How about DMT’s?

He just sells a general pad that you cut to shape..... REM is perhaps the best choice for a "finished" pad

He just sells a general pad that you cut to shape..... REM is perhaps the best choice for a "finished" pad

i still don't understand why its so hard to make one correct?..same amount of effort to build one incorrect... oh well

So I was in a factory that made these for commercial trucks. The HEATED male/female tooling probably weighed more than a truck and probably cost tens of thousands - actually may have been well in to the $100k plus range. Then it was installed in enormous "stamping press" like machines that would press and hold for a couple minutes to form the pad. Smoke POURED out of the machines. The whole shop had a thick cloud of smoke about 4ft and above. Wonder how/why the workers would tolerate that. Was hard to breathe or see. This was in OHIO. Not China too.

Thats probably why it's not as easy to make a good one verses an inexpensive one. Only way to justify tooling/equipment like that is for automotive production type volumes.

Jim just said that the original ones were molded and that the molds to build today would cost as much as 100K each. And he'd have to buy a different mold for each pad that he wants to supply. I don't know what the volumes are for reproduction hood pads, but lets say you sell 200 a year per part number. You can do the math how many you'd need to sell just to pay for the tooling. Not to mention the machines to heat the material up and inject into the molds. Add labor and material, he might have to charge $1000 a piece to make those at a profit?
He said he buys a similar material in bulk and then cuts to the correct shape with dies, which is much cheaper than building a mold, by using a relatively inexpensive press with the dies to use to cut the pads from the bulk material.
Years ago I interviewed for an engineering position at a plant in the Chicago area that made foam underhood pads for heavy duty trucks. The place looked like a hellhole. From the offices there were windows looking out onto the plant floor and there were large machines with steam coming off them with workers manning them.
Very dirty looking place.
It was one interview that I almost walked out of, and probably should have as it looked like a unpleasant place to work so I was wasting my time and there's staying around. But I stuck around for the whole interview, and a week or so later I got a dear John letter from them rejecting me, and I was rolling my eyes thinking, you are rejecting me? Who'd want to work in that place!

OUCH. It's not "cut to shape". All my hood pads I reverse engineered, drew in CAD and had a steel rule die tool made. Mine are made from firm, 1/2" thick, FIRM, flat material, not molded unfortunately. Have to buy it in a semi load at a time to have the custom density (firm) made. I even had OEM style clips made with legs that are slightly longer to work with our thicker than factory pads. Other non molded hood pads on the market are either WAY too thick (1" was all that was available till I started making mine from 1/2") and are cut on a CNC (oscillating knife table), not die cut like ours. Big difference in the edge quality and hole shape/location. I know its just a hood pad but I try to make them like I would expect purchasing for my own car.


Only 2 places make the molded ones, REM and Repops.

REM are the most correct looking but fragile. I quit selling them because people would grab them at the shows and tear a handfull of corner off. There went $100. I have seen some installed. One guy told me it took a few pads to get one on his 66 Satellite without damaging it. He also painted it to darken it and make it more correct. LOOKED nice.

REPOPS makes them out of very nice, durable material but they are kinda modern looking. All the molded features are very rounded instead of squared off like the OEM pieces.

Here is the picture of the one I installed on my car a while back, might have been 5 or 6 years ago? I don't remember where I bought it. The one on my car when I got it in the 90s previously restored had some sort of yellow fibrous material and was falling apart, and whomever's I purchased to replace it was a big improvement. Not molded to be shaped to the underhood braces etc like that original one (that also appears to be FK5 convertible?), but except for a OE gold restoration still looks quite good. From DMTs catalog it appears the originals had metal clips? My new pad had plastic ones, I suppose I should buy a set of his metal ones and update my installation.