Friend of mine waited 8 months for a clutch for a Twingo, apparently they couldn’t make them due to shortages due to covid.
Now seems also to be lots of Renault parts shortages due to their Russian supply of metal not being available currently.
Friend of mine hit a muntjack deer in a couple of year old civic. Nice car, fairly high spec.
Superficial damage mostly but radiators needed doing and the pedestrian deployable bonnet deployed.
one of the parts has a 2 year waiting list (he thinks but not sure it was the deployable bonnet mechanism) so after a few months in a hire car whilst they attempted to source the required bits, the insurer eventually decided to write the car off instead. Seems bonkers but I guess there’s just no alternative
I hope some enterprising chap buys it at copart and manages to make it safe
There's a lot to be said for driving an older, very common vehicle. New brake caliper ordered Thursday night, arrived Monday. Loads to chose from, OEM and plenty of copies as it's so common, and loads from breakers as it's getting a bit old.
Hopefully only off the road for an afternoon while I do it but some of the bolts look a bit rusty...
I've got a heat shield coming from Saudi Arabia, for some reason. Not an urgent part but not available, for my shitbox mx5, from mazda europe, america or japan, but the japanese distributers tracked one down on the shelf in a dealership in saudi.
Just a heat shield so it's no biggie but I was kind of boggled both by the fact that it's unobtainable, but also that they have a process in place to recall stuff from dealership stock when it's unobtainable.
Similarly, needed a fuel injector, for a mazda 6 (which I've pinched the engine out of and put in the mx5). 1 in the entire of europe and as a result they were charging £200 for it. The exact same part from Ford USA was $23, but Ford USA won't ship to the UK because we have Ford UK, and Ford UK couldn't order it in because they never sold a car using that part in the UK. Bosch make the injectors but won't sell it direct, only to manufacturers- so I ended up getting a set of 4 better injectors from Bosch for £112, which is annoying because they'll need to be mapped in but I was buggered if I was paying £200 for one "proper" one.
Still on the bright side now I have injector headroom for about 500 horsepower, that'd shake the rust loose.
