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Strange, my '72 still has the stock seat rails, all of 'em whole. Guess I'm luckier than I thought. As for the pricing of plastic parts... Since Jonce is already in the process of making the hinge covers I'm sure he knows about this process (I'd like to hear comments on how it's going) so this is primarily for those not familiar with making stuff. I only have a minor in Business Administration, but there are some things I know about mass production and it's call 'economies of scale'. Though this model works with many forms of products and it *basically* means this: The more you purchase of one item the less the cost to you will be per item. Ever notice how some things will have several prices, depending upon the quantity you buy? The more you buy, the less each item costs. This is how mass production works that allows the consumer to but a car. If you were to purchase each car part individually and build the car yourself (to keep labor costs out of the equation ;) the total cost of the car would be well over five times the manufacturers suggested price (a friend and I computed this out on a Ninja 200 motorcycle that he totaled back in '89). You will notice that this concept is (finally) being used in the house building market in the form of manufactured homes. Exactly how economies of scale works is beyond the scope of this forum and I will spare ya'll the gory details. Whew! So, what does this mean to you and the plastic parts? You will need to contact the plastic people and an engineer (they probably have one working for them) to figure out how the item will be formed, what type of plastic to use, and other engineer-type questions. Then the mold, casting, what-have-you must be designed, will two be needed?, one for the left rail and one for the right? Then purchasing the plastic and performing the actual creation takes place. All said and done a single seat rail could cost you a couple hundred dollars (this is being conservative). But if it is successful, you can have a lot produced, say 50 to 100, and it would cost you less per rail made. Either way, you then have to determine how much each rail will cost (money to recoup from investigation and cost to produce), add any profit you think you deserve, then try to sell to the public. Since T3 aren't as common as Bugs you won't be selling many, thus the retail price will be high. Now you kind of understand why the door and trunk seals are so spendy for the T3! Luckily, if the business is good and customer-orientated, you should be able to get estimates of all this and determine if the venture is worth-while or maybe solicit investors to help defray the costs (but share the profits...). So Jonce, I hope it's affordable and the best o' luck to ya. We need more entrepreneurs in the T3 world. Toby Erkson air_cooled_nut@pobox.com modified '72 VW Squareback 2.0L stock '75 Porsche 914 1.8L ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: plastic seat rails Author: type-3-errors@umich.edu at SMTPGATE Date: 12/8/96 3:25 AM hi all jonce from street bugs just to let you know ive got a set of these in N.O.S. form and it took a mere 5 years to locate. and sorry there not for sale. but i have found a few poeple in the detroit area that deal with plastic molds and such and im in works on the pop out hinge covers for type 1 in ivory. so i guess i should see about repro those seat rails too. eh? how is the market do you think they could sell and how much is a fair price?? this all must be check out to see if worth while. thats the biggest problem with t-3 parts not enough in the world to make repos affordable. any input? by the way i ...