Hi Dennis,
Backorders are killing me on my TR4 project, too. Your choices are to wait,
or keep shopping for another source with the part in stock, or try to make do
with used parts, or have a patch panel made up by a custom shop if that would
work for you, or try to get a TR4/4A panel and modify it to fit if that's
possible.
I suspect the U.S. vendors are getting body panels from the same source. I
believe many of the original dies were bought up by a company in England that's
using them to reproduce the parts. I suppose it's possible there may be some
quality differences, batch to batch or perhaps others are also producing the
parts.
I've noticed TRF seems reluctant to give an estimate of when parts will be
received, while some of the other vendors may take a guess. I suppose TRF is
just being cautious.
I would suspect the LH floor pan is much more frequently replaced than the RH
pan (at least here in the U.S. on lefthand drive cars, the opposite would be
true in England, with righthand drive cars). This because the primary cause of
rusted out floor pans seems to be leaking master cylinders. The original RH
pan is still in my TR4 and is in good condition. Meanwhile the LH panel was
patched sometime before I got the car (approx. 1978), has again been damaged by
leaky MCs and I've got a replacment pan waiting to go in.
Good luck with your project!
Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif.
AMfoto1@aol.com
http://hometown.aol.com/amfoto1/amfoto1.htm
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:06:29 -0800
From: "D&B Lambert" <blambert@socal.rr.com>
Subject: TR3 Floor Pans
All,
In need of a left hand (driver's side in the states) floor pan for my
TR3A project, I checked the usual sources. <snip> One more thing:
why is the LH pan so much scarcer than the RH one?
Thanks, Dennis
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