How far would you be willing to go to get that hard to find original part that you need for one of your many projects? In my particular case it would seem that the answer is, hundreds of miles.
Yesterday I drove
all the way to West Yorkshire in England to pick up a 25 year-old soviet-made
handlebar fairing for a IZH Dnepr MT11 I'd won on eBay. Better
yet, it came with all the original fittings.
It's not much to look at, and I'd be the first to admit that it's far from
pretty, but it's what they originally came with from the factory
in the Ukraine and I've been after one for a couple of years
now. The problem is that even the poorly made Chinese copies are prohibitively expensive once you add in overseas shipping costs. So, if I was going to get one it would
have to be second-hand and located in this country, and even then they don't come up for sale all that often.
As this one was ‘collect
only', and a quick visit online showed me that I was looking at something in the
region of a 500 mile round trip, it looked like a road trip was one the cards. I made the necessary arrangements to pick it up and together with the wife and the dogs we headed off for what promised to be a long day.
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| similar screen fitted to a Ural 750 Patrol |
In the end I
probably ended up paying more in fuel to collect the thing than it cost me in the first place. Nevertheless, I am happy with the purchase and it
turned out to be in pretty good condition for its age. It should scrub up well
once repainted. In addition, I also picked up a
NOS set of rear shock absorbers and a single saddle that the seller had spare, so all told a pretty successful day out.
How many miles Mr Combo, 900 looking at the map through the bottom of your whiskey glass.
ReplyDelete500 I would think sober, but glad you got what you were looking for.
Hope to see you at Tighnabruaich if you are going this year.
Yup, nearer 500. The bigger number is a typo and I'll change that in the post. Nice of you to keep me right :)
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