Spare parts for old Merc Hymers

Ron Bentham For Hymer spares your first port of call is Brownhills, who are the main Hymer dealers in the UK - ask for Darren Leadbetter who is the old Hymer spares expert. d.leadbetter@brownhills.co.uk. But be aware that although they are pretty good, some parts can be expensive - even though if you mention Classic Hymers, you will get a 10% discount. Many habitation parts are "generic" - ie not Hymer specific - examples are the blinds - made by Seitz, all the gas stuff - Truma - fridges - Dometic and many other bits - like taps and light fittings and bulbs and bit n bobs - all this stuff can be sourced from caravan breakers, although it can be quite a task to identify what fits where. 

There are now getting some parts that are almost impossible to get - habitation door hinges are an example.

The wing mirrors are a standard truck part, and quite hard to find. 

As for the Mercedes - it's a mixed bag. Wander in to a Merc main dealer with your vin number, and watch them shake their heads and give you the "don't see many of these nowadays" routine, and arrange an overdraft before you go. The truth is that the Merc parts computer does still list the parts, but they are spread all over the country, and sometimes they just can't be bothered to do the work locating them. These are guys who work on £80k SLK's at £120 an hour....so forgive them for not giving a damn about your 20 year old pre Sprinter chassis. So avoid main dealers if you can (except in poorer EU countries like Portugal, where I have found them to be much much better)

What you need, and I have said this many times on here, is to forge a friendly relationship with a local light commercial garage, and preferably one with an owner who is in his 50's as he will have done his apprenticeship on these old chassis back in the 80's and 90's. He will have his own set of contacts for spares. Many parts are "pattern" parts and readily available - eg only a fool buys an oil filter from a Merc dealer!

And then there are the breakers. If you look around our roads you wonder that given the fact that these 80's and 90's pre Sprinter Merc vans and chassis - 410D (yours) 310D (5 series), and all the others - 208, 209, 409, 508 .....etc etc ...... are so incredible durable and long living.....where the hell are they? The only ones you see still plying their trade are either specialist vehicles, or minibuses, plus the odd hippy van conversion - they are THE van for hippy vans - just take a walk around any festival camp site. It took me a while to find the answer - they are all in Africa! Once their resale value in Europe dropped to a certain level, instead of scrappage, they were loaded wholesale into containers and shipped to Africa, where they are still running to this day, loaded to the gills with livestock and people. I found this out when I spent 2 winters in Morocco. 90% of all light commercials there are Mercedes T1 and T2, they just run and run and run, and they keep them on the road with ingenuity and hammers! There are breakers yards all over europe - including a couple in the UK, who hoover up all of what's left of these vehicles, and send containers of spares over to Africa. So now you know!

Luckily these guys have yards and stock, and the process is never ending, so it is possible to get spares from them before they ship out. There is a place in Cornwall I have used - a very nice guy, who found me a very rare high ratio gearbox for my S700.

And of course there are still plenty of traditional breakers around who get the occasional scrapper in.

So all in all - spares are available for these Merc chassis - you just have to be willing to do the work, and if all else fails, there are our German friends - they have no problem with spares, for the obvious reason that for every old Merc over here, there are still 10 over there. They can get pretty much anything you want.