And, therein lies the problem.... in the USA's largest car market, it just won't do to have vehicles sticking around that long.
Here, I can only dream about having a vehicle rust free even a fraction of that time...
Rgds, D.
How long do USA auto manufacturers HAVE TO keep parts available ?
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And, therein lies the problem.... in the USA's largest car market, it just won't do to have vehicles sticking around that long.
Here, I can only dream about having a vehicle rust free even a fraction of that time...
Rgds, D.
We've had a few good examples on here of relatively ancient vehicles that still have good parts availability.
I'm half seriously thinking of starting another thread "Are there ANY hard parts that you CAN'T still buy for a VW Bug ?".
Meaning of course, the original Herbie one, not the wasser cooled one....
Rgds, D.
houstonscott
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BMW has a policy that they will supply an OME part for your BMW no matter how old. Need a part for a 1941, 335 coupe, if they have to make a one off they will to satisfy you. HS
Capricious
Platinum Member
"..I'd want the rest of the truck all-mechanical, w. a stick transmission..."
Can't even get a manual in a 1/2 ton anymore. Instead, you get a choice of automatics.
I drove nothing but manuals from 1977 until buying the current truck in 2002. Wife can't drive a manual. Tried teaching her years ago. What an experience.
Can't even get a manual in a 1/2 ton anymore. Instead, you get a choice of automatics.
I drove nothing but manuals from 1977 until buying the current truck in 2002. Wife can't drive a manual. Tried teaching her years ago. What an experience.
The Fred
Veteran Member
Hard to find ANY good parts for VW air-cooleds any longer. Most all is Chinese and almost all don't fit or are just plain garbage. All the good old VW parts are long gone.
As for BMW, they have agreements with their suppliers of electronics parts, modules that used modules won't be tolerated after about 2006. Can't just go to a junkyard and swap in a used radio or ECM.
Fred
I don't know their current official policy, but it seemed like Mercedes used to do a good job on older parts too.
Rgds, D.
Too bad about the bugs.... that used to be a nice market to play in.
Yeah.... that's kind of what I've been alluding to a few times here..... cars were getting a little too long-lived and reliable compared to what the manufacturers and govts would like to see turning over. I've seen a healthy market with Ford trucks in terms of control module rebuilders, but I have no idea what traction BMW has with same.
The big players have a pretty big influence in the after-market; and, if that doesn't work, they have BIG legal departments and budgets.... if one of them decides a control module is going to die, it won't be around long.
Rgds, D.
OEM parts availability seems to be decreasing (vs. vehicle age) somewhat. Given how tightly a lot of the OEMs are integrated with the 2'nd tier and lower suppliers, when a OEM decides to drop a part, sometimes it is effectively gone from the market. Period.
After a bit of searching, all I came up with on US govt regs was a reference to emission warranties, at around 8 years.
united states - Are Auto Manufacturers required under US Federal Law to provide parts for a set period of time? - Skeptics Stack Exchange
But... if anybody wants to post the details of recent personal encounters with this issue.... no complaints about thread topic will be heard from me....
Rgds, D.
I haven't read all of the replies, but as a manufacturing engineer can tell you this (which many have already been brought up). That most of these parts are sourced and it would be the supplier that may decide of stop making the parts. In some cases it's because a company goes under, others they were bought out, maybe the car maker no longer uses them for the part(s). Once a part isn't in demand they stop making them.
I have come across this with $500K manufacturing machinery. The OEM didn't know their supplier had stopped producing certain parts on a 10 year old machine until we went to order these parts. The OEM had one of what we needed in stock and went to order more for their inventory and found they couldn't get the parts. Which they were still using in some of their product, so it was a shock to them also. They informed us of the issue, and we are still working out the solution.
Touch screens for machine controls. The supplier will make one huge run of screens, then move on to the next newer generation of screen. once that supply is used up, it can be very difficult to find a replacement or when you do, there are usually hardware and software issues that have to be solved.
We have bought machinery that even a few months later, a replacement part couldn't be found. In that case newer parts had to be made to fit the machine.
The problem is very few suppliers will agree to produce parts for length of times greater than a year or two.
mikehaugen
Elite Member
I am an industrial mechanic/technician and we run into this problem often. Simple parts like photoeyes aren't typically a problem, but others like touchscreens (like you mentioned), and drives/inverters are often a problem.
That is more what I do now because the company I work for needed someone and I like the challenge of trouble shooting electronic controls. It also gives me a more flexible schedule.
The only inverter I have a problem replacing is a German made KEB unit. They use serial communication and have to "talk" with the machine. Any other I can replace fairly easy with a Yaskawa drive. I can use a laptop to program and a certain parameter 10 years ago, is the same one today. I can also save the parameters and just load them to a new drive. I can do this because 99% of the drives use a simple 0-10VDC signal for a speed reference and many are similar to one another. What sucks is many inverter OEM's change parameters depending on the series and model of the inverter. Which makes it hard if you don't know what they all mean.
German KEB's are also different from the units they ship to the USA because this forces you to go to the OEM of the machine for help. Many of our European made machines have these.
Servo drives though unless it's a FANUC or a OSAI is hard. Those to companies will still support older product fairly well.
BTW: Yaskawa even has preset programming in the drive. By that I mean you do enter basic information, volts, amps, poles, min Hz, max Hz, etc. For the type of application though, you can select fan, AC unit, conveyor etc and use the auto tune function and it does the rest. So you don't have to be a drives expert to replace a drive. Just have some basic information on the motor and you can do it. Of all the drives I have worked with, they seem to be the easiest and are very robust and have a long life.
