Morris Minor Owners Club

Les, you have a very good point. We should not have to put up with inferior quality goods.

I completely agree, and it is so frustrating being let down by new parts that are worse quality than 50 year old parts. The problem is, collectively I think we are all to blame, as the proliferation of poor quality, cheap parts is driven by the fact that the majority of owners don't want to spend the money on good quality. So the parts don't sell, and manufacturers substitute them for Chinese junk that doesn't last 2 minutes, but hey, it's OK because it's cheap! The only way to get around it is to be prepared to spend more money for quality. I would, and I suspect many others would, but unfortunately, not the majority. It's not helped when some of the retailers list parts as 'Superior quality' when they are clearly still rubbish...

For fuel hoses, as above, get them from a proper supplier. If you manage to get the good quality stuff, it lasts just as well as it ought to.

Has anyone tried the silicone radiator and fuel hoses being offered by ESM and other distributors? They are quite expensive but I would imagine they last a long time.

I'm still restoring my Morris so I haven't had the time to test all the parts I've bought but I've gotten rubber that looks really good as well as rubber that looks really cheap (rear lamp fixings, especially).

Just replaced a water pump on a Land Rover Discovery, failed in less than 18 months. When I got the old one off it was easy to see the cause of the failure - the little rubber seal that keeps the water away fron the bearing was cracked in several places, bearing then quickly got kippered and shredded the serpentine belt. Ok, there's the chance of replacing with a pump 6 times the price of the patern one - but what guarantee do you have that it will last 6 times longer. Our major gripe must be with the quality of rubber that's going in to theses parts - think we should knock up a petition and bung it at the rubber manufacturing trade associations. Any thoughts?

les wrote:In the absence of a tyre specialist joining this thread, I checked a few leads out and found a statement from the British rubber manufacturers assoc from June 2001-----'The brma members strongly recommend that unused tyres should not be put into service if they are over 6 years old, and all tyres should be replaced 10years from the date of manufacture'. Whether or not we all do this is doubtful but would imagine these people could pull rank over other opinions!

I suspect that is called "covering your -don't swear or you will be banned- "