Tips on Buying Restoration Parts

Like so many other automobile lovers involved in a restoration project over the past several years, we have suffered the trials and tribulations of attempting to find parts to restore our classic Mustang. Like an Arthurian Knight on the quest for the Holy Grail, we had to search the world for hard-to-find items for our vehicle. But, the hunt for those elusive items is part of the fun.

Owners of 65 and 66 Mustangs are the luckiest in the hunt for restoration parts. One person told me “If you have a tire, you can build a 65 Mustang around it.” This is almost true, with nearly every imaginable part available through aftermarket companies. With 1 million of these cars sold during their production years, this is understandable. But, for those of us who own 67 to 68 Mustangs there are some items that are just not available. Seems the farther you get from the 65 model, the scarcer parts become.

The owners of 67 and 68 Mustangs are second on the list, as far as available items, and are gaining new items all the time. For instance, when we first began restoration on our convertible, the taillight buckets were found to be rusted through in spots. At the time, taillight buckets were not available for 68’s, so we wrapped them in foil tape and painted them as a quick fix, in hopes of finding suitable replacements, from a donor car, in the future. Luckily, soon after we painted the car, several aftermarket companies began selling the items.

But, some parts are still not available for our models, and probably won’t be for some time. When we first bought our car, one item we knew we were going to have to track down was a glove box door. Somewhere along our Mustang’s history, someone had removed the glove box door, and it was nowhere to be found. Not only was the door missing, but also all the items that were attached to it (latch, trim ring, and the plastic glove box itself). Now glove boxes for 65’s and 66’s are abundant through nearly every Mustang catalog out there, but not for our model.

Luckily for us, and all automobile restorers, we now live in a time where a 24-7 swap meet is literally at the touch of a button. Yes, Ebay has thousands of items for every automobile restorer. With some searching, and a little patience, we soon found all the parts needed to restore our Stang’s missing glove box. And that is the key to shopping on Ebay, patience. If the part you’re searching for isn’t listed, give it a week or so and most likely it will be.

We searched for months to find a suitable center console for our car, and some of the accompanying parts took even longer. In our search for console parts we had managed to buy a nearly complete unit with a few of the shifter parts missing. One part in particular, a shift indicator light bracket (a metal piece that holds the indicator light a slides with the shifter), was hard to find. We had called some of the “Mustang junk yards” around the country and found they were very proud of these items. One business quoted a price of $100 for the simple metal bracket. Refusing to pay “pirate prices,” we simply kept an eye on Ebay, and after a few weeks finally found the item for around $10.

Another tip to buying on Ebay is not to bid immediately. When you find the part you have been looking for, it’s not wise to bid on the item when there are three days left on the auction. Wait until the last possible moment to bid. Set a price you are willing to pay and stick with it. Bidding early only gives others the opportunity to start a bidding war, and during bidding wars buyers tend to go overboard, buying parts for more than they’re worth. Sellers on Ebay love this, but if you’re the bidder, use restraint. Unless it’s something extremely rare, there will be another one online sometime.

Things to consider when buying on Ebay are also shipping cost and where the seller lives. When you live in Tennessee, buying a set of heads from a seller in Oregon can cost you a lot more in shipping than paying a little more in the initial price from someone in Georgia. Always check shipping charges before bidding.

But Ebay isn’t the only place to get great deals on parts. When we first bought our 68 Mustang, the first thing we did was to order parts catalogs from every vendor we could find. Mustangs Plus, CJ Pony Parts, Mustangs Unlimited, NPD, The Paddock , California Mustang and Year One were just a few of the catalogs we ordered. Each offers a variety of restoration parts and we’ve found that some offer special parts the others don’t.

Having a variety of catalogs allows you to price shop for parts. When ordering power windows for our car we found that one vendor was nearly $100 more expensive than another vendor for the same part. The vice versa was apparent for the power window switch, the vendor with the high priced power window parts was $100 cheaper than the other for the switch. Ordering from both companies saved us money.

Another way to save money is to compare shipping costs and bulk discounts from the various companies. Some offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount. Others offer different percentage discounts for orders over various amounts [5% over $500 and 10% over $1000]. Depending on your order you may actually save money by buying a higher priced part from a company that offers free shipping. The same can be said for buying in bulk. You can save money by buying a lot of parts at one time, rather than buying one or two pieces at a time. Good advice is to have a calculator handy and check the same order with different companies or mix the orders between several companies.