Yeah, I whole heartedly agree with you....its crap. But, its pretty standard. We had a lot of ex Triumph lads come to Norton, especially when they started moving stuff overseas. The lad I directly worked alongside, used to tell me of all the stuff that Triumph used to destroy, rather than even sell to staff....for example brand new bikes from other manufacturers, that were bought in to pull apart and record info from (Norton did the same...TVS bought a new Ducati and a new BMW for the design department to pull apart etc)...let alone obsolete stock from their own cupboards. So if big companies wont sell such things to even their own staff....joe blogs has bob hope. I was lucky in that alot of the parts I needed were sub-assembly core component part numbers....numbers that the dealers wont have access to. But as the staff weren't completely on the ball, they'd just look up the number I gave them, then work out a price via the standard format. Wont get that now. At best we'd get Scott telling us that part number is not available and you'd have to buy the complete sub assembly....much like any other brand (clutch basket retaining plate, in this example).
Regards the original post...Graham LeBlonde bought a seat unit from the very original UK carbon supplier. Dont suppose Graham spoke to him regards producing more??