<VV> Replacement part quality

[Bill Elliott]

Guess this is as good of a time as any to remind everyone just how darn lucky we have it with our 
vendors.

I play in a LOT of cars... many of which were made in FAR larger numbers than the Corvair for a far 
longer period of time, and I have yet to find a marque that has the vendor support that we do... and 
better yet at the prices we can get out parts for.  I'd guess the closest community in ease of getting 
stuff would have to be Mustangs... and I don't hesitate to guess that most Mustang bits are 50-
100% more expensive than the same type of items we get from our vendors.

I was recently on the phone complaining to a Mini vendor (same basic Mini in production from 1959-
2000, some 5,387,862 built) who had most of my order (basic stuff) on backorder... who told me I 
should be happy that a car like the Mini had the level of vendor support it did.  This rarely if ever 
happens with any of my Corvair orders from ANY of the vendors.

When any of my buddies ask about getting into Corvairs, the first thing I show them are the catalogs. 
They are almost always blown away by the availability and the prices.

Now, I have not been extremely happy with some of the repro trim bits... but you know, for 90% of us 
they are perfectly fine. And the fact that something besides the rare and expensive NOS stuff is even 
available at all is amazing! I've had some cars where I had to run without trim because it was either 
unobtanium or exorbitantly expensive.

Our vendors are a major reason that the Corvair hobby survives and we should better leverage the 
easy availability of parts when recruiting new members. 

And anybody that is unhappy with our vendors should try restoring and running some other non-
mainstream marque and see how they get along. (As far as I know, all of our vendors speak English 
and will take American dollars!) ;-)

That being said, I just had ANOTHER fuel pump failure (this time on my '66 Turbo vert that I'm 
considering selling... very strange... no external or internal leaking, just suddenly not pumping... pump 
origin unknown)... and had to use up my last Source pump. But at least I'm confident that one won't 
be needing another new pump anytime soon!

Bill Elliott
Urbana, MD