Parts availability

Had my brake master cylinder fail, so needed one today. I checked a 50 mile radius, advance, auto zone, napa, o'reilly. Finally found one at an auto zone 2 towns over. It didn't used to be like this.

7 years ago when my clutch failed I had no trouble finding a master & slave.

Also, kinda pissed about this o.e. unit only making it 20 years.

Driving ancient vehicles (myself included) has is down side. Not to mention your taking a guess as to the quality of the part when ordering online

Jetta SS said:

Had my brake master cylinder fail, so needed one today. I checked a 50 mile radius, advance, auto zone, napa, o'reilly. Finally found one at an auto zone 2 towns over. It didn't used to be like this.
7 years ago when my clutch failed I had no trouble finding a master & slave.
Also, kinda pissed about this o.e. unit only making it 20 years.

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parts are hard to come by in some places and some parts are EXTINCT and unreplaceable. For instance, the bearing nut on the O2J trans shifting tower is EXTINCT. the parts that do exist are used and in the same or worse shape of when you go to replace it.
You can rebuild masters and calipers ect. they just have orings and some sandpaper goes a long way. Unless your piston is heavily pitted, you can rebuild it for just a few bucks in orings from a standard variety pack.

Jetta SS said:

Had my brake master cylinder fail, so needed one today. I checked a 50 mile radius, advance, auto zone, napa, o'reilly. Finally found one at an auto zone 2 towns over. It didn't used to be like this.

7 years ago when my clutch failed I had no trouble finding a master & slave.

Also, kinda pissed about this o.e. unit only making it 20 years.

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Yeah but you're talking imports, and I don't think I could probably find a MC in Des Moines at any auto parts store, never even thought about it actually. If I did it would have been outrageously expensive anyway, probably Beck Arnley and with BA you sometimes now get junk. Best I could hope for is to have it sent out from KC overnight but still the price would not be what I would want to pay either.

As for the NLA stuff from VW not really much to do about that, I'm not even sure what a bearing nut from a 02J shift tower is TBH but if you have a part number I'd like to see what it is.

I always work from the proposition that parts I need are going to be slow to get locally and that means keeping items on the shelf that are critical. It's not that general maintenance parts are impossible to get but you have to be strategic about it.

We are talking about cars that are now generations old too...

Steve

I have had pretty good luck with ROCKAUTO.COM for funky parts...
try them !
Ebay UK also a good spot BUT the vehicles are not called same as we call them here.
Totally different nomenclature and descriptions of/about parts...
Variant is saloon
and seems ALL screws are threaded backwards(lol) !

But yeah, try the:
SEAT/Spain
Polski/Poland parts.

Good luck !

The internet is your best friend in these cases. FCP Euro is the place I go for OE parts... they haven’t failed me yet.

garciapiano said:

The internet is your best friend in these cases. FCP Euro is the place I go for OE parts... they haven’t failed me yet.

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that's because you have not had to order those parts yet, just wait!

No clue what that means. I’ve ordered O.E. parts from them and GAP. They order them in from a dealership.... usually 2-3 days extra wait time.

-Todd

yea, there are parts that do not exist in new or in good shape save for the unicorn every once and a while. i forget the part numbers but most of the parts for the shift tower on the 02J dont exist anymore.
there are proper upgradeable parts that dont exist any more, like the aluminum thermostat housing.
Try and find a new or even good used AC line with a non aftermarket POS ball valve vs the OEM shrader valve. you cant. I got one from ECS years ago and tried to return it within the window allowed but they said that they cant take it back as it was all recalled due to the issue.
The ball valve thats in them suck and they all leak and have poor thread pitch, the OEMs do not exist. i have had to resort to having a hydraulic shop make new rubber lines on the old ones.
Its really hard to find OEM alternators, you can get all the proper parts to rebuild them and you can get remans or rebuilt bosh, but its still a crap shoot, same with CV axles, unless you custom order or get lucky on NOS, you limited to cheep reman crap that goes bad in weeks or a few years at most.

im sure there are most extinct parts but this is my experience.

We got 'em. https://www.idparts.com/brake-master-cylinder-b4a3-p-1933.html

That one's not too hard. Other A3 items are gone: some coolant hoses, intercooler hoses, some electrical items, and lots of body and trim stuff. But if you have a nice A3 it's worth the search.

By the way, GAP is no more. One of their folks works for us.

Mongler98 said:

im sure there are most extinct parts but this is my experience.

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NLA is a totally different story. Can’t blame the supply houses, for that.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

By the way, GAP is no more. One of their folks works for us.

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Yeah, unfortunately I knew of GAP’s demise. I started ordering from them decades ago, when they were Adirondack. Every so often, I check and see if their website is back to taking orders.

-Todd