Michael’s Blog

Well my efforts to dispose of the entire used parts inventory have not been successful. I had expressions of interest but when it came down to it they just didn’t work out.
As a result I have reluctantly decided to try to sell what I can through this blog.

As can be imagined organizing and describing the parts is very time consuming, and my storage arrangements are somewhat tenuous but, we just have to see how this works out.
One of the more difficult issues with used parts is figuring out a fair price. This is because different people have different interpretations of the value of such parts. 

First you have the person who looks upon used parts the way they would view things at a garage sale or a flea market, and in some ways that is not unreasonable. The parts are used and it would be easy to imagine that I got them for very little and therefore they have little value.

At the other end of the spectrum is the true aficionado; this is someone who has seen what is available in reproduction parts and really appreciates originality. I guess I’m one of those.  

For those in the first category please consider this. In order for these parts to get to where they now are all of the following had to occur.
 The car from which they were removed had to be purchased and moved to our shop.
  The car then had to be disassembled, this doesn’t mean ripped apart, it had to be carefully taken to pieces while being very careful to not damage the more useable parts. The people doing this work were not “casual labour”, I tried that and everything got destroyed, so the disassemblers were, for the most part, qualified mechanics.
 The parts removed had to be cleaned and sorted into “keepers” and “chuckers” and we had to pay to have all the latter parts amd the carcasses dumped.
 Storage trailers had to be purchased and positioned on valuable land.
 Storage shelving had to be purchased and assembled inside the trailers.
 Storage containers has to be purchased and then the “keepers” had to be sorted and stored in the trailers, some for as long as 20 years.
 Now someone (me) has to photograph and document all the parts and put them up on the blog. 

So, when I say that a used thingamajiggy is $55, it is all of the above that is being paid for and …..we tried our very best to do it on the cheap!!  

So here are the rules:
1. The minimum value of an order is $CDN40. If you want something worth less think of something to add to it. To put it bluntly I’m not in this to waste my time searching out $2 parts that someone thinks are worth $0.50. I am 25 minutes drive from where the parts are stored so it is at least 1 ½ hours out of my day to search out an individual part.
2. Everything is sold as is and all sales are final. Ask me any questions you like and I will do my best to answer them. I know British parts pretty well and am usually aware of what is important but please ..ask.
3. Please try to be very specific about what you need. Include the make model and year of car and an accurate description of the part you need.
4. I will charge a packaging charge of $5.00 for articles under 2 kg and this can be as much as $150 for big things like major body panels and heavy bits, like engines.
5. I will ship all parcels of a size that they will accept via Canada Post I will get a cost for the postage and send this to you.
6. I would prefer that you make arrangements for the collection and shipping of larger items.  I can arrange for this but I will charge a service charge of 20% of the shipping costs.

If you are interested in a particular part please contact me at mailto:magicareprotect-usedparts@yahoo.ca and be sure to include what you feel is a fair price for the part.
Say something like: 
I’m interested in a Spitfire MkII cylinder head. The casting number on the head is 122322 and if you have one in good condition complete with valves and springs I will pay $100 for it.”

Additionally it would be VERY HELPFUL if you would use a brief description of what you need in the “Subject Line”

If you have no idea what the part should be worth let me know and I will try to figure out a fair price. I will try to make every effort to answer all enquiries but if you don’t hear back please try me again, I use a pretty aggressive spam filter and stuff gets lost.

Scott Morris has been good enough to re-arrange the list into a much easier format to search.. .. something for which I’m very grateful. You can download it here:

scott-morris-list-modified.xls

I will try to keep it up to date and add more pictures as I get the opportunity to take them. I will not be updating the list on my previous post.