We seem to be receiving a lot of emails recently asking if we ship to certain countries, the simple answer is yes, we ship worldwide on a daily basis.
The “Do you ship to my country” email is usually followed with “How much is shipping” and the answer is we have no clue, prices are calculated dynamically by the webshop.
The webshop holds a record of the weight of each item we sell as well as any customs details, so as you add items to the basket the webshop also adds the weights up, once you start the check out process the webshop will quote you the delivery charge based on the package weight and destination with no obligation to buy.
We currently use Royal mail and FedEx and shipping service providers and services are sold to the customer at the cost price to us.
Royal mail is sensibly priced up to 2KG, after that the prices are crazy.
Fedex takes over from 2KG upward.
Please remember that any sales out of the UK are exports and are as such sold without VAT meaning that you are liable for any import tax, duty and disbursement fees.
You know what it’s like, you run a workshop specialising in old vehicles and sometimes you simply just can’t find a tightening torque for something.
As it happen there are “standard” tightening torques for normal nuts and bolts and after managing to glean what I could from the interenet and several sources I brought it all together into one sheet that we had kicking about for emergencies when we simply couldn’t find the data from an automotive source.
There’s no warranty with this info, it’s here to help and for general “get you in the right place” guidance only, use at your own risk, you know the score.
We’ll be closed Wednesday the 10th and Thursday the 11th to carry out the annual stock take.
Last orders will be 2pm Tuesday for anything ordered with FedEx, 4pm for Royal Mail and collections.
Hopefully all done for Thursday evening and we’ll attempt to get the backlog out the door on Friday but it may spill over into the following Monday, we’ll do what we can with what we’ve got!
Just remember that we’re not the only ones with some of these parts and I’m sure Slaughter House Customs, Just Kampers, Heritage Parts Centre will only be too happy to relieve you of some cash!
Get ready for when the stock syncs on Thursday night for all that stuff that we manage to find that’s been missing for a year, all those rare parts that we thought were obsolete and that we didn’t know we had!
It’s come around quickly, but apparently it’s Easter!
We will be closed on Friday the 29th March, and Monday 1st April, returning to work on Tuesday the 2nd April.
The webshop will remain open all over the Easter period and we’ll commence shipping on Tuesday when we return.
Enjoy your chocolate eggs or whatever 🙂
As always after a bank Holiday we will process all orders on our return.
Any requests to change or ammend an order in any way will result in the order being placed “on hold” and dealt with after we have shipped everything else.
We always aim to get everything shipped out on the first day we return, but with the best will in the world due to the number or orders we receive thats not always possible.
We thank you for your patience.
It’s that time again… if you’re reading this you’ve clicked the “Christmas Closing” message on the webshop.
Good. You’ll be surprised how many people miss that big red banner at the top of every single page…
This year we close at Midday on Friday the 22nd December.
Our last collection will be Royal Mail at around 4:30pm on Thursday 21st December.
Last Fedex collection will be at 2:30pm on Thursday 21st December
That means if you’re reading this after around 2:00pm on Thursday the 21st December it’s unlikely your Fedex order will be shipped.
We’ll push the Royal Mail stuff as far as we can up to the last collection time
We may be able to drop small items in the parcel collection box on Friday morning, but we can’t guarantee it…
Realistically once it gets to around 3:30pm that’s it…
Until…
January 2nd TWENTY TWENTY FOUR Yes, thats a whole new year… We will be ringing in the New Year on January 1st, then returning to work on the second January.
All orders placed over the Christmas/New Year period will be shipped in the order they were placed (ish).
As always we will do our best to catch up on the backlog and we aim to have all hands on deck shipping orders in the New Year, but we expect some delays may be possible with shipping.
All thats left is to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a productive and Happy New Year.
Thanks for keeping us busy again for a whole year!
Due to staff holidays there will be no one here with email access to reply to your questions, not an ideal situation but needs must.
All emails will be responded to on a first come first served basis upon our return to work, fully staffed on the 29th of Aug (the day after the bank holiday)
Clearly we’ll have a back log so please be patient in awaiting your response.
The warehouse is open as usual, orders will still be leaving as they should without disruption.
Please make sure that you order everything you need to!
Usual “Day after the bank holiday” rules apply, we’ll do what we can to get your orders out on time but first come first served, busiest time of the year and a 3 day weekend usually spells trouble!
It’s that time of year again, our silly season where customers are fixing their vans to go on holiday!
Just like you we like some time off too and we have a perfect storm brewing for early next week (31st of July to be precise!) where we will have more staff away from work than we’d ideally like.
We will be running reduced staff in the warehouse early next week and this is a heads up to say, please order in time as not as many packages as we’d like to get out the door will actually be going out of the door.
To try and pre-empt a flurry of grumpy customers who email to say “I paid extra for next day delivery”, orders will be picked, packed and shipped on first come first served basis and we will do our utmost to ship as much as we can with the shipping service you selected at checkout, we don’t want orders sat in the tray just as much as you don’t want a delay in receiving your package.
To save us from replying to the same type of emails over and over again, anyone who decided not to read the big red banner at the top of every page on the webshop will be simply sent a link to this page!
Normal service will resume on Wednesday the 2nd of August as we try and clear the backlog.
Please be careful to make sure you order everything you need as office staff will be in the warehouse packing orders and we may not get to your “I forgot to order something, can I tag it on to my current order” email until it’s shipped.
Another common question we get at Brickwerks Towers is why do we use “Left” and “Right” to describe where parts fit to the vehicle on our webshop and not “nearside” and “offside” or “drivers side” and “passenger side”?
The answer is simple, we sell car parts for vehicles that are both left hand drive and right hand drive to customers all around the world, we cannot use nearside or offside as we have no idea where the customers browsing the site is located nor what their vehicle is and which side of the road that they drive on.
Left and right are used as it doesn’t matter in the world you are, left is always left and right is always right.
Left and right is taken as if you are sat in the vehicle facing forwards.
Following on from several recent discussions with both trade and retail customers who have approached us regarding the supply of radiators for the T3 either as a standard replacement or an uprated version we’ve been prompted to write this post regarding what’s happened with the radiators over the last few years and what’s available now and to dispel some of the myths floating around.
This is all a matter of what’s actually available and modern manufacturing techniques. Time and technology has moved on.
As far as we are concerned, and ignoring the very early Diesel radiator which isn’t available anyway… and the “DF” radiator which isn’t either, there are 2 different radiators
A thinner radiator for 1.9l WBX engines (34mm core).
A thicker core for Diesel models and 2.1l WBX engines (42mm core).
This measurement refers to the thickness of the radiator core. The core being the “finned” section of the radiator that has channels that the coolant runs through.
Actually it’s more complicated than that, as there are a number of dropped part numbers (including one that was discontinued before the water-cooled models were even made… but we’ll ignore all those too as they all supersede to the same parts.)
Previously, we have offered 2 options for the larger 42mm core radiator, an original South African produced radiator from Hella (still made until a couple of years ago), which was pretty much exactly the same as the one VW fitted in the factory and an alternative which is an aftermarket radiator sold under many different brands. Sadly the originals are no longer available, part of the reason for this is the insistence by some suppliers that the cheaper rads are the same as the originals resulting in a drop in demand for them.
Screenshot from VW’s parts prgoram, ETKA
Please review the following table that lists all the different radiator part numbers as fitted to a T3, when they were discontinued and which part number they were replaced by.
The parts in bold are radiators that we currently stock.
The early or late style in the table above refers to the radiator style and not the vehicle, early style radiators were only ever fitted to 1.6D “CS” engines and were of a more traditional construction having brass tanks and a soldered core. The early radiator is easily identified by it’s huge design flaw by having the cooling fan switches at the top of the left hand tank, any loss of coolant would render the fan switches inoperable and would accelerate a overheat situation.
Luckily, VW realised their shortcomings in this early style radiator design and it was replaced with the introduction of the WBX engine for the 1983 model year by the later style radiator with plastic tanks, aluminium core and a fan switch in a sensible place!
There are rumours of a mythical 50mm core radiator and yes, they did exist but as we said at the outset, time and technology has moved on and the same cooling capacity can be achieved by thinner and more modern cores.
The 50mm core featured tightly packed fins that would often get clogged with dirt, debris and insect matter much reducing the cooling capacity.
Hopefully this page clears up some of the misinformation floating around and helps you make an informed choice when shopping around for a radiator.
Eyup!
Easter is just around the corner and just like you we’re resdy for a few days off!
We shall be closed on 7th of April (Good Friday) and the 10th of April (Easter Monday)
Roll on a 4 day weekend!
We’ll be back on the 11th with a backlog to clear so a bit of patience please, we’ll do our best to get your parts away in the post ASAP. afterwards but please expect a bit of disruption.
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