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FCP Euro Service Kits

FCP Euro Kits

Back in the near Stone Age when I was in high school and owned British cars, the junkyard was my and my buddies' local car parts store. As long as you didn't need an engine, gearbox, or rear axle, nearly everything else was $5.00 total.  We would take in nearly empty toolboxes, load them up with switches and gauges (Smiths, of course) and walk out $5.00 poorer but with a wealth of trade-able icons of British motoring.  These were the days before health and safety rules and liability concerns, so you were free to walk around the place and browse. You could examine patterns of problems, like how every Porsche 914 in the yard had had an engine fire starting right under the battery tray and how every BMW 2002 was smashed in the front, but never in the rear.  English cars were never as dramatic looking, just discarded. An automotive educational field trip was way better than any of the field trips we got in high school.

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These days you never see a “you-pick” junk yard. In fact, I'm not sure there are junk yards anymore. They have all become “auto recyclers”, “used auto parts dealers”, “salvage boutiques” and no longer can you “browse”. Computerized sources of recycled and re-used parts with store fronts and potted plants in a waiting room. In some cases, they have gone online and on eBay. But just as in the Stone Age, they are still a viable option as a DIYer parts source.

Many will reasonably argue why replace a used failed part with a used part of unknown origin and life span. That is a fair comment, but when a reasonable price difference versus new is involved or if the used part is more readily available than new, I would submit that used parts are worthy of consideration.  Additionally, if the part comes off a low-mileage car, one should be able to expect a reasonable service from that used part approaching that of a new one.

As an example, I recently had my Volvo's wiper motor fail on my 2002 Volvo XC70.  Price new for an on-line replacement was over $200.  eBay buy-now price for a clean unit from a low-mileage southern car was $35.  These motors are not particularly hard to replace so even if I eventually have to do a couple of them to equal the life of the new part, I see myself ahead.  There are areas where reusing and recycling of parts isn't a viable option.  Areas such as the brake system, shocks/struts or other systems where the cost of parts replacement isn't that prohibitive, where the parts are subject to a wear rate where the use of a used part really does not gain you any real extension of service life or when safety is paramount might be poor situations in which to use reused parts.   But consider that many non-mechanical critical components have high replacement prices to the point that replacement late in a car's life begins the process of cost benefit to keep the car.  For example, why replace the $1000 “Drivers Information Module” (DIM) in a $4000 used Volvo?

When the rest of the car is mechanically sound and still possesses the potential for a longer service life, why not replace that DIM with a $100 recycled part?  I've done this to keep my old XC going and the used part is still going strong 3 years later.  Careful attention to the parts books (i.e. VIDA in the case of Volvo) can sometimes be required, but the value of the effort is there if your car can be maintained economically.

It is fairly common for many of us to see auto recyclers as reasonable sources for major bits, such as engines and gearboxes. We all know that as an object, the car is one of the most intensively recycled items of the modern world. For years, the steel and aluminum parts of a car have been recycled back into new cars, refrigerators, and beer cans.  Even the plastic bits of your car are now marked with the Universal Recycling Symbol.  So if you have a front-end fender bender, the next time you see that mangled front bumper it might be a park bench or your one gallon milk jug.  A much better demise than in a land fill or thrown down a ravine somewhere.  A trip to an auto parts recycler may not give you the automotive education like a browse thru the junk yards of 40 years ago, but it may be beneficial to your car's operational cost and your wallet.  Plus, by recycling you do give the world a bit of a break, so why not?

What was your highest value-add by using a used versus a new part?  And to be fair, what was your biggest mistake using a used part versus just buying new?

About the Author: Uilleam Ross

bill_rossUilleam (Bill) Ross is a 60 year-old retired 30-year veteran of the IT industry and a 45-year car guy. Living in Western Head, Nova Scotia, he now indulges his passions for landscape photography and cars, principally Volvos and Land Rovers.


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Written by :
Uilleam Ross

Uilleam (Bill) Ross is a 60 year-old retired 30-year veteran of the IT industry and a 45-year car guy. Living in Western Head, Nova Scotia, he now indulges his passions for landscape photography and cars, principally Volvo’s and Land Rovers.


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