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THE PRICE IS RIGHT
Page 50
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is it worth shopping round for spares? Yes! Taking a 75-tonne Mercedes
Benz Atego as an example, we found mirrors priced from £32 to £100,
and clutch kits between £269 and £444. Colin Barnett reports.
The latest in our series checking out how you can save money by shopping around for your parts enters the rough and tumble world of the 7.5-tonner.The Mercedes-Benz Atego is a popular choice on the used market and we've taken a hypothetical example. a Bristol-based 2001 Y-reg Atego 815 horsebox just purchased with a few battle scars. We sent our researcher to source a basket of spares to give our abused truck a new lease of life.
The shopping list consists of a range of parts that would typically be needed by a slightly neglected three-year-old example. Top of the list is a new clutch, while more cosmetically we need a new front bumper, windscreen, driver's door mirror, a headlamp and rear lamp.After the Atego's third birthday we are more interested in keeping the costs down than keeping M-B's warranty auditors happy, so as long as the parts do the job safely and efficiently we're not too bothered by the name on the box.
Our target non-franchised vendors were identified by a search on vvww.yell.com for 'commercial vehicle parts' and 'Bristol'. Despite the broad search, two results,EXB (UK) and DTTruck & Bus Parts, turned out to be an Iveco dealer and a Volvo/Scania specialist respectively.
This left us with five hopefuls: L&F Commercial Parts Specialists,AJ Parsons & Sons, Picksons Truckcare Components, Commercial Spares Distributors and Drivelink Components.The latter was short-lived, for as soon as we mentioned what we needed, we were referred to Picksons.
AJ Parsons was the last to be dropped, as the only parts they could supply were for the clutch, and despite being asked for a clutch for an Atego 815 they needed to know the power rating before quoting.
Pick the nearest three
From the official Mercedes-Benz network we selected the three nearest dealers from the M-B website.The nearest, Commercial Motors South West (Bristol). after redirecting us to its Avonmouth depot, wouldn't quote on any parts without a chassis number. The other two official dealers were Rygor Commercials at Westbury and Euro Commercials of Newport, who also redirected us to another site, in Cardiff. L&F and Picksons both took down our requirements with a promise to call back, which both did promptly. Commercial Spares was also very helpful, but the only one of our requirements it could meet was for the clutch. AJ Parsons tried hard to help, but we eventually got so bogged down over the power rating issue that we gave up.To be fair, with a genuine enquiry for real information, we feel confident that we would have been satisfactorily dealt with. No-one was able to provide a windscreen or non-OE headlamp, although Picksons said they could source a headlamp if we could provide them with a Bosch part number.
Both Rygor and Euro Commer cials pointed out that they couldn't guarantee the accuracy of the prices without a chassis number, but both were as confident as they could be. The helpful man at Euro Commercials provided the required prices there and then, but Rygor took the details and promised to fax the info. When it hadn't arrived next day, we rang and repeated the list to another person, who lived up to his promise to call back within 30 minutes. •