ell this month we are going to get back to our regular article. The theme for this month's article is "do I buy a new part or do I restore the old one". One of the more common mistakes that people will make when restoring his or her ride is thinking I can buy everything new. Well you can't. I do not care what car or truck you are building, but there are some items you can not buy new and probably will never be able to buy. For example, seat trim or 1962-64 Impala bucket seats, not going to happen. Or the rear seat out of 1957 Nomad wagon. Items like this are never going to exist in the reproduction world, so you must hang to them. If you will refer to February 2007 article I go into detail about saving items and bagging, boxing, etc.

Once you have determined the items that you can not buy and the ones that you can. You can move to the pile of parts that you can buy new. Look at them. If it is a chrome item and is not pitted or rusted through check into having it plated. The only items I do not recommend doing this to are grilles and anything made out of pot metal. Replated grilles will never look as good as one that is brand new. All of the little holes and curves are a pain to replate once a grille has been disassembled. Pot metal is a pain, and I wish that GM had never used it. Don't ask me about the process that you use to replate pot metal, I just know that it is different and 95% of all chrome shops use words like ten foot pole when talking about pot metal. So my suggestion is buying what pot metal items I can new. Bumpers are an item that I am on the fence about. If you are just trying to build a nice car that you take the family out in and take to some local car shows then I would buy a new bumper. You can buy a new one usually much cheaper than you can ever have one plated. However, if you are trying to build that 1000 point show ride, then take it to a plating shop and remember when it comes to plating you get what you pay for. If you are getting pricing of say $500 to replate your bumper and someone suddenly says they will do it for $150, I would be very suspicious of that. You are more than likely going to get something that either looks like junk or the person who quoted it didn't know what they were doing.

A big reason for making the decision on whether to restore and item or just buy a new one is cost. If I can buy an item for $25 or it will take me two days to restore it, the answer is simple buy it. I don't know about you buy my time is worth more than $25 over two days. But if the same item is going to cost you $500 and you can restore it in two days then you restore it. My way of thinking is I can apply that $500 to many other items or use toward the cost of having something restored.

Well this article we are keeping short this month. In closing Herman and I would just like to thank all of our customers over this year and the many more that have bought parts from us over the past twenty years a big thank you. You are what makes this job fun and exciting for us. Please keep the questions coming and we hope that you have a happy holiday season and try to remember this time of year is about giving and helping those that are less fortunate than ourselves. Tray