What is Brickwerks?

Brickwerks is a bit like an automotive “free house” for lovers of VW commercials from 1980 until 2003, a small business selecting the best VW T3, T4, LT1 and Caddy 1 parts from around the world and offering them for sale back to the planet at the best prices we can though our webshop. We are not tied to one particular supplier, we are free to buy whatever we like from wherever we like.

Brickwerks isn’t run by sales people, we don’t have a string of shareholders we have to please, we don’t have a social media team nor do we spend money on advertising, in fact we have only ever spent money on one advert in a magazine ever when we here held over a barrel as Simon had his van featured in a magazine. By saving money here means we can offer the very best prices from our modest warehouse in Honley, West Yorkshire.

We try and supply the best products we can from a shrinking pool and constantly monitor the quality of parts supplied to try and nip problems in the bud before they happen.

We have good working relationships with the following companies.

VW Classic Parts, JP Group (Denmark), BBT, Vewib, TRW, Elring, Pierburg, Wahler, Hella, Bilstein, Febi, Topran, Spax, AVO technics, AH Schofields, MyBusParts, TK Carparts, GoWesty, Gemo As well as a lot of  smaller companies you’ve probably never heard of and of course our local machine shop that recreates lots of obsolete, hard to find and niche products exclusive to Brickwerks.

Who is Brickwerks?

The owner, Simon, A fully qualified and trained mechanic bought his first T3 in 1995 and has owned at least one ever since. A little later the internet began to gain popularity and a little frustrated with the lack of information for the T3 on the internet he, along with Steve Shaw started Club80-90, an internet based club and resource for VW T3 owners to share help and information as it simply wasn’t available anywhere else.

Simon was perfectly placed to do this as by trade he was a mechanic and had access to information and data from within the motor trade (Even still using a Microfiche!), Steve brought the computer skills as he used to run a small internet service provider.
Simon would provide “how to’s” by photographing work he’d carried out on his own and friends vehicles and upload to Club80-90 to help others. Steve, also a T3 owner would keep the website and forum running smoothly. Steve also went on to open his own workshop specialising in LPG conversions.
As time went on, Club 80-90 didn’t go in the direction Simon anticipated, at the time he was young and was more interested in modifying T3 and not so much into the family camping club that it ended up being and so Brick-Yard was born, another free to use website, a little more laid back, a little more sweary and a lot more centred around tuning and modifying T3. Obviously there was some light hearted banter between the 2 factions but that was all part of the fun!

Sadly with the rise of social media and smart phones, users soon migrated to various platforms and the activity on the forums started to wain but Club80-90 and Brick-Yard are still there doing their thing albeit in a more sedate fashion than they used to. There is a lot of still relevant information on both forums and Simon remains an active member of Club80-90 by sticking his oar in every now and again.
There is little traffic on Brick-Yard anymore but it is preserved for posterity, a reminder of a true community.

History

Disillusioned with his mechanics job at a local Japanese car main dealership Simon became frustrated with their business practices, upselling, bonuses for rushing jobs and just generally not being truthful with customers he asked one of the mobile tool dealers if he knew of any units to rent, not expecting an answer but he did, He was too deep in now, he had to follow it through and…

SJ Baxter Motor Engineers opened in April 2005 initially as a normal, run of the mill backstreet garage. Soon, Transporter owners from near and far started flocking to the small garage in the back streets of Huddersfield but it wasn’t without its problems.

Some hard lessons were learnt in the fact that you cannot rely on local motor factors to supply good quality parts for 20+ year old vans in the usual 1 hour service you get for normal cars and you cannot control the quality of what you end up with in desperation to keep the work moving and customers happy.

After a few interesting episodes of customers who had travelled quite a long way and not being able to get home because their vans was in pieces on the only vehicle ramp we had as we had parts supply issues, it became obvious that parts must have to be on the shelf!

Then, having to put right vehicles because the parts you bought have failed resulted in far too many late nights and disgruntled (but understanding) customers. Having being quite prolific on T3 and T4 owners internet forums, people knew about what happened in Huddersfield they started ringing up and asking to buy the parts on the shelf.

Trying to do 8 hours’ worth of work, answer the phone, and post parts to people single handedly became tedious, and resulted in more annoyed customers as the bloke they travelled hundreds of miles to get to fix their pride and joy spent more time on the phone than on the spanners!

A web shop was a must!

The first attempt was knocked together with dreamweaver and was very basic indeed, it acted more like an online catalogue, postage was guessed (often badly at our expense) and the admin side became a pain in the proverbial.

Along came webshop number 1.

Instant improvement! No more wrong addresses as notes that were taken in the past were rushed, phone calls slowed down and postage no longer cost us money!

So, we now needed somewhere to put all this stock, there was a small room above the office at the workshop in Paddock, it was no bigger than 3m x 3m, stacked to the roof with parts!

Webshop proved popular, warranty returns were almost zero, something was going well…

More cogs turned…

Brickwerks needs to spread out!

In Nov 2008 with lots of help from friends, relatives and even customers SJ Baxter motor Engineers moved premises to our current location in Honley, near Holmfirth.

2 units were rented, one for parts and one for repairs, there was a reception and even an office that we could put the plotter to make vinyl lettering and stickers, brilliant! The units were previously occupied by some fabricators, messy ones at that so weeks were spent tidying the place up.

One big garage, 2 ramps, fancy wheel alignment stuff, tyre fitting and balancing equipment… it was all slotting into place, now staff were needed! After a few failed attempts at getting reliable staff for the workshop, a change of plan meant I left the job of running the sales side of things to long term “Mukker” Michael Tyler, and me to move back into the workshop.

Next, apprentice, sorted.

Next, take on more stock, sorted.

In late 2010 or landlord had 52 solar panels installed on our roof, inside the unit with have 2 inverters which feed into the substation for all the units in Bridge Works.

Okay, things now getting serious, so in April 2011 SJ Baxter motor Engineers ceased trading, and SJ Baxter Ltd was born.

Web sales have increased year on year and so has the number of staff required to keep up with demand.

In mid 2019 the tough decision was made to close the workshop for good and concentrate on web sales, plus we needed more room for quality stock!

2020, we’re currently running at 6 members of full time staff and a couple of part timers helping out on the busy, post weekend days!

In 2025 We’re still here, Still doing what we do, we still drive T3, we’re still into “it” after all these years!