Topic

When are the people who sell spares for TF's going to realise you can pick up a whole TF for £250- £300. When they charge an arm and a leg for the majority of parts. I agree they have a living to make but please get back on planet earth before you go out of business. Remember £5.00 is better in your pocket than a part left on the shelf with a £10.00 ticket on it.

Rant over.

hear hear, some live in cloud cuckoo land especially the chap on ebay who describes his items " only done 23k miles "etc'' then asks for three quarters the price of new. Also can someone explain to me why new shocks and coils[softer ride] cost 300-400, new wishbones are 90 a pair on average and a 2nd hand hardtop can be 400 plus .

I agree with all that's been said above, however lets face it the guys that allow them to do it are us F and TF owners paying their prices, be it to repair are cars or even improve the looks with shiny bling or something. One of the biggest examples of this are chromed hood catches, find a set on a car that's may of been bought for a couple of hundred quid, get them chromed and stick them up for sale for half the price of the total they paid for the entire car

But lets face it to a lot of us are cars are our hobbies and there are not many hobbies whatever they are that aren't money pits.

Its also called sale and demand I suppose, while there is demand these guys will carry on putting silly ticket prices on their stripped down bits. .

However I still love my F and I get loads of pleasure our of it.

Simple solution is to go and buy your £250 to £300 TF,
find somewhere to strip it,
get this place licenced as a scrap facility,
add storage.
And that is just to get the parts.

Finally you have to make a living wage.

Admittedly there are people who strip cars privately, I have done a few but it's normally a car I have owned for years that has reached the end of it's useful life.
I currently have a car that I bought as I want some of the parts but I guess as it is wrong to sell parts at market prices I shall just bin the rest.

If you don't want to pay the price don't.

The way to go is get a cheap mg ......strip it of every component.......store the bits regimentally labeled up ready for any failure and guess what?...........you will never have a breakdown again............i did this when i owned a series 3 landrover.......because my landrover was to high to fit in the garage................the garage became my version of rimmer bros..............i waited for that breakdown,where i could say....no probs,i have the part on the shelf............in 4 years of owning the land rover i only had to use a brake switch from my stores of many parts..........

It's hardly surprising many MGF and TF are getting scrapped as the price of new and used parts are ridiculously high considering how low the value of these car's are.
I need a gear selector switch for my steptronic and I would prefer to buy a new one but they are £181.50 inc VAT from Rimmer Bros http://www.rimmerbros.co.uk/Item--i-UGD100010 which is just crazy as there is nothing special about them. I have had it fail in the past and took it apart and repaired it but I don't want to have to keep doing that.
I looked for a secondhand one much as I don't want a secondhand one as it will prob have the same issue but all that used parts supplies will offer is a complete gear selector unit for around £50<£60 which again is still to steep to take that risk and whats more for the same type of part for example a BMW X3 is £25<£30.
I argued this point with one seller and he said well BMW are 2 a penny yes but they are worth a dam site more than a MGF Steptronic and how does he expect to sell the parts he has if people just end up scrapping the cars because there to expensive to repair.

There are less MGF Steptronics on the road this year than Reliant Robin/ Rialto's according to https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?q=mgf which I think is a sad reflection on the current status of the MGF

Yes it would be nice to be able to buy a complete car to strip for parts but I don't have the room to do this.

While I understand making a living all things are relative if the cars are worth nothing the parts are worth nothing added to the fact its a rapidly diminishing market there was less than 600 steptronic's taxed this year so it only makes good business sense to off load your stock of parts as quick as you can while there is still a market for them. It also make sense to try and help preserve the market by keeping the cars on the road.

There is no way I'm going to spend £181.50 (which is about 40% of the current value of the whole car) on a new switch I'm just going to have to bodge it up again. I also noted that the BMW Mini steptronic has a very similar looking switch which costs £137 new and while still a ridiculous price for what they are it's quite a bit cheaper

yes of course they are a money pit and I don't mind that it's just how deep that pit is becoming with the price of parts compared to the value of the car

I expect the Bini steptronic will be the same box.

Used cars spares is highly unregulated i suppose impossible for the environment agency to control although i doubt they would not take issue with somebody dismantling a car for a few personal spares and it would be a sad day if they did.
The permits involved is complicated,waste control is very stringent ,hazardous waste as to be disposed of by waste carriers with waste transfer documents etc.and insurers do charge heavy premiums for car dismantlers.

Also vehicles are supposed to be issued with certificate of destruction,i used to have a breakers yard to do it correctly is very costly and the insurance underwriters have several clauses that must be adhered to.

More and more MGF MGTF are being purchased for low sums, some i get offered which i turn down and see on the internet with parts at high prices weeks after, my website specifically states i do not break roadworthy cars as i get fed up of the phone calls from sellers.

I only previously purchased insurance write offs and concentrate on sourcing new parts and have provided some of the cheapest prices in europe for new parts.

MGF MGTF is a personal addiction of mine i often inject my own personal capital funds into the the business, as a whole it runs at a loss as i enjoy sourcing parts and have bought heavily in the last two years, Some SAIC parts which shipping and import duty is also costly along with the pound against us dollar at the moment is not good for any importer in the UK.
My favourite finds are Genuine MG ROVER legacy parts although most manufacturers who supplied Longbridge direct pre 2005 simply are not interested, the large businesses do not find it viable to make 100 of a certain part and old stock unused is treated as surplus but must be bought as a job lot which can run into tens of thousands.

So yes when somebody buys a few MGF MGTFS for peanuts and commands OTT prices and makes up a ebay name mgf best in the world etc i too find it a bit jumping on the bandwagon but where money is to be made somebody will muscle in and as they say its a free country.

Running any business can be costly, some of the highest turnover companies in the world have failed. Expenses add up,unit premises,insurance,postage employees.ebay & paypal fees,vat,accountants,hmrc tax,advertising etc the profit margin of a item for a business attempting to run legitimately is often the small picture but rightly so for the many unregulated traders who claim to have a interest in MGF MGTFS it gets right up my nose too.

talkingcars wrote: wrote:

I expect the Bini steptronic will be the same box.

The ZF VT1 CVT box is used by BMW in the Mini Cooper CVT and the Mini One CVT.

I've removed and taken apart the offending switch and below are pictures of this nasty peace of crap they want £181.50 for ...





In the next 2 pics you can see what the issue is with it, the slightest bit of damp and the current running through such tiny contacts and they corroded .. the manufacturing cost couldn't be more than a couple of quid if that so a retail price of around £25 would be more than adequate

I have now cleaned this up using a drimill with a wire wheel and some alcohol (no not to drink) to clean and refitted it and its appears to be working fine ... until it corrodes again that is ... I will perhaps do a how to for this as it saves so much money




I have also looked at ideas for improving this by maybe using micro switches something like this (see below) but I think I will leave that until switch stops working altogether