BUYING used parts on the internet can be an excellent way to exchange piles of nice crisp £20 notes for lumps of scrap metal about which the vendor has lied through their teeth. Over the years I have been caught out a few times. A ‘good running’ 200Tdi engine turned out to have eaten its turbo bearings, causing it to run away on its own oil and destroy every moving component in the engine. A ‘500 miles from new’ set of tyres for which I travelled halfway across the country had cracks between the tread blocks big enough to lose a small dog in. I came home empty-handed from that trip.
I have become very wary of internet bargains and nowadays I only buy something mechanical if it is cheap enough to be able to salvage some useful parts from. Even a seized engine will usually yield some useable castings and ancillaries,
