Scoop is right!
First thank you for you so kind comment about my other waffles sir Bertie. I have to comment on what Steve Cooper was saying about looking for parts: he’s just so right. Those who find the parts they need are usually those who put the most effort in. As I write it’s just over five years since I finished my 30 years doing Honda (and Hinckley Triumph) parts. I intended to go back after my cancer surgery but one way and another it didn’t work out. Anyway I like to think I was one who would try to find an answer to alternatives for discontinued parts: luckily the computer system where I worked had the facility to make notes about where other parts could be used so that information at least goes on hopefully doing some good. I do occasionally get a chance to help someone struggling; recently through Twitter a lady in Ireland with a VT250 Magna who was trying to find footrests for her machine who I could point in the right direction. Specialists in certain makes are naturally more helpful than the parts people at your local dealership. In the end there’s no substitute for experience and I would add the state of mind that looks beyond a single part and understands more of the way parts work with a manufacturer and can
see the bigger picture. It’s the same with any old machinery I’m sure, for the last few years I’ve been working with old Brit parts. Not something I ever expected to do, but again those who put the work in are those who succeed in the end. For the harder to find things you have to look everywhere, then look further, keep trying, even if it takes years. For some reason there are those who always expect whatever they need to be just be there when they want it and then will complain when it’s not and like those keyboard warriors and bar room ‘experts’ as Steve put it, I don’t think such people ever have really gone beyond trying the obvious and giving up, if they ever tried at all. Michael Durrant
Bertie says: “We always love your waffles sir! And parts is a thorny issue with classics, hence we’ve started our new ‘Breaking Bad’ section, to look at the prices things go for and how hard/easy they are to find.”