Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:42 pm by nikkinutshop
Rare and not too many around is just fine if a person has a Duesenberg or an original Bugatti. You have an old truck. Most of, if not all of the used parts are equally worn out and not good enough to be replacement parts. It is very likely more than one person is looking for the same parts. Jay Leno can afford to have that rare part custom made for that multimillion dollar collectable. The same cost of making a part for and Old IHC is the same as the price of making a rare Duesenberg part.
Rare is a curse when it comes to getting parts and finding a shop that is willing to do any work at blue-collar prices.
I have long been a proponent of using modern components to get an old vehicle safely on the road. If any person has an old vehicle languishing in a shed, somewhere, I cannot imagine much fun in that. I have always enjoyed the parts chase but, for me, there came a time when I stopped looking for the impossible.
In the last 60 - 70 plus years, the mechanics of how things work have become so much improved. Some of this was to eliminate persons or make the components more assembly line friendly. The side benefit was often a better machine.
The options are many and these options have been discussed in detail, on this forum.
There are always the few persons who rise out of their dirt floor sheds, in righteous indignance, suggesting the OEM is just fine. I have to wonder if there might be some fear of change and hanging onto the way it always was is more comfortable, for them. While I respect any persons who has become a repository for millions of bites of original mechanical information, maybe this is crippling their imagination when it comes to modernization and substitution.
Try to not forget the names Ford 8.8 axle and the almost endless number of DANA axles that have been made.
This is a suggestion, only.
I would rather have tools I do not need than to need tools I do not have
