Every year, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have their annual Congress and exhibition in Detroit, Michigan, and I always make sure to attend this event to learn about new automotive technology and see what new products the other suppliers have to offer. Traditionally, the major US, European and Japanese auto parts suppliers are present to raise awareness of their products, but this year was very different and was a reflection of the changes that are occurring in the automotive industry. There were relatively few traditional suppliers, and literally hundreds of suppliers from India, China and Mexico. They had turned out in force, and the fundamental message was that these suppliers are now very capable and can supply almost any component that the traditional suppliers can.
They still have a way to go when it comes to complete systems because they still lack the engineering resources, but that will come in time. In the mean time, they offer similar products at the component level but at much lower price. No wonder there is so much outsourcing going on.
The relevance of this preamble to the Jowett fraternity is that it should be possible to source many spare parts from these off-shore suppliers probably cheaper than they can be found locally. As a former Lucas employee (Lucas got swallowed by TRW in 1999 and my part got sold to Delphi in 2000), I was pleased to see a one-time Lucas satellite, Lucas-TVS from India at the exhibition offering many old Lucas parts. These were the genuine parts built to Lucas designs but with modern materials. Their website is at:
http://www.lucas-tvs.com/products.html
Here you can find that they are still making the M35G starter motor and the C40 dynamo, as well as distributors, lighting and switchgear. Much of the really old stuff was in the Lucas Indian Service Limited brochure that I picked up, which illustrates that proper Lucas batteries and items like the floor-mounted headlight dip switch are still available. Unfortunately, their website link is non-functional having been subsumed into the main TVS website.
While Lucas-TVS was the obvious supplier of interest to us, there were many other suppliers at the SAE Exhibition, with the list available here:
http://www.sae.org/servlets/vsearch?Sea ... 3&Company=*
It is a long list, so it takes a long time to download. Among the potential suppliers of parts who could make Jowett components, I noted:
http://www.TVSrubber.com/range.htm
http://www.indoschottle.com/
http://www.gmm.com.cn/english/index.asp
and several others.
The bottom line is that people who's role it is to look for Jowett spare parts may want to look at some of these off-shore suppliers. Yes, there will be difficulties involved in dealing with far-away people, but they seemed interested in small runs of parts as well as the large runs.
Philip Dingle
A Source for New Parts?
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PJGD
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- Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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ian Howell
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From 1966 to '67 Black deLuxe Javelin LDF 738 (Scrapped with broken chassis)
From 1967 to '87 Black de Luxe Javelin MKC 1 (later 6469TU). (Sold as non-runner with tons of spares, 1987)
From about 1980 to '87 ex WD Jowett stationary engine. (Sold on)
From 1966 to present, 1930 Long Four Fabric Saloon, Dark Blue / Black.
Taken in a part-repaired state to the 2010 Centenary Rally, returned to a roadworthy state by 2013. - Given Name: Ian
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