(Nobody) Buying car parts in Taiwan

After a contact breaker set and a condenser for an olde stylee ignition system (Daihatsu Skywing 1986)

Parts place in Tainan looked it up on their computer and gave me one of each, 150 NT each, but they don’t fit. Got a refund.

Plan B, local garage that has got me bits before, though that mechanic has gone. With a Chinese translation, a photograph of each off the Internyet, my registration document to unambiguously identify the vehicle, and a few days, they came back with 2,000 NT, used.

Say WHAT?

That’ll likely be the whole distibutor. I dunno how the photo’s got “lost in translation” but they apparently managed it.

This is par for the course here, and VERY IRRITATING.

Do they crush and scrap all old vehicles? Don’t think I’ve seen many junk yards.

Met a guy from Australia once looking for some slightly older car parts and claimed Taiwan is the only place to get the parts he needed.

I was with a friend the other day driving a CRV and needed to replace headlight. Pulled over at a random garage. Ten minutes and total bill NT$200. It would have taken at least an hour back home and probably cost at least 1500 but probably more.

Maybe that’s the only way they sell it as a whole.

I’ll[quote=“tango42, post:3, topic:180419, full:true”]

Maybe that’s the only way they sell it as a whole.
[/quote]
That wouldn’t be normal since these are “consumable” parts, but it is a very old vehicle so suppliers have probably stopped carrying bits for it.

I used to have the President of Ford Taiwan as a private student and he would sometimes order parts for me through Ford

Was quite funny watching The Brush-Off from the sales suits turn to The Grovel when I dropped the name, but I’ve sort of lost contact/guanchi.

Its not a bad price for a whole distributor, but I don’t, AFAIK, need one.

I’ll try some web searching later. You used to be able to get parts for this car in Germany. Shipping charges will put the price up but these are very small parts.

Taiwan has lots of 3rd party parts. Also lots of used part from junk yards (see the driving skill and estimate surpluse vehicles).

One thing i find frustrating like you, is buying new parts. Countless times, recently with mitsubishi truck parts i want to buy new ones but they simply wont sell them. Our family member is a mechanic and he said the same. So for example. Need a new computer. Can only buy junker truck computer (used). He tried and we tried to go to the dealer and the parts people. They only sell them if they install them…annoying as all hell as they are seriously corrupt mechanics and i dont want to leave the shop with extra damaged parts!

I did once go to the main Daihatsu dealer in Tainan with a print (from the official Charade manual) of the bit I wanted (an exhaust bracket, easy enough to improvise as it turned out) and got the M-word without the guy looking at it, so I havn’t bothered with them again. Maybe foreigner-aversion, dunno.

Rather surpisingly, this car was dealer maintained by-the-book in Kaoshiung by the previous owners, so that might be a possibility, but I dunno if they’d supply parts, and it is 7 years since they last saw it.

Too busy with GF’s Masters Dissertation at the moment, so I’m already into late inspection penalties, though I dunno exactly where the point of no return is