Waiting for the hardest parts

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This article was published 27/01/2023 (1211 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Automotive parts for classic and vintage cars are hard to come by these days. Finding the right pieces takes time, patience and a little more money than it used to, says a local gear head.

When Brad Johnson was looking for pistons for his 1963 and a half Ford Galaxy, he searched and searched and searched but without much luck.

“I waited two years before I got the pistons I needed to use,” said Johnson, who also owns Brad’s Classic Auto Service in Brandon. “The 390 Ford engine was a factory high-performance engine, so the compression ratio had to be right. I could have bought pistons that would have fit the engine, but they wouldn’t have been the same.”

The waiting game is common among those who like to work on their own classic and vintage vehicles, but sometimes you hit a brick wall, said Tory Chambers.

“It’s getting very difficult to find parts,” said Chambers, who owns Tory’s Repair in Brandon. “For instance, crankshafts, they aren’t manufacturing them anymore, so whatever was out there is gone. And very common stuff, like lifters for a Chevy engine — you can’t find them because everybody’s doing projects and they’re not being built.”

Like many industries, auto parts businesses are still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and when manufacturing came to a standstill followed by supply chain issues and disruptions in shipping at Vancouver’s port, said Richard Howson with Auto Parts Central in Brandon.

Parts are no longer being manufactured for vehicles that were made in the 1950s. Howson said they stopped making them in the ’90s, so suppliers are just selling what they have until they run out. But because he has noticed more classic car and hotrod customers, he gets creative with helping them find what they need.

“Personally, I enjoy the puzzle,” said Howson. “For some of the hotrods, we start with old paper catalogues and find numbers in those first, and then we use those in various searches and try to figure out if it’s still the same.”

Tucked in a small Winnipeg warehouse is a parts supplier who has classic and vintage car parts that he has sourced from across Canada and the United States.

There’s no shortage of inventory for Norm Dumont, who’s in his 70s and said he probably has hundreds of thousands of parts in stock at Mid-Canada Suspension.

“I literally have thousands of part numbers in my head that I could recite,” Dumont said as he laughed. “A front wheel bearing for a Chevy, it’s going to be part number 909001 and it was used from 1925 up to the ’50s.”

Dumont will load up his trailer and hits auctions from Minnesota to Oklahoma, Ohio and both Dakotas, buying parts he knows his customers will need. His most prized acquisition is an old Chrysler catalogue that came from a car dealership that closed in 1938 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

It’s both an obsession and a passion, he said, but his goal is to match an auto part with a buyer to keep old cars on the road.

“Everything’s available, it’s either time or money and if you can’t find it, we’ll get it made,” Dumont said. “When people say to me, you’ll never find it — no, no, no, there is always something, somewhere.”

If you’re building or restoring a car and you can’t find a part — don’t give up, urged Rob Rose, a metal fabricator. He owns a 1928 Ford Model A Coupe and a 1940 Ford Coupe, as well as a frame for a 1935 Chevy Coupe, and is mindful about where he gets his parts.

“I’m building a car that I can jump in and drive to the coast and not have any issues with and do it fairly economically,” Rose said. “I build stuff you can jump in and drive and service on the road, and if you need to — get parts.”

The car community is close-knit with many clubs, associations and Facebook groups standing at the ready, said Road Rebels member Lindsay Rystephanuk.

“The guys are always willing to help,” Rystephanuk said. “Whether it’s a search for an old transmission, a part or an engine, nine times out of 10 the answer will be ‘yeah, I know a guy,’ and if he can’t help, he’ll know someone who can.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com