the same plastic that the C clip parts are made from. The mold will be more complicated but not that hard to make.

The clamshells are rigid and the "C" trim pieces are more flexible, almost like a vinyl. I gave an original one to an engineer and he made some rigid prototypes that turned out very nice. Form, fit, and function . He was going to try and market them, but lost his desire to continue after AA released theirs. His are much, much nicer. . . .I'll post some side by side comparison photos later on this weekend.

Thanks,

I would like to see that. Do you think there is much demand for these parts out there?

I'm the engineer Wayne was speaking of... I modeled the C clips up in CAD off of the sample Wayne was nice enough to send me. Then built them on our rapid prototyping machine (ABS plastic, not quite as strong as injection molded). But once I saw AA was selling them (for cheaper than I could sell them, I might add) I kinda, as Wayne stated, lost my steam.

The clips I made were fairly durable, and the paint held well, but if you gouge through the paint you could see primer and white plastic.

Pricing is a little up there, our minimum charge for virtually any part off of the prototyper is about $50. Problem!!

-TH

By casting them it would reduce the cost.....

Got it. Modeling the clam shells would be a lot more work and time on an SLA machine than the clips. I'm still thinking my mold idea might be the answer. The best thing is injection molding. AA said they are working on that and might have it working early next year.

Thirding it!

Sometime around 2000 I needed a set of those very same c-clips for my original 914/6 cause to PO lost them.

I'm adding this cause at that time,My wife and I happened to be in Atlanta,and we decided to stop by AA to see wether or not Geroge was as bad as all the online forums made him out to be.All the flaming was directed his way.

Anyway,while I was there I asked George if he had some c-clips he'd sell me for my 6'r.He handed me a box with the repo's,and I held them personally.They were nice.I asked him how much,and he told me eye to eye $150.00 for the pair.Then,here's the worst part,as I reached for the money in my pocket,he tells me he won't sell me a set,cause that's too much for a part
The A-HOLE takes them away,puts them back on the shelf where there were 10-15 other sets sitting,and tells me to find a used set cause only a concours guy would wanna spend that much on a small pice of plastic.
I vowed never to go back,and it took me 4 more years of postings to find a set for my car.

Ron

The problem with injection molding is the startup costs....I've heard of the figure of $20,000 for the mold and then a 5,000 piece min run........with only 3,400 cars built and mabey 1/2 of them left unless someone is planning on a lot of 6 clones you would be sitting on a lot of pieces for a long long time.

I could probably build them, but I'd have to have them in my hand before I'd know for sure.

Yeah, I work at an injection molding shop, the tooling is a little much to swallow for such a limited item. Amortizing that cost into part costs would put individual piece-part prices pretty high unless we could sell a bunch of them!

It'd be somewhere around $10k for the mold I'd wager ($20k sounds a tad high... market tooling prices have dropped thanks to Asia), it needs a slide action to make the interior mounting slot. That adds a bit over the cost of a straight-pull mold.

If we weren't busy as hell, I'd have it built!

-TH

Easier to do them with a compression mold. The set up costs for a limited run are almost negilable. A 100 pieces would probably cover the needs for the next ten years.

Click to view attachment

th

Those look terrific!!! How were they made? What kind of plastic did you use.

Mark

.

Cast urethane, eh? Silicone mold? They look awesome...

I really interested in making a mold and additional clam shell parts. Does anyone out there have 914-6 column surrounds I can buy or borrow to do this with?

Mark

A set of 911 clamshell are on the way for patterns.