Hello all, here to read up and educate myself before taking the plunge and buying/building an FD3S in the UK. Want to start with a shell and build it up my way rather than buy a complete running one; like most of you, I like to tinker Cheers

 

Better to start with a roller than a shell perhaps. Strip it down and rebuild it, reverse engineer as it were. A shell will kill you in acquiring used parts.

 

Good shout. They are getting a bit long in the tooth now; part of the reason I've been buying aftermarket parts when they pop up in good condition even before I have the actual car, lots of parts are either old and in bad condition or beginning to fetch silly money (or often both), so have been grabbing stuff when I can

 

I suppose, being in London, you know of TRWORX. Seems he has parted out dozens of FD. His online (ebay) prices seem high, but it may be worth catching up to him in person.


One of their locations is at 9 Rockingham Close.

 

Yep. Just bought a few bits from him recently and managed to negotiate, so I paid nowhere near the listed eBay prices. He is supposedly closing down though, there is a listing for all the parts/FDs he has left for £50k on eBay. Bit of a shame if that's the case; another source of parts about to go.

 

When parts hoards come up for sale on here they seem to move out fairly quickly and at decent prices to the seller. Perhaps someone with a different sales model could move his inventory quicker. Albeit much of his stuff would be rhd and shipping is a factor. However, it is surprising how the selling price of FD parts is getting globalized. I see sellers in Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Greece and UAE, selling at North American liquidating prices less shipping costs.

 

Yes, I'd probably agree, especially given eBay/PayPal's 10% and 3.4% fees listing there means you lose a fair chunk of the sale price, so naturally a raise in listing price to compensate means prices which begin to put prospective buyers off. Over at the UK FD forum (FDUK) I'd say the majority of stuff which comes up for sale is priced very cheaply compared to a forum like this (not always, but I find it to be the case more times than not). The result is that things shift incredibly fast; sometimes within minutes. I'm at the PC quite a lot of the day, and despite very frequent visits to the forum I've missed out on some great deals.