69 Z-28 CrossRam on Ebay

[70 copo]

Charlie,

Consistant with my understanding of what is coming. Seems that there is a race on to see who can repop the first good quality pieces.

He is also coming out with other reproductions soon.

Phil

[Born30YrsLate]

I believe this guy is already repopping the first gen camaro big block 4-speed cross members...

[Charley Lillard]

He showed me his big block crossmember at Carlisle and it was a very nice piece. Also showed me a very nice 69 Radiator.

[Salvatore]

Obviously we know who we are talking about. Has some nice repo items already. Made in AMERICA!

[firstgenaddict]

Yea the radiator looks very good. Tanks, necks, and tags all look oem.

[hugger_69]

Yes,

Obviously the seller is well known to many of us but I was not aware that he planned to release repop manifolds in the near future as mentioned above. What I do know is that another eBay power seller from Chicago recently listed a cloned crossram on eBay and it sold for a decent dollar c/w dated 4295 carbs. The intake itself looked like an Offy with mods and the big thing was the fact that it had a casting date on the underside, a winters snowflake, and a GM part number. The base was an Offy without any markings and he stated right in the ad that the top plate was freshly machined as a clone.

While it looked real from the logo and markings, this seller failed to note that the front and rear overhangs should have been drilled and tapped for the 4th bolt hole, and the webbing around the distributor hole was too obvious to being an OFFY design as well. Either way, this obviously shows that the money for GM Intakes is driving the market and obviously there are people who will want to buy the clones for a fraction of the cost.

I know another carb rebuilder making near perfect clones of the 4295 carbs so what part is next? A good friend and I modified an Offy for my car and did the same with a new pair of Holley 600's. The intake was stripped of logo's, converted for a gm type linkage, and I ordered a set of the progressive throttle shafts made to clone the 4295's. You tell me what you think of this setup at about 3500.00 vs 20K for an NOS piece. The only thing we did not do was attempt to add a snow flake or part number, not that it can't be done. Its just a moral thing I guess.

[dante]

the gentleman you all are refering to was able to hunt down the orginal patterns for the GM intake......the new ones will be based on those patterns with impeccable maching.....something like 40 different processes......holley is about to reproduce the 4295 carbs also and GM is ready to reintroduce the correct cam.....you will be able to buy a complete perfect knock off set up for about $8500 very shortly.......also perfect 69 RS fenders that are straighter and fit better than orginal GM units for $1200 per pair.......waaaaaay better than $2600 for an NOS pair and a better product to boot......stamped right in the good old USA near detroit

[dante]

just a follow up.....jim is making a bold move, not to mention a HUGE investment to start reproducing these parts.....i for one applaud the move and hope he does well....hopefully this will start to bring the value of some cars back down to where they belong.....IMO the only cars that should bring the mega bucks are the ones with full docs.....now that people know there are perfect reproduction parts out there unless a car has full docs you have to assume that there is a strong likelyhood that a crossram set up is a repop and you will pay accordingly for the car......and if you want a package for your own car isn't $8500 alot better than almost $23,000.....by the way, he will be making 69 deck lids too.

[jfkheat]

Are there legal issues repoping these parts? Can they legally reproduce the snowflake, GM part numbers and casting dates? Are these exact reproductions? One problem I can see happening is that someone can have a documented crossram car that no longer has the crossram. They can install one of these repoped ones for $8K and have a $100K plus car.
James

[Jeff H]

Technically, there is no such thing as a documented cross-ram car. It was an over the counter dealer option so it would not be a factory installed option. I know there are cars out there with documentation showing the crossram being ordered with the car so that would be the closest thing. If a repop crossram setup is going to cost $8500 or more, then you might as well step up and get an original GM crossram. A repop setup would have to sell for around $5000 to make it worth buying instead of an original setup. I keep thinking about selling my setup with the GM fiberglass hood, TI stuff, Stahl factory style headers, radio delete, heater delete and Minilite repops to help offset the cost of my JL8's restoration. But every time I think about selling, I think that it would cost even more in the future if I did want to add the stuff.