Hi David,
It's great to see you visiting our site, and we all sincerely hope you return.
I have just put a Rare Spares kit through my car and I found it of very good quality and fit, and can accept your explanation of pricing. This is a very niche market and I'm sure everyone here congratulates you on your continued committment to the supply of early Holden parts. I mean you can't go down to your local Supercheap and buy this stuff, you can get it from Clarke Rubber but how much frigging round do you want to put up with?
There are some suggestions I have to improve the kit
(you had to know this was coming ) 1. The Front door rubbers are obviously different from the originals, which had moulded corners, and if you take your time fitting them, they work OK - EXCEPT for the area around the "A" pillar. Nearly EVERY car with replacement rubbers has a problem whereby the rubber gets forced out of the channel by the front door movement. This is an easily rectified problem, you just need to cut in a rubber that is closer to the original profile. I used a section of FJ door rubber layed on its side, and have no problems, but to have it right out of the packet would have been great.
2. The rear quarter windows rubbers are about 2mm too large on the lower section, this makes the rubber sit above the body and creates an area for water/dust ingress. This again is easily fixed by linishing the rubber to the correct thickness, but if you are paying good money you would expect little things like this to be right.
3. The rear door rubbers have an issue where they cross the door hinge, originally the rubber here was a much thinner section which allowed the door to close without needing to dramatically compress the rubber. The Rares rubbers use the same section here as the rest of the door and this increased height tends to make the door spring back at you when you close it. Basically bouncing it off the hinge. Again easily fixed by cutting out the back of the rubber where it goes over the hinges.
I reckon you've got VERY good replacement rubbers but if you've gone to this much effort it's reasonable to expect that you would take the time to do it right.
David, I hope you take my minor criticisms in the constructive manner in which they were meant, and I hope my comments lead to the necessary changes. I'm sure others on the forum will back me up on my comments, we are after all your current and potential customer base.
Thanks again,
Craig.