Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:20:57 -0600
Reply-To: miguel pacheco <mundopacheco@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: miguel pacheco <mundopacheco@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: a van thought friday or not ;)
In-Reply-To: <072401cb56b4$5d78f020$6701a8c0@PROSPERITY>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
I've been pulling, stealing parts and otherwise for years. Your client
is fickle and only wants what he needs. Anything outside of that,
well, he doesn't need it until he needs it and would just hate to
store it. So you store it for them, even though they have full
knowledge of all the various things they will need, but they are comfy
that you will store it for them. Well, I was selling parts to a couple
of local shops and, nine out of ten, as soon as I sold the part, I
would need same! It didn't take long to figure out that it was a lose
lose situation, so I switched it around a bit. In the end I realized
that the best I could hope for is karma....., so what I do now is I do
not sell to the shops. If it is a traveler who is stuck and doesn't
have the money or some such thing, they get the parts for free. If you
run into me in Durango and you need something that I have, it's yours.
I don't care if I can get boatloads for it on TheSamba or some such.
If you need work on your van and I'm in the county, I am free of
charge. Plain and simple it is all for karma. Sometime in the near
future I plan on taking the trip to South America, to the tip, then
across the Atlantic to Europa, then finally through Africa....so I
will need all the good karma I can get!
Now, if you are storing parts, then selling them, you need to charge
for the storage too. What I would do is keep a list of the parts every
van owner will need no matter how much smarter they are than God and
remind the buyer that they can save on shipping, right then and there,
by purchasing the inevitable. What is the inevitable? Well hell, we
all know what that is, right? If you need a dipstick, for God's sake
you know you will need an ECU, or a TPS, right? In short, as a parts
hoarder, I can tell you that it is hard to relish as much as I should,
going to Farmington, NM next week to part out a Carat, because I don't
have any room in storage any more.
End of rant....sigh!
Miguel
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
- Thomas A. Edison
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:04 PM, Scott Daniel - Turbovans
<scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:
> of course,
> I have the same thing..
> I see my only good used part for something ..
> you know, I sell a good used trans and it will cost me the entire cost of
> rebuilding one to get back to having a spare trans around.
>
> and for regular smaller parts it always depends on how many I have.
> If I have 3 ..
> fine, I can sell one and still have two others for my project vans.
>
> I know a couple of hard core VW types that may have a part..
> but they'd rather not sell it.
> Often because it's worth more than you would normally sell if for .
> some of them you can't get ..
> then the price becomes more demand-based.
> and even then don't want to charge a lot just because you can get it.
>
> I seldom part anything out.
> and of the vans I have dedicated to supplying parts for others ..
> I can mine parts off them for *years* .
> and not tearing them all apart is how to keep track of where the parts are,
> the little fasteners for them , how they fit etc.
> a barn full of boxes of vanagon parts can be real hard to work from,
> compared to good intact parts vans.
> I have one ..an 85 with a burnt to nothing interior ..
> I've been getting great parts off it for about 6 years now, not even
> counting engine and trans.
>
> bought one nice 87 GL with engine fire ...
> there was a perfect rebuilt 2.1 wbxr engine under all the burnt stuff ..
> drivin' that engine in another van these days...best wbxr I've ever owned. .
> and now that van is used to test-run and test-fit engines and conversion
> parts in.
>
> what fun we're having.
> and ..
> save every vanagon we can please, all those that are not rusted hulks or
> crashed.
> and ...
> if you can, don't through away the bodies ..
> there are just SO MANY small parts on them that can be very useful to other
> vanagons.
> and they make great rolling storage units too.
>
> Scott
> www.turbovans.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jay lefstein" <jleftbrane@GMAIL.COM>
> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 2:13 PM
> Subject: a van thought friday or not ;)
>
>
>> hey guys, it's jay from vancouver... i have just spent the better part
>> of the morning changing a bunch of oil seals and a few coolant system
>> bits and pieces..
>> oil pump cover gasket, filler tube gasket, oil cooler seal etc.... I
>> drive a 87 syncro westy and i have a 88 8 pasenger van i use to store/
>> sell parts from.. i have parted out 5 vans in the last 3 years and It
>> has been good for me and many others..
>>
>> my thought is this... almost everytime i do a project on my syncro I
>> see something it needs, most of the time i have it in one of my 10
>> rubbermaid bins of parts or on my parts van..
>>
>> I am finding that there are less and less van worth buying for parts
>> and more and more parts harder to find.
>>
>> so I fell like it makes the good parts i have worth more to me for
>> this simple reason. If I sell a part for $25 today and a week later i
>> need the same part for my own van and have to order it from the states
>> ( i live in canada) or germany and pay tax and shipping etc. it could
>> cost me 10X as much as I made..
>>
>> any of you out there feel the same?
>>
>> any thoughts from buyers or sellers on what is fair or how to price
>> these old parts...
>>
>> J
>
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