We will have to dissagree on this point.
However if there were enough people willing to pay a fair & reasonable price for good quality replacement parts then there would be people willing to make them as there is sufficient demand to allow for a reasonable living or profitable side line.
However as very few British bike owners are willing to pay a fair & reasonable price then no one will bother to make good quality replacement parts.
I used to gt tanks made locally
However the tinsmith who made them no longe makes tanks for British bikes
He makes them for just about every other country and in particular Honda & Harleys
He stopped doing British bikes because he got fed up with arguementative & abuse people demanding he make them tanks cheaper than they were listed on the web.
It takes about a full 40 hour week to make a tank from scratch and down here the average weekly wage is $ 1500
The median wage for unskilled workers is $ 650 week
People think $ 500 is too expensive
The down side of this is he knows the right curves & dimensions for most British tanks but that will die with him unless sited like this one measure up originals and post the dimensions, which for a tank are very complex.
That means eventually the only option will be poor quality parts made by quite skilled people but done from illustrations in sales catalogues .
The same goes for rear stands, girders, main frames guards and even wheels rims & spokes.
This will eventually lead to "restored" bikes that are unsafe to be ridden and the resulting serious injury or death.
People like you have been repairing motorcycles for decades so can tell what is safe or unsafe but too Joe Average who retires and decides he . or she would like to get an old bike to ride so they buy one that has been slapped together by Charlie Cheapskate using the rock bottom priced parts sourced from anywhere on the planet in order to make a cash profit on every bike than passes through their hands .
Or Joe himself who does not have the skills required to work out if a part is fit for purpose & assumes as it is nicely painted it is good to go .
And FWIW, some one down here just paid $ 440 ( Aus) for an original pull start knob for a 1962 Victa 18" lawnmower
The going rate for original wheels are around $ 1000 a piece of $ 300 for reproductions & a mower has 4 of them .
And these parts go on mowers that were made in much larger numbers than M20 ever were .
So £ 10 a piece for huts sounds quite cheap in comparison.
Appreciate your responses and opinions.
To be fair, there's no problem with my M20's fuel tank.
I am now dealing with my BMW R51/3 and looking for a solution for it. Its fuel tank will probably be disqualified.
The truth is that these days the gas tank is undergoing patching repairs, and a pressure check will reveal whether we have succeeded or not.
And if we do not succeed, then I would like to be ready with an opinion whether to purchase a replica, and where.
By the way the advantage in the tanks of our M20's is that you can dilute any fuel refill with one liter of diesel. I have been doing this for years, the motorcycle works very nicely and I believe that maybe the diesel helps a bit in preventing the rust on the sides of the tank.
Who knows.
email (option): michasteinmann@gmail.com
['So £10 a piece for nuts sounds quite cheap in comparison..']
The fact is that not all parts are the same...Some can easily be made at a viable price today, some can't...The more manual labour is involved in the process the less chance of getting a product everyone can afford because of todays labour rates..
I think you're making an erroneous comparison to justify the £40 asking price for 4 original sump guard nuts...I can (and have ) made exact replicas out of the correct material and had them plated for about £2.50 per nut at todays manufacturing prices, even taking into account the low volume of production...
However, my particular point there was that building a bike from original parts throughout if you start off with an incomplete machine is not really an option for many and hard to justify with prices at the level of the example I quoted (the nuts)...
Thus the interest in replica parts from India etc...Because people can't afford or can't financially justify spending more on parts than the final machine costs, or they can't find a good original part,or they are unable to pay for multiple hours of labour for a skilled craftsman it doesn't automatically mean they are all tight asses...As I said, these sort of sweeping generalisations about groups of people never apply...Just take a look at some of the extremely expensive rebuilds that are out there..
I agree though, we don't see eye to eye on this subject really in multiple ways....Ian
email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com