Plastic mold injection Fiat Grills

Tribalwars

Tribalwars

Ron Smith
I work at a employed owned plastics mold injection company call Con Met. We make all the plastic parts for all of the big trucks such as Freight liner and Kenworth. I was wondering if there is a way to buy the molds for our Fiat X19. Early and late models. Like the hard to get grills. Plastics have came a long ways from the 80's. The newer plastics are so much more durable from sun and more crack resistant and hold the colors better. If there is away to buy these molds from Fiat I am sure I can talk my company in to picking these molds up. Any ideas?:hmm:
 
Bryson City facility?

If OE molds cannot be sourced, what about making molds?

I have a decent condition plastic frt late model frill AND an aluminum grill made by an xweb member that could be used to make molds....
 
Bryson city yes

It cost a lot of money to machine out a mold. we got some molds that are over 100 thousand dollars. That is why I would want to buy the old ones from Fiat. The molds are probably setting in some warehouse some where.
 
I know a guy...

Who may be able to help. Unlikely though as most of the trim bits were outsourced and finding the original mold would be really hard.

I'll check and see what turns up.
 
Overseas

I wish I knew if the parts was molded here in the United States or overseas. Was there any factories here in the US?
 
Nearly all the plastic parts on my X say "Made in Italy"
I'm guessin' the grilles were molded there.
 
Someone just needs to step up and fund one of those 3-D printers, just think of all the little bits and pieces you could reproduce. I think it's 4K to get going with those things?
 
Talk to Chris Obert

SOCAR was the producer of these parts. My understanding from talking with Chris is that the molds are long gone, but anything is possible.

I have an NOS front grill for the '79 on cars that I could lend if there was serious interest in reproducing grills.

-Dean
 
A few years ago I took a late model front air dam/spoiler to an injection molding company near Philadelphia.

The estimator looked at it for a minute, weighed it and said that the mold would cost about $10,000 but after that, each piece made from the mold would cost about $20 each.
 
Tribalwars said:
If there is away to buy these molds from Fiat I am sure I can talk my company in to picking these molds up. Any ideas?:hmm:
Click to expand...

First off, Fiat did not make any X1/9 specific plastic parts.
Bertone hired a company to make them for them. 10 years ago that company contacted me asking if I wanted to buy their old stocks, so I dropped by their warehouse & made the deal.
Outside in the parking lot, the edges of the parking lot was lined with the old tooling. All of it was rusty from sitting outside for years, and a lot of it was broken, either from when it was being used, or from cars & trucks running into it.
It was fun, and very sad, to walk around the tooling and try to identify what specific part it was for. They didn't want to let the tooling go (I guess it does a good job of defining the parking lot size!), but when we found the 1979-88 front grill tooling, it was unbroken. And we made a deal right there & bought it.
It took a lot of work and cash to fix the tooling so we could do another production run, but we did.

I can't see it being worth the time to try to buy any more of those parking lot stops, if they havn't been recycled since. So your back to making the tooling off old parts.

Chris Obert
 
Thanks Chris Obert

Maybe I can round up some parts and take them to my engineering dept and get them measured up and get a price on getting some molds made. If there is anyone interested in trying to do this please PM me.
 
More proof of what I have been saying about the exxe for years. This car is really a Bertone product branded Fiat. The exxe is and always has been a low production, low cost Bertone exotic product, it was never really a Fiat even if Fiat provided technical aid and mechanical bits for it's production.


Bernice


Chris Obert said:
First off, Fiat did not make any X1/9 specific plastic parts.
Bertone hired a company to make them for them.

Chris Obert
Click to expand...
 
Just a thought....

Instead of creating tooling, take it to a shop and have them do a detailed measurement using a 3 axis measuring tool and create a 3d model which can then be used in a 3D printer or a 5 axis milling machine to make a cheap total loss mold...
 
I'm less familiar with the European auto industry, but worked for GM and had (have) friends at Ford and Chrysler for years.

It's very common for a car company to farm-out components, sub assemblies, etc. Especially piece-parts like grills, bumpers, etc. And the body designers/builders have always worked closely with the OEM to engineer, produce, and market their finished products.

Fisher Body was a coach (body) builder for several US auto companies and then Durrant invested majority share in them to gain influence for GM. They were eventually brought-into the GM corporate structure.

The X1/9 Bertone/Fiat arrangement doesn't seem that different to me.

Rupunzell said:
More proof of what I have been saying about the exxe for years. This car is really a Bertone product branded Fiat. The exxe is and always has been a low production, low cost Bertone exotic product, it was never really a Fiat even if Fiat provided technical aid and mechanical bits for it's production.


Bernice
Click to expand...
 
Funny Story

Just a few days before I was going to Europe during a summer break from college someone backed into my X in the bank parking lot. Not a lot of damage, but they broke the driver's side turn signal lens.

I was told it would take months to get a replacement, this was in 1984 and I didn't know anything about other parts sellers in the US. Anyway I figured I could get one while I was in Italy.

I went to a Fiat dealership in Milan. The guy spoke no English, but I found a photo of an X1/9 and explained as best I could what I was looking for. The guy called the Bertone factory and put me on the phone with someone who did speak English who said I needed to get to Turin that day to get the part as the factory was closing for the month of August.

I made it to the factory and the guy I had spoken with was the head of N.A. marketing for Bertone. I explained that I as looking for a single lens. He and a helper came back a few minutes later with a complete set of lenses off a car. I always guessed that they just went out and stole a set off the production line.

Basically what I understood was that Bertone built the cars with the drivetrains, and some other bits sourced from Fiat. Of course this was in '84 after Fiat had pulled out of the US market, so who knows how long they had been doing this.

I would agree with Bernice's assessment though that Bertone was the coachbuilder all along for these cars. Weren't the spiders built in a smiliar manner by Pininfarina?
 
I would prefer metal parts rather than plastic as that stay longer time and is durable too.
 
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