So as some of you know, it’s been awhile since I’ve been around. I got the chance to give someone a tour of my garage and my neglected projects. (I’m not ready to call them abandoned yet!) That got the juices flowing again, even though I still have no free time to speak of.
The first thing I found is there are still a lot of old friends here. That was good to see. Then out of curiosity, I surfed ebay motors looking for Cougar parts listings. I was pretty surprised to see a lack of availability for anything but generic stuff that everybody has. At first I attributed that to people getting fed up being ebay sellers. So I went to check out WCCC. To my surprise I saw dozens of “out of stock” items that I thought they would always have. Just to be clear, I’m a '68 guy, so I am looking at '67/8 stuff exclusively. So what’s the real story here? Has this stuff really dried up that much in the last couple years? Or it is just not lucrative to deal in it anymore?
I agree that parts are becoming harder to find and very few deals are available due to the number of people now using eBay. Also being a 68 fan, I look often to see if anything of interest becomes available.
It is a shame that the Cougar auction site did not get any traction as that would have been an ideal format to easily filter through all of the various items posted to find exact match parts.
There are still pars around, it is more like a treasure hunt at this point. The same people who posted parts a few years back are great resources to contact. If there are things in particular you are seeking, send me an email and I can send it to a few people who may have leads for you chair@cougarclub.org
As you said there are still a lot of great people in our community and we all do stick together to help keep cars on the road and coming to events.
Hi Gavin. Good to hear from you. That’s one thing I always liked about the Cougar community. There are always people willing to help out. I’m not really looking for anything specific at this point, but I’ve always loved buying parts. Even parts that I don’t necessarily need. I thought it might be a way to ease back into the hobby, by picking up something new like an XR7 dash assembly. I was shocked to see how little was out there. I’ll make the same offer, if you know of anyone seeking '68 parts have them send me a message. I have stuff that I would let go if it would help someone out.
I do think things have changed. It seems like things are quieter here and on the other message boards I’m on. I think the sites have “matured.” Most of the pressing and common issues have been quite thoroughly discussed and debated.
I agree with your observation about eBay. eBay is a two-edged sword. It is a great way to get parts out, advertised and sold, but then the inventory of parts gets depleted in a hurry. There are only so many NOS parts, for example, and so many guys who are willing to let them go. I think we’ve hit a low in the supply side of things right now.
Thanks Gary. I also noticed it’s a bit quieter here. Maybe you need me here running my trap. I have to figure out a way to stay engaged. Unfortunately being OCD doesn’t allow for a lot of diversity. Once I get involved in something it takes all my focus away from everything else. The new business has been doing that. But working 80 hours a week is getting old. Jack is becoming a very dull boy. It’s time to spend at least a couple hours on the hobby I always wanted to enjoy.
I belong to the Pak-Rat section of the human race and buying parts that I really did not need filled my rats nest to the point that I can no longer get around in my garage safely.
Things are very different. What was a parts car 10 years ago is now a decent project car. 10 years ago WCCC was 20% repro and 80% used, now it is 90% repro. When we buy a $500 parts car now (about once every 3 weeks) all we get are core bumpers, trim, power steering components and the like. Last good 67-8 dash pad that came through here was three years ago and did not last the day on our site at $600
“This icon means that we’re looking to buy this part! WCCC is a buyer of used and NOS hard to find 67-73 Mercury Cougar parts. Usually we give an in store credit of 50% of our web price for parts delivered in hand or by carrier to our Brooks, Oregon location. If you’re not interested in store credit, just shoot us an email and we will let you know if it’s is something we can pay cash for. We do not send cash for parts in advance but we often can compensate you within hours of receiving the goods. Sometimes a 50% wholesale bid will not be enough to entice you to sell. It never hurts to ask if we can up our bid! If it is an in demand item that we have requests for we often can pay more. Just email us if you have questions or want to share pictures.”
I guess I have mixed feelings about this. It makes the stuff I have more desirable, but it doesn’t bode well for trying to find parts I still need. Fortunately that list shouldn’t be too long.
I have been listening in the wings to see where this went. The biggest change we have is the Facebook effect. You can get an easy “drive by” Cougar fix on Facebook and that is all a lot of folks want. Facebook is killing all kinds of forums by taking away the kind of search driven traffic that makes commercial sites viable. We have never been concerned with that so no worries here. Forums will always be the right place for any kind of actual tech advice or trouble shooting. And of course people do eventually realize that Facebook is an addiction that can eat away all of your free time.
Forum software is so far behind Facebook on picture posting that I really don’t blame people for preferring it. They also have really good screening for robots and spam that makes it possible to dispense with the hurdles that we have to put people through to join here. Last week we were under a brute force attack that made the site slow, and I know that is not fun either. Nothing a few billion couldn’t fix.
On the parts front, Ray Bischoff 427XR7 made a very good point. We need to get this stuff off our shelves and into cars that need the parts. I think that I am as guilty as any body but I suspect most of what I have is not really desirable.
But as I tell my customers who are on the fence about when and if they will sell their spare used parts, “They are money in the bank and usually are not going down in value”. At times here at WCCC a part will get misplaced here and not resurface for several years, almost always it is worth more than when it fell behind that rack.
I bought a parts stash and two Cougar together three years ago. I’ve sold off less then a quarter of the used parts and have paid for everything without even touching the group of NOS parts I got as well. No big hurry to sell the rest. I got to leave something to do in retirement someday. I agree Facebook has taken away from the forums. I think the main downside to Facebook it has spread-out the Cougar community into special Facebook groups. Instead of the community being together on one or two forums. The plus, Facebook seems to reach a lot more Cougar owners then the forums. I think mainly due to the ease of use and convince as they already have a Facebook page anyways.
That’s part of the problem, all my parts are desirable. To me.
I was forced into Facebook for my new venture, it really is a necessity. But I’m not a huge fan. Despite the fact that I haven’t been here for awhile, this forum is much more appealing to me. After the 1st thousand cat pictures they get kind of old.
I’m still trying to figure out that Al was even gone.
On a more serious note, I agree on the FB thing. It moves so much faster. I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing. Oftentimes, a question might pop up and it gets answered, and within in an hour, it’s off the page pretty much never to be seen again. Then I’ve even had guys ask me a specific question about how I did “so and so mod” on my car. When I answer it, the lightbulb will go off in their head and then they remember that they’ve already asked me that very same question after recognizing the answer.
I don’t like that it is broken up in to SO many groups either. I forget which are which anymore.
As for the parts topic… I just shake my head.
I had a bunch of really good used parts leftover from the latest rebuild on the Hero. I had no use for them since I only have the one car. I offered them for sale on MCN back before this site even existed. I wasn’t trying to make a killing on anything. I did manage to sell my perfect XR-7 AC control panel and one former member asked about the floor duct for the heater which I gladly sent to him free.
NOBODY was interested in my mint (zero pitting) outside door handles, or any of the rest of the complete factory AC/Heat system, nor the foot actuated washer pump and countless other misc pieces that were all in great condition.
I changed my ad to read “free to a good home, just pay shipping.” Some guy whose name escapes me decided he wanted it all. So I carefully packaged it all up into three separate shipments and sent it to him. The total was $103 in shipping for all. Then he bitched about the cost.
He did manage to pay, but shorted me three dollars!!!
There’s no way I would want to get into that racket on a regular basis.
Nice try Mark, but I know you’ve been laying awake at night wondering when I’d come back.
I think your story is just human nature. Some people just really can’t appreciate it when someone does them a favor. I’ve bought things I don’t want from a couple people just because they were fair with me and I felt like it would help them out.
