How do owners of very old or rare vehicles find replacement parts to keep it running?
In: R2 (Narrow/Personal)
A lot of car parts are off the shelf components. Ford does not make axles for their trucks, they go to a reputable axle manufacturer like Dana and buy whatever axles they are making. So there are lots of these single components that fit a whole range of models of cars from different manufacturers. And when the component manufacturer updates their design they often have to make sure it fits the older cars so that the car manufacturer does not have to update their design to use the new parts. This means that there are lots of parts out there that fit your unique car. You can take them from scrapyards, from unsold inventory, or even buy brand new components as they are still being made today.
For more unique parts like body panels and such it can be harder to find. In some cases you find large inventories from the factory. This is typical when the company failed to sell as many cars as they hoped for but kept up production until they eventually went bankrupt. Famously DeLorean was one such company and they are still selling parts made back in the day and stashed in warehouses and sold in bulk at auctions. In other cases people have been able to save the tools used to build the components. Often the tools might have been sold to a third world manufacturer to make cars on license. When you have the pressing tool or the mold for a body panel it is fairly easy to make another part using those tools, even without a factory you can do it in a suitable workshop. Other times people take old parts and make molds of them in order to make copies. Or you can get the parts from the scrapyard.
But sometimes you can not buy a part at all. You just need to make it yourself or pay someone to make it for you. For some things you can get away with a modern equivalent but even this may need some modifications. You may therefore need to do some metalwork to recreate an old part for your vintage vehicle.
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