By Hans de Boer,
Owner, De Boer Transmissies
It's a fact of life that many spare parts are not made available by the original equipment supplier. Fortunately for us, there's always the aftermarket to fill in the gaps. However, no matter how quick the aftermaket suppliers are to respond to market demand, they will always be lagging behind the OEs to some extent. Also, the levels of demand for specific parts tend to vary greatly between markets.
In cases where neither OE nor aftermarket parts are yet available, sometimes we are lucky when used - often nearly new - parts are available. This way, we can still repair and rebuild the components affected by non-availability of spares.
Except of course, when the parts are needed in a country that forbids the import of used parts!
Last week I had a visit from a few Turkish customers. They bought lots of new spare parts, but also a couple of used ones that were unavailable any other way. These went on the bottom of the shipping crate.
Now they will need to pray that the parts arrive, so that a vehicle owner on a budget who has a small part failing on their transmission can be on the road again, and the repairer can earn a living in economically tough times.
Of course, the parts vendor would be more than willing to pay import duties on the parts. Only they cannot: the parts they need are illegal to bring into their country - just because they have been used previously...
Oh, and following on my previous blog, at the end of last summer Jatco announced that in 2012, they will only carry spare parts for the JF506E anymore; all the rest has been discontinued.
Ah well, just another challenge...
Good stuff Hans, the vehicle manufacturers seek only to make repair outside their networks more difficult, and the interests of the owners are not considered. See you soon, Gerald Hewing.
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