Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Individual Parts worth more than the Mog ?

Faced with one or two items to replace on the old girl (2008 4/4) I am dismayed by the MMC pricing of parts.
For example a simple rubber boot for the Quaife rack & pinion from the factory £88 each. Price of a perfectly good PAIR of boots that fit and do the job of keeping out the road grit: £17.
Curious to see if other more expensive parts are so pricey I see that ONE stainless polished wire wheel is over £900 so the five wheels of my vehicle including the spare: almost £5,000.
At this rate I could achieve more than current market value by breaking for spares. Not that I would ever do so.

To be fair to MMC, even from the supplier (MWS) they are £840, so there's not much of a markup on them.

Thanks for the correction Tim. I must have exaggerated the figure on the wheels. But the Rubber boots a whopping 1000% markup is a bit much !

Interesting. What exactly are the £17 boots...are they from eBay?

autodoc.co.uk does a range of steering rack boots and their website tells me the one I ordered is a fit for the 4/4. This figure quoted includes postage and VAT.

AutoDoc

Not Ebay.

Crikey. I think I'll order a pair as spares. Too good to miss.
Thanks for the info.
Nick

Remember someone once doing a costing of what it would cost to build a Harley from the spares department .... can't remember how much beyond it being jaw-dropping! 😀

Would be interesting to compile a table of vehicles rated by the difference between purchase price and the price of building one from spares from the dealer ... might be an eye-opening guide to what to buy for ongoing peace of mind ... bet there'd be some crackers! 🙂

K

That's until you peel off the made in India sticker hidden under the MWS label and think, they probably paid £10 in labour to assemble this

Jon M , At first I imagined your "India sticker under the MWS label" was a remark made in jest but no, you have it in truth because I see MWS says so in their website and to quote, they say:
"In 1980 Dunlop Ltd, who had been in partnership with Wheels India Ltd since the 1960s, decided it was time to relocate wire wheel production from the Midlands to Madras, India (now Chennai). MWS was awarded exclusive worldwide distribution rights for all Dunlop wire wheels and George joined Dunlop engineers in India, spending several months overseeing the new production line. In 1982 he saw the first batch of wire wheels produced and shipped to the United Kingdom. By this time George’s son, Colin, was taking over ownership of MWS."

My actual jest is therefore: "Guess the price of an Indian Made +4 Morgan - £22,750 but the waiting list is two and a half years".

Having run a motorcycle spares retail and trade import business for 20 years its entirely normal and indeed necessary for the collection of spare parts that make up a vehicle to cost far more than the sales price of the new vehicle. Maybe three times more as a minimum but could be up to ten times. The inability to buy in spares at the mass production cost savings afforded to the manufacturer, stocking costs of supplier and retailer particularly of low turnover parts which may sit on a shelf for years in extreme cases, expected trade discounts etc. all take their toll. In my case sourcing high turnover spares directly from the vehicle manufacturers suppliers mitigated to a degree purchase costs but invariably involved buying in far greater quantities than the three month turnaround model my business was run on. Out of desperation we once stripped a brand new motorcycle into its component parts in order to satisfy customers that had been waiting months for spare parts back ordered from the sole manufacturing source.