Old Britts Parts

Fred and I have been retired for almost a year now. We still have inventory left and do not have the energy to open up our website to sell parts bit by bit, so we are looking to sell the entire lot. The total value of the COST of the remaining inventory is around $48,000. We will be VERY aggressive discounting this price, so if anyone is interested, we will consider ALL offers. Please contact us at fred@oldbritts.com and we will provide a detailed list of our inventory. Thanks, Ella Eaton

i sure miss you folks....

I am happy you are retired but like Joe said you sure are missed.

Very, very missed for sure. Just being selfish, certainly hope you are enjoying retirement.

The Norton world misses you!!

@ellaeaton and Fred, you two REALLY were a God-send to me in everything Norton I have ever been involved with. If I hadn't retired just before Fred, I'd probably already have backed my big trailer up and loaded as much as I could carry...

Enjoy whatever you do, I'm sure you'll get a buyer. If you haven't posted on www.britbike.com, you should...

Hi Ella, thank you for many years of GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE. I assume you've explored selling them back to A/N (and others) at a negotiated discount?

ellaeaton said:

Fred and I have been retired for almost a year now. We still have inventory left and do not have the energy to open up our website to sell parts bit by bit, so we are looking to sell the entire lot. The total value of the COST of the remaining inventory is around $48,000. We will be VERY aggressive discounting this price, so if anyone is interested, we will consider ALL offers. Please contact us at fred@oldbritts.com and we will provide a detailed list of our inventory. Thanks, Ella Eaton

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Dear Ella, Fred, I hope the sale of parts has moved forward for you? I had an exchange with Ashley Cutler at Andover Norton back in October 2021 and asked if they were interested or even able to host your incredible Technical Articles on their web site so that they were not lost for ever. I was told that the owner of Andover Norton knows you very well and were possibly already exploring hosting some of the parts and tools you offered along with the Technical articles. I have not seen anything happen with regard to the technical articles except that some can still be accessed through your Oldbritts site and others wont load and there are now no pictures.
Is there any update you can offer all your former customers who think the World of you two?

Pompey60 said:

Dear Ella, Fred, I hope the sale of parts has moved forward for you? I had an exchange with Ashley Cutler at Andover Norton back in October 2021 and asked if they were interested or even able to host your incredible Technical Articles on their web site so that they were not lost for ever. I was told that the owner of Andover Norton knows you very well and were possibly already exploring hosting some of the parts and tools you offered along with the Technical articles. I have not seen anything happen with regard to the technical articles except that some can still be accessed through your Oldbritts site and others wont load and there are now no pictures.
Is there any update you can offer all your former customers who think the World of you two?

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I've bought most their Andover Norton parts plus a few more. I'm working on adding them to my inventory so they show on my web site. As always you can call or write me. There are about 450 distinct parts involved (over 1550 total parts). There are a few expensive parts but most are hardware and small parts. I paid less than I would have paid AN so I will sell them for less than normal - you WILL NOT find new for less and you are unlikely to find used for less than these new parts! I should have the parts in-house by the end of the month.

Once added to my inventory, they will be included here: https://www.gregmarsh.com/MC/ForSale.aspx

I'm willing to buy the rest of their stock, but don't want to have it sitting here until I die. If there are things your want - send me your wish list and I'll see if I can get them. Ella and Fred aren't selling one-by-one, so if there are a few items you want that they have, you will have to buy all of each item (unless other want them too) and you will have to wait until I have a big enough group to buy from them. For instance, a large selection of Mikuni parts (no carbs), a bunch of British taps and dies, or a bunch of Barnett cable making components.

The parts from Old Britts are now available for sale. Old Britts has found buyers for everything I didn't buy. This purchase added to the extensive list of AN parts I already had means that I have about 78% of the parts that makeup a Commando.

Most of what they had left was parts that generally don't sell and generally it was items I didn't stock. In other words, bad idea to stock. I got a good deal and will pass that along - I don't want this stuff sitting here forever!

For those looking for something I don't have, an order is going to AN tonight so tell me now if you want something added!

I'm so glad Fred and Ella were able to work a deal with you for the rest of their inventory. Their home was about 40 miles from me and I saw them occasionally when one of them came into the shop.

I bought a few items from them after Pokes closed up. I believe they bought some of Pokes inventory when Ross closed up shop. He had NOS items going back well into the 50s. Aside from Norton there was Matchless, /7 and earlier, including /2 BMW stuff, Yamaha, Greves and an amazing basement full of skeletons of bikes they'd bought as junk over the years. I built an entire G15 from parts from that source, matching numbers, title and all. Digging through the old titles for the G15 title, I found the title to a 57 Matchless I'd sold to a guy 20 years earlier. He'd never transferred it. Greg, did you get any of that earlier stuff or just Commando?

Speaking of old inventory, does anyone know what became of Cliff Majors' (AKA The Sandy Bandit) stuff after he died? He had containers full of bikes and parts stashed around Portland Oregon, aside from a storefront full.

The Cycle Hub (Cliff Majhor) stash was sold to a couple fellows (Greg Hult and Mike Reilly) back in the early 2000's, before Cliff passed in 2015. They sold parts under the Classiccyclesspares.com website for a while. Don't know how much they sold or if they are still in business. He told me years ago he had 12 semi trailers of NOS parts from TriCor when they closed down. An old Cycle World article confirmed at least 11 trailers were part of the deal with Hult and Reilly. It must have taken years to inventory it all. Cliff was a real character.

Ron L said:

The Cycle Hub (Cliff Majhor) stash was sold to a couple fellows (Greg Hult and Mike Reilly) back in the early 2000's, before Cliff passed in 2015. They sold parts under the Classiccyclesspares.com website for a while. Don't know how much they sold or if they are still in business. He told me years ago he had 12 semi trailers of NOS parts from TriCor when they closed down. An old Cycle World article confirmed at least 11 trailers were part of the deal with Hult and Reilly. It must have taken years to inventory it all. Cliff was a real character.

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This is what the Wayback Machine shows for that url from 2004-2016.

Thomasa said:

Greg, did you get any of that earlier stuff or just Commando?

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A few bits of earlier stuff but mostly Commando. They had very little for Norton that wasn't Commando. I've updated my parts page to include all the Old Britts parts and where all parts came from.

https://www.gregmarsh.com/MC/ForSale.aspx

What a task! I hope you got an electronic list with your purchase. I sense you are being careful not to repeat the Cycle Hub story. I sat next to Cliff at one of the Northwest Dealers Assn. dinners and he regaled me with tales tall and small. He was indeed a character. He was famous for raising the price of anything if someone tried to bargain. I witnessed that one day when I visited the shop on a will-call pickup for our shop. The jaw-dropping expression on the bargainers face is still fresh in my memory. Guys like him, Trevor Dealy, Poke and Budshot, Dewey are missed from the regional scene but the memories live on, at least till guys like me who remember them die off.

Thomasa said:

What a task! I hope you got an electronic list with your purchase. I sense you are being careful not to repeat the Cycle Hub story. I sat next to Cliff at one of the Northwest Dealers Assn. dinners and he regaled me with tales tall and small. He was indeed a character. He was famous for raising the price of anything if someone tried to bargain. I witnessed that one day when I visited the shop on a will-call pickup for our shop. The jaw-dropping expression on the bargainers face is still fresh in my memory. Guys like him, Trevor Dealy, Poke and Budshot, Dewey are missed from the regional scene but the memories live on, at least till guys like me who remember them die off.

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The hard part was that the eight lists came as formatted .pdf files that I first had to get to Excel before adding to my database. Fortunately, Ella inventoried as she boxed so I can rely on the quantities. Not good is that they sometimes used one of the parts books part numbers and I use the AN numbers - you can search for parts using either in my system, but they are stored by the AN number.

Out of self-defense, I added their parts to a separate database table and made the web pull from both. I will merge them but have to figure a way to mix everything together so I can find it. Right now, I have all my previous parts in known locations and the Old Britts in eight marked boxes. You can imagine that finding one screw someone wants in a box with 50-100 other parts is not fun.

Here's what will be interesting. Everyone loved Old Britts even with their high prices (compared to me). Let's see how much trouble I have selling their leftovers at low prices. Something tells me that this will be a problem for my heirs Fortunately, my stepson is into British bikes too.

Too bad you didn't have the chance to buy Pokes shelves with hundreds of little drawers marked with factory part numbers and arranged in sections to match the factory parts books.

I resisted buying from Old Brits early on because I had access to most stuff at dealer prices. That said, they had items of their own manufacture that I'm sorry I did not buy when I had the chance. And, of course, their tech information is much loved. If Colorado Norton can sell at the prices they do, I'm certain that you can sell at fair retail far into the future. Michael Partridge does a nice business despite the inconvenience of shipping into the US only via USPS and US customers having to convert prices to US $. If you buy from AN, et. al. in enough quantity to defray the increasing freight costs many of us who buy from them will buy from you. I have not talked to Partridge since Brexit to ask how that has affected him but I suspect there has been some disruption.

But the Euro and Pound are both at rock bottom since the US Fed began raising interest rates and the opportunity to buy at a discount should last until that bit of international slight of hand is over. That said, it won't last forever because the US is exporting our inflation and prices in England and the Continent in local currency will rise eventually. I suspect that much of the retail price increases have a lot of freight charges embedded in them. Our local NAPA store now charges freight for items out of California warehouses that used to be on regular stock orders. At $6+ for diesel I don't wonder.

Thomasa said:

But the Euro and Pound are both at rock bottom since the US Fed began raising interest rates and the opportunity to buy at a discount should last until that bit of international slight of hand is over. That said, it won't last forever because the US is exporting our inflation and prices in England and the Continent in local currency will rise eventually. I suspect that much of the retail price increases have a lot of freight charges embedded in them. Our local NAPA store now charges freight for items out of California warehouses that used to be on regular stock orders. At $6+ for diesel I don't wonder.

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Just received a Wassell shipment and an even bigger AN shipment is on the way. The exchange rate is the best I've seen in years, but the shipping has gone up so much in the past three years that the exchange rate improvement is not that noticeable. Priority USPS main of a Norton tank and side covers from VA to CA with insurance was $70, last month, ground was $139 for the same box - UPS wanted $165. From the UK to VA the shipping is up over 150%.

Because I make bigger orders the shipping doesn't hurt as bad as it could. Since Amal, Tri-Spark, and Wassell have real dealer accounts I can make a little money while selling for less than anyone else. With others like AN and JRC I am lucky to breakeven but then I get the parts I need to build bikes without having to pay the huge markups.

I had a chance to go into the basement of Pokes Cycles to grab some shocks. It was dimly lit and if I recall a set of stairs alongside a wall with no banister. Found a pair of rebuildable Konis and thought about using the butler's lift in the wall to move them up to the first floor! I recall how little I thought of BMWs at the time - ignorance - but have an R69 now and Ross really loved those bikes.

Steve Giblin (late of Deweys) is in Arizona now - he had several Commandos at his Woodinville location but his prices were too dear for me. He did however get a T140 5-speed into a Slickshift gearbox for decent money. Memories.