I am restoring the front brakes on my 71 442 and as part of the resto, I would like to have refinished disc brake backing shields and the gold look caliper brackets. Cost vs quality is the dilemma. I could send these items to a refinisher, ie, Steve Gregori in California or similar place, if any close to the east coast, or do I simply buy reproductions from Inline Tube? How do their parts compare to the originals? They look beautiful in the catalog and are reasonably priced, but I don't want them if there are any issues. The shipping of my parts to California and back plus the costs of the refinishing would probably exceed the Inline Tubes parts, even considering shipping one way. What have your experiences been? Thanks.

 

I remember a couple years ago oldzy was trying to decide if aftermarket was good enough for his restoration. He bought a set, but decided to have original ones replated instead. I don't remember where he bought the repop ones from but he did buy a lot of stuff from inline tube. Life changed and not in a good way, he ended up selling a lot of parts he'd collected. You might go back through some of his old threads to see why he didn't like the repop ones. You might also try to contact him to see if he sold the ones he had replated. Here's a link to his major build thread:

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...oration-2.html

 

Ok, I'll check out his thread, thanks for the info. Maybe others who bought the Inline Tube parts will chime in.

 

Have you looked into usps flat rate boxes for far shipping within the USA/PR ?

In my experience, if you want the correct material, appearance, fit and function, you will use
1) new GM parts, or
2) refurbished used GM parts

And, folks will fake up stickers and put them on Taiwan parts then sell them as GM parts- trans inspection cover I bought for the '66 442 manual trans car- the round cutaway for the oil pan was oh at least 1/4" too small radius, required 3 hrs of trimming and test fitting to install it. A used GM part would have been better.