Quote: Forgive my ignorance. But if reproductions have been made once already, why would anyone have to "tool up" to make another run??
EXACTLY!
There is no RETOOLING cost, Fram has had the tooling and the tooling has been paid for. The last production run by Fram was only five or six years ago for the last batch IIRC.
I'm employed in mass production (as a Millwright) you'd be surprised how quick Management is in making stupid decisions on sh1t-canning production tooling worth tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars for scrap $$$ when an item line is discontinued by a vendor/manufacturer,...only to have to re-invest in re-tooling at a later date
