Once your list is done I would suggest contacting Layson's and Van's to see if they will contact there suppliers to see if they can get them to make reproduction lenses.
Reproduction Tail Light Lenses
- Thread starter traintech55
- Start date
traintech55
Senior Member
Thanks for the suggestion.
The big issue has always been using the pentastar or any of their other trademarks. That is what got Laysons in trouble a few years ago.
Aftermarket parts have been around for a long time and there is never an issue until the trademark shows up. Chrysler looks at anything with their trademark on it that wasn't sold by them as a counterfeit part. It is up to them to watch out for that and if they knowingly let anyone get away with using the trademark, that "gives permission" for others to use it.
It sounds crazy to some guys just wanting a new taillight, but believe me, in the legal world, letting that guy make taillights in his garage with a pentastar on it just opens the door for some big offshore manufacturer to flood the market with counterfeit parts.
The way a lot of the repops were made was by making a mold directly from an original taillight with the trademarks on it. Each taillight is then made by hand pouring them individually. If you use the right materials, shrinkage is minimal although the plastic will be a little different. I remember seeing some early repops that faded from UV and looked horrible.
The alternative is making the hard tooling for injection molding and that gets expensive really fast. The larger the taillight, the larger the expense. If you did the hard tooling, you can omit the trademarks.... That will keep the legal team at Chrysler at bay. Of course, if you make a taillight without the pentastar on it, you now have a lot of guys that won't buy it for that reason only.
I should add that I'm not trying to throw a wet blanket on the project. I just want to make sure that everyone has their eyes open going into it.
We had to throw money at lawyers because someone used our trademarked name and I got a pretty good edumaction on what you can and can't get away with. That was right about the same time that Damiler/Chrysler came down on the reproduction vendors too.
We had to throw money at lawyers because someone used our trademarked name and I got a pretty good edumaction on what you can and can't get away with. That was right about the same time that Damiler/Chrysler came down on the reproduction vendors too.
I know Layson's told me a flat "No." to making my 66 Polara lenses. They are looking for something they can sell a lot of, like 66 300 lenses, so they can make money. They weren't in it for the compassion aspect, but can't blame them as money keeps the doors open and the lights on, not charity work.
traintech55
Senior Member
That is why I have started this. As I said everyone wants to make money, My goal is to approach them with a committed order of 25 sets, but again, we have to start somewhere.
twostick
Senior Member
The tooling for just 1 model like the 66 300 will be 6 figures. You would need a 1000 unit order to get anybody's attention.
Until 3D printing technology advances, these kind of low volume parts will continue to be made of unobtanium.
As far as the 66 300 goes the bezels would be a higher volume seller because 90% of the survivors are pitted. No takers on that part either.
Kevin
When many got their first education on "rights" to names and such was in the middle 1980s. Remember the old "MoPerformance" magazine? A small, low volume publication allegedly done in a guy's basement, but it had better information than others in that middle-80s era. It vanished, suddenly. Word was, at Mopar Nationals, was that Chrysler's legal people shut him down for infringing on the Mopar Performance trademarked name they "controlled". Many felt that tie-in was a little "stretched", but the Chrysler legals made it stick. End of one great publication.
The OTHER part of the legal aspects, back then, was car clubs with a Chrysler name in them. IF the club was not sponsored by an authorized Chrysler Corp dealer. In those situations, all Chrysler wanted was a letter requesting permission to use the particular name and indicate how it would be used. Pretty painless, but still something to have to do. This, too, was in the later 1980s. As time progressed, it seemed that legals kind of evolved out of the picture. No car club was trying to usurp an OEM's ownership of "name", but usually enhance and make it more valuable by their activities to promote the club and the Chrysler products related to it.
It's up to the "mark's" owner to make sure how it's used and verify who owns it. If that doesn't happen, it can be "open field day" for somebody to scoot in and take control of it. This is what the legals are for.
It IS easy to repro small lenses. Everything's available at the arts/crafts store. The rubber to make the mold from, the red plastic for the part, and instructions. One of our Buick club guys showed us a demo one day, of a small red tail light lens for one of his cars. He had a good sample to mold from. The detail was impressive. The dark red color was good, too. NO rocket science! Being a tail light for a 1940s car, it had no reflector in it. But doing something larger, as a '66 Newport tail light lens, would take much more molding materials and a "fixture" for all of it to happen in. Once the basic mold is made, I suspect any markings as to specific identifiers to a particular car could be removed before the plastic is added. OF course, these would be "singles" situations rather than "multiples", I suspect, but the procedure is still the same. And, if something went awry, it could easily become one BIG mess to clean up.
In the '60s, there were aftermarket tail light lenses for many popular cars. You could find them at some of the auto supplies, back then. Almost every one of them used a "thinner" red plastic, which made them look "not original" to me. But they fit the need for a replacement lens. Not sure who made them or how long they were in business. Seemed like they were usually the round-type lenses, not the oblong lenses which became popular in the middle-to-later 1960s cars.
In the pre-Pentastar days, there was the unique DPDC letters on many Chrysler Corp parts.
CBODY67
The OTHER part of the legal aspects, back then, was car clubs with a Chrysler name in them. IF the club was not sponsored by an authorized Chrysler Corp dealer. In those situations, all Chrysler wanted was a letter requesting permission to use the particular name and indicate how it would be used. Pretty painless, but still something to have to do. This, too, was in the later 1980s. As time progressed, it seemed that legals kind of evolved out of the picture. No car club was trying to usurp an OEM's ownership of "name", but usually enhance and make it more valuable by their activities to promote the club and the Chrysler products related to it.
It's up to the "mark's" owner to make sure how it's used and verify who owns it. If that doesn't happen, it can be "open field day" for somebody to scoot in and take control of it. This is what the legals are for.
It IS easy to repro small lenses. Everything's available at the arts/crafts store. The rubber to make the mold from, the red plastic for the part, and instructions. One of our Buick club guys showed us a demo one day, of a small red tail light lens for one of his cars. He had a good sample to mold from. The detail was impressive. The dark red color was good, too. NO rocket science! Being a tail light for a 1940s car, it had no reflector in it. But doing something larger, as a '66 Newport tail light lens, would take much more molding materials and a "fixture" for all of it to happen in. Once the basic mold is made, I suspect any markings as to specific identifiers to a particular car could be removed before the plastic is added. OF course, these would be "singles" situations rather than "multiples", I suspect, but the procedure is still the same. And, if something went awry, it could easily become one BIG mess to clean up.
In the '60s, there were aftermarket tail light lenses for many popular cars. You could find them at some of the auto supplies, back then. Almost every one of them used a "thinner" red plastic, which made them look "not original" to me. But they fit the need for a replacement lens. Not sure who made them or how long they were in business. Seemed like they were usually the round-type lenses, not the oblong lenses which became popular in the middle-to-later 1960s cars.
In the pre-Pentastar days, there was the unique DPDC letters on many Chrysler Corp parts.
CBODY67
Kevin, you may have missed that someone out there already has the tooling for the 66 300 tail light lenses and we just need to find out who has them.
I agree with you on the need for reproduction bezels.
That's what I was thinking this morning, just too tired to word it like that. I worked in injection molding years back, and the tooling was the biggest start up cost. We sold tooling for what it cost, so we could get the production side of the business as well.
That tooling will still be expensive to buy, but if you could find it, you could find a shop to run it for you.
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