Carlisle Attendees - Outlook for E-Body Dash Pad Availability???

[DeathProofCuda]

Would be interested to know if anyone talks to ABC Moparts and/or Dash Pad Pros about the projected outlook for E-Body dash pad availability.  Have supply chain or other problems improved so that refurbished steel core pads will be easier to find going forward?  Will ABC Moparts ever have E-Body dashpads back in stock?   

[cuda hunter]

I didn't see remanufactured dash pads in the swap. 

Did anyone else? 

[R/T's 4 R/P]

I picked up an E-body pad from Bob.
I had it ordered about a year ago.
Yes, he is in need of cores.
There is a small issue I am hoping I can figure out how to address.  Otherwise, it is very nice.

[CudaA39]

Order one through Year One, they're the same product as ABC.  I went to ABC thinking it was a premium choice over a larger vendor and it showed up with "YEAR ONE" stamped in the vin pad.  Had to trim it in two spots to get the AC vents to fit. 

Exactly why I didn't send my core back to him, just in case this thing completely fails.

[EV2RTSE]

Yeesh. Only saw them walking by, would have stopped in to inquire further but there was quite a few ahead on line already and we had a lot of ground to cover that still didn't get done in a day trip. Price looked to be $1200+ on the ones they had, saw piles of cores in the background.

[anlauto]

DASH PAD PROS were there all Friday and Saturday with well over a dozen new pads for sale...I talked to them around 2pm on Saturday, they still had about six left.
They will have more for the Mopar Nationals in Ohio and even bringing some to Canada for Moparfest (according to them)

If you haven't figured it out yet....the same guy is making them for everybody....

Just Dashes is the only ones out on their own doing their own thing.

[cuda hunter]

But, Just Dashes are leather wrapped, correct?

[R/T's 4 R/P]

All of them use a vinyl cover.

[Solarguy]

If you haven't figured it out yet....the same guy is making them for everybody....

I thought ABC did their own E Body Pads?

[anlauto]

But, Just Dashes are leather wrapped, correct?

YES

[anlauto]

If you haven't figured it out yet....the same guy is making them for everybody....

I thought ABC did their own E Body Pads?

Do they really ?

[DeathProofCuda]

If you haven't figured it out yet....the same guy is making them for everybody....

I thought ABC did their own E Body Pads?

Do they really ?

I was also under the impression that ABC did their own.  I feel like I've heard/read that several times over the last few years. Last year I was talking with a Mopar parts vendor and I asked where he got his dashpads from.  He said Dashpad Pros and he said that ABC was having some kind of production issue (not just a foam availability issue) that was preventing them from making E-body dash pads at that time.  Not sure how correct that statement was, it's just what I heard. 

Was Bob at ABC previously a member on this forum?

[anlauto]

The truth about the manufacturing of these pads has always been a little blurry in my opinion...

[RacerX]

DASH PAD PROS were there all Friday and Saturday with well over a dozen new pads for sale...I talked to them around 2pm on Saturday, they still had about six left.
They will have more for the Mopar Nationals in Ohio and even bringing some to Canada for Moparfest (according to them)

If you haven't figured it out yet....the same guy is making them for everybody....

Just Dashes is the only ones out on their own doing their own thing.

Dash Pad Pros makes their own pads.    I visited their facility in El Paso and saw the operation when I picked up my pads and dropped off my cores.   
They have the machines and molds.

I posted a post about it in the other dash pad thread a while back.

[NoCar340]

Having worked at Year One for a couple of years in Product Development and still having friends in the business, I've got a little insight:

ABC Moparts' E-body pads say "YEARONE" under the VIN number because ABC has Year One's tooling from the '80s/'90s.  YO got out of the refurbishing business decades ago because people could not follow instructions.  Folks kept sending pads with the VIN number still attached.  That, kids, is a Federal crime.  Nobody from the FBI is likely to show up at your door, but Len Athanasiadas (YO's founder and then-owner) was paranoid as hell that they'd knock on his.  Whether it would've ever been enforced isn't the point--it's clearly laid out in the US Code.  Printed in the catalog, and told to any customer on the phone, "You MUST remove your VIN tag.  If you send your pad with the VIN attached, we cannot return it to you."  There were E-body pads with attached VIN tags stacked like cordwood above the Product Development department for years.  We were not allowed to ship them to ANYONE, including the guys doing the pads or the titled owner of the vehicle.  It's literally against the law.  I don't know if anyone ever showed up in person to collect theirs, so I don't know if anyone got one back.  But to answer your question, yes, there were some "heavy hitter" VINs up there (at least one J, multiple Us, Vs, and possibly an R).

If you've been doing this a long time, you might have an old Year One catalog (say, mid-1990s) lying around.  If you look up the dash pad service, Year One advertised using the original Chrysler tooling.  Yes, they found and bought it, just like they did with wiring harness connectors.  M&H is just Year One's contractor to build harnesses; YO owns the tooling, blueprints, everything.  ABC makes no such claim, but they've clearly got Year One's old tooling.

Bob somehow got his hands on the tooling after Year One gave up.  My guess is that it never left the facility YO used.  If you look closely at ABC's pads the "N" in "YEARONE" is reversed.  Old Year-One-restored pads have the N correctly oriented, and new YO pads aren't marked at all because they're reproductions.  They're not refurbishing old pads anymore, and understandably so--they had a lot of irate customers, and arguing with someone who won't or can't listen is trying and foolish.  Anyhow, the reason ABC is the only restorer of which I'm aware that's doing a full refoam is because his tooling requires the original process.  Just Dashes and other refurbishers leave as much original foam as possible and fill in the voids.  They then mold over the foam, which is why their pads sometimes look overstuffed or "puffy", which has been discussed on multiple Mopar boards. 

With some friends' "in-person" help (multiple vendors at Carlisle/Nats/Indy) I shopped for about a year before going with ABC.  They were the best I saw, right down to flaws that matched original dash pads like vinyl tailings at the injection points (Chrysler sometimes trimmed 'em, Bob doesn't).  However, they're not perfect.  Neither were originals.  There seems to be a bit of an alignment issue on ABC's AC pads where the vent openings need a little love to make the vents fit correctly.  Mine is like that, and a friend just got one within the last week or two with the same issue.  Frustrating, but not insurmountable.  I consider it a reasonable trade-off for all-new foam.

I cannot speak to the reproductions since I didn't seriously consider one.  When I started shopping, most seemed to have ABS cores or come from questionable sources.  There was a lot of eBay/Facebook fraud happening at the time.  Steel-core pads from reputable sources were less common than they are now.

ABC can get you a pad no problem if you send him a core.  Turnaround time is pretty reasonable, usually a couple of weeks.  Rest assured, he's not selling you the same aftermarket pad Year One or anyone else is.  His is on original Chrysler steel, same as Just Dashes, so no mounting or distortion issues.

That's what I know of the dash pad situation.  Do with it what you will.  I only know Bob through buying a dash pad and have no dog in the fight.  Just Dashes has been around forever and has thousands of happy customers, so they must be doing something right.  I know nothing of Dash Pad Pros, good or bad.  They might be spectacular.  The only thing I can say is that if I saw detail photos of their product, I liked ABC's better.

If anyone wants particular detail shots, I have one of ABC's '71-up 3-speaker AC pads hanging around awaiting my car's return from paint.  I also have a few good cores here: another '71-up 3sp/AC for direct comparison, and '70 Challenger and Barracuda single-speaker non-AC pads for less direct comparison.