1981 308 GTS Speaker Grill remanufacture

I think they look fantastic

 

Hi Graham,

I put my efforts on hold until Andrew’s inventory is finished (if there is still demand.) Anyone making the effort to keep parts available and reasonably priced deserves a shot at recovering their costs. These look pretty good. My originals are a bit shinier. Perhaps a polish and clear coat would look closer to original?

 

Hi Derek, I know we chatted way back when. I actually suspect electropolishing would be needed to give the original. I put my first set on the car and made another "neater" set as I'm a perfectionist but I never did fit them as my first set didn't bother me as expected. I've 2 unpainted sets that I planned to polish with a polisher before painting but the rest of my fleet distracted me away from that. I recall somebody (maybe yourself) saying they thought they could get under £200 but by the time I got mine machined both sides with sound transmission slots, they cost me £300 just for the machined set. Your thoughts at the time were greatly appreciated but they never sold when on that auction site.

 

Hi Andrew,
I would be interested in buying a set of grilles if you still have any in stock.

 

Hi Miklas, I do but will contact you directly if that's OK.

 

I posted this in the what have you done to your Ferrari today-thread but I'd figure it makes sense to post here as well. I installed the new grilles I got from Andrew McCrae and I was really happy with the quality. They are extremely close to the originals.

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No one would know the difference but maybe 4 people walking this planet. Nice.

 

Very nice of you to say so Mikael. [emoji16]

 

Resurrecting this thread, as I had some time on my hands over break + a bout of the Covid to look into speaker grills for my carb'd 308.

As a quick summary of the fchat 308 speaker grill thread, it sounds like @Andrew McCrae actually executed on producing a set of CNC's aluminum grills way back in 2018 for £300, which still required painting/finishing. Not sure his part avail status at this point (sounds like at least 2 found homes, but not sure the status on remaining stock). These were machined both top (seen) and bottom (hidden), so form factor accurate but more expensive since they required 2 ops in the CNC.

In a slightly later but still contemporary thread on the same subject, @derekw thought he might be able to produce in China including paint/finish for ~$250/pair in 2021 (not sure what volume was needed to get this price). These were only form factor accurate on top (seen) to keep costs down. Unclear where this landed, but I know he was a bit anxious about putting money up front w/o seeing the final product.

For my car, I've got a nice driver's side grill but am missing the passenger side. (I'm guessing the PO used it one day as a frisbee or maybe as a substrate to do lines in the early 80's, given the treatment of other components on the car.) So I'm currently planning to just make it really simple w/a pair of all-black 3D printed grills. Not in any way attempting to replicate the existing aluminum finish or look. It's still not super cheap cuz of the part size (guessing about $200/pair), but I think it'll blend in well with the door cards and no one but all of you monkeys will actually know it's not correct. And it's a driver.

I've printed out a few different mock-ups -- see below. Everything was printed in blue PETG (a thermally stable form of plastic) as I wanted to be able to see the features. Final will be done in black (PA12 either using MJF or SLS methods for those of you that are interested). I was a bit worried about plastic deflection, but it's pretty minimal as you can see below. Also the final will have a smooth finish.

NOTE: I confirmed that our discussion here was 100% correct: The original grills were manually prepped from long sheets of extruded aluminum. Grill holes, screw holes and even the outside dimensions are *not* consistent. I can see the impression left by my missing passenger side grill and it's 6mm longer than my driver's side grill. So be careful in sourcing these grills -- you may find that the depression in your leather door card or that the hole that was drilled doesn't work for the grill you get. In my case, I'm making them longer on both sides so should work for anything.

Some pic's (note that the final will have a much smoother finish with no witness marks...and be done in black):
direct replica of original
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plastic deflection (minimal):
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Minor update to the look using a 430 rear bumper cavallino ramparte (note that my printer lost it's adhesion in the lower left corner...that won't happen when I send these out):
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Love to hear your thoughts. (also particularly love to hear from @Andrew McCrae and @derekw since you were both leading the charge back in the day).

 

Oh, forgot to mention, Philip Warburton over in the UK has a pair of remanufactured grills on EBay right now. These are similar to @derekw plan: machined on only one side to save cost. These haven't been painted, so still require more work.

Too pricey for my poor little driver, but they do look quite nice. As mentioned above, I would definitely double check the dimensions against your doors. These already have the screw holes drilled, which also means you might also not line up w/your existing holes.

But they do look nice

 

Just got final grille's back from manufacturer. I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Multi-Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D prints in nylon (PA12) so should be very stable in UV/heat. Also tried vapor smoothing finish for first time -- basically a process that ever so slightly "melts/relaxes" the nylon so that it has a smoother finish.

I still need to put speaker cloth behind them, but they blend well into my doors. And I've finally got my passenger side bare speaker covered up.

*Almost* makes me feel like I should fix up my tatty interior. Then again, I kinda like the low maintenance of having duct tape on the seat...

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I think they look awesome! Love the Cavalino’s as well. A little black dye around those cracked edges might set it off a little nicer where the door card is no longer black.

Top Work!

 

Are you going to keep the grilles black, or will you try to chrome/silver paint the raised horizontal ribs as the originals?

 

I'm keeping them black. It'd be a lot of work (prep, masking, spray, etc) and it's not clear that the final result would be that great. If you want the original look, it'll be less effort to machine the profile out of aluminum, anodize, buff and clear coat. You can see that's where this original thread spawned.

My goal was to make something simple that had an OEM look/feel. Also, it's about half the manufacturing/finishing cost of trying to replicate the original plates.

Having said all that, I am tempted to try out the chroming process (https://pchrome.com/) just to experiment with the finish . But I'm skeptical that it'll look good and I'm positive it'll be a ton of work to get everything sorted.