Helping a Long Distance Friend

One of the exciting moments of owning an old ride is part hunt. You know, when you need that particular part and no shop has it on stock, you start to cross your fingers, contact here and there and just when you almost gave up, the part you need is on some junkyard a driving distance away. It was there all the time but never crossed your mind before to visit it..

In Yohann Quaziz's case, he really needed a pedal box for his Charmant and unfortunately, it is nowhere to be found in his home country, Israel. I met Yohann in rollaclub.com forum and he mentioned he needed a pedal box that will fit the Charmant and work with the T50 gearbox clutch. Well, lucky you Yohann! The last time i went to Jakarta and visited Parung junkyard, i saw one Charmant there still having its pedal box. Surely it'll work with a T50 since all Charmants here use it!

So, when i went back to Jakarta for the national election day, i visited the junkyard again on Sunday, July 5th to help Yohann out. Other than the pedal box, Yohann also asked me to get the gauge cluster also because his Charmant doesn't have tachometer on the cluster. So here are the pics i gathered during the junkyard visit.

Before..
During the removal of the parts.. That's not me by the way. That's one of the junkyard workers.
After..
Now that you see the mess left after the work, these are the stuff that Yohann asked me to get. First is the pedal box. It's a bit rusty but overall it is still in a good working condition. A bit of welding to remove the rusted part would be good but i think it's not really necessary.

Here's the gauge cluster. Some of the electrical tracks on the back of the cluster are cut but it has been fixed previously so i think it should work perfectly.

I got help from mom to pack those stuff yesterday. To reduce space, i had to unbolt the pedals and retainer spring. Then mom taped them to the box body. She used a lot of old newspaper sheets and styrofoam to secure the stuff.
The box we used to pack the stuff is a bit too small so you can see a part of the pedal box protruding out. I don't think that would be a problem since it's metal and it won't break easily. Here's the result of the packing.

When i tried to weigh it using a body scale we have at home, it measured around 6 kg. There's a FedEx agent nearby my home so i went there to check the price. Damn, it was very expensive. For example, sending a 5kg package to Israel costs you US$300. You need to add 1% VAT and 6.5% fuel surcharge. In total, you need to pay US$322.5! I took a picture of the price list.. Click pic below for better view.

Well, although i won't be paying for the cost, Yohann will but i do agree it's too expensive. I promised Yohann to check the price on smaller companies. I'll also check our local governmental post office. Unfortunately, today is holiday for our national election day and tomorrow i already have to leave Jakarta and get back to work. Hence, i promised Yohann, the soonest i can check the price again is sometime around end of the month when i get back to Jakarta again.. Be patient, bro!

Apparently Yohann is also into drifting with his Charmant like my friend Stanley. His Charmant is left hand driven, white and 4K-powered. He's planning to swap the engine to Red Top 4A-GE, just like me. Because it's an auto, he had to buy a T50 gearbox and a pedal box to match. He uploaded some videos of him drifting. You can see his uploads here. Here's a video of him drifting. Pretty cool drift considering he's still on open diff! I guess the rain really helped on the slide, eh Yohann? LOL i'm like watching a video of Stanley drifting! Their Charmant look almost the same!