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Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:13 pm

I have a moral issue with paying $125 for a piece of rubber. Any of you know how to get around that? I'm replacing my windshield and want to re[place the seal. Thanks.

Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:16 pm

How about Ductape :shock: !

Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:25 pm

ChrisFrost wrote: I have a moral issue with paying $125 for a piece of rubber. Any of you know how to get around that? I'm replacing my windshield and want to re[place the seal. Thanks.

Is this the first car you have ever owned????

A moral issue over a piece of rubber, get over it!

The savings of owning a Thing is doing the labor yourself.

Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:47 pm

ChrisFrost wrote: I have a moral issue with paying $125 for a piece of rubber.

A Thing isn't a bug. There aren't hundreds of thousands of them on the road. If someone makes a rubber piece for a bug, they can sell several thousand of them. If someone makes a rubber piece for a Thing, they'll be lucky to sell a few hundred. Rare rubber for old cars can ($150) get ($175) expensive! ($170)

We're very very lucky that The Thing Shop makes the parts they do. If they didn't make several of those parts, you simply COULD NOT get them at any price. It costs a lot of money to tool up for a part, and since we Thing owners don't buy in the quantity that the bug owners do (well, can) then we're stuck with having to pay for a higher percentage of that tooling.

Someone in another thread was complaining about the price of The Thing Shop's windows. Clearly, they haven't priced windows or figured out how much R&D goes into something like that. Those are short-run parts that are hand-made, and they're a quality product. If they could sell tens of thousands, they could probably get some cheap overseas shop set up to crank them out. But with 8000ish (is that the right estimate?) Things left on the road, there's no way to drive out the initial production costs.

You begin to fear those 181xxx part numbers, as they mean triple the cost - IF you'r lucky enough to get them. Look around for trailing arms, leaf springs, original rims fenders or most other body panels and you'll quickly wish SOMEONE would make them new, even if they were triple the price.

Now, take a deep breath. Most other vintage car parts cost a LOT more. Go try restoring an old, rare, non-VW. You quickly discover that it tends to be much cheaper and easier to restore the VW.

I bought a Type4 engine for my Thing. There is only one exhaust system that will fit, and it had to be custom built. Initially, I was shocked at the $2k price tag, then I started looking around a bit. You can EASILY pay $5k on a good custom exhaust for a modern car. Turns out the primary reason for my sticker shock is that I'm used to seeing $150 bug exhaust systems, or performance $500 bug exhaust systems - I just wasn't used to the price for good, custom work. If it wasn't for Tangerine racing, I simply wouldn't have an exhaust that would fit my car! As I understand it, he's now made three systems - no volume savings at all!

The good news is that most Thing parts are cheap because they're identical to a bug/bus/ghia part. Don't throw a hissy fit when you come across one that isn't.

Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:55 pm

I have oe (new and used) windshield seals and they cost nothing near your nut case price. We need to talk. pm me K-mann

Tue Apr 17, 2007 7:48 am

Yep. We Thing owners have expensive taste. :wink:

I used to have a couple of gray-market European Mercedes. You could repaint your Thing for what it costs for a tune up for one of those babies (hence the "used to have"! :shock: )

Tue Apr 17, 2007 2:49 pm

-Um... shop around a bit...
-
http://www.oeveedub.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PR...ndow-seals
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-This one is $59.95 and German!