New method of making replacement parts Classic Car Weekly Available on newsagents' shelves on Wednesday each week. An interesting read with news of events, auction listings and results, reviews of classics, technical material and cars for sale adverts. More MGV8 parts availability The availability of parts for the MGBGTV8 model, including mechanical parts, routine serve items and body panels, is good from leading MGV8 parts specialists like Brown & Gammons and Clive Wheatley, but with the limited production run RV8 it can inevitably be less so. However on checking with Clive Wheatley he confirms the availability RV8 spares - both rear wings, both door skins, boot lid, bonnet, front wing (one side) and the headlamp binnacle are available. Malcolm Gammons mentioned Brown & Gammons also have good stocks of RV8 spares as they took over the former MG Rover spares stocks from Catapillar some years ago. Brown & Gammons Clive Wheatley mgv8parts Nissan teaches robots to make replacement parts for cars Nissan Global Newsroom & More See video clip Posted: 191010 Classic Car Weekly report that "a new method of reproducing replacement parts - one that could recreate the panels and metal parts for any classic no matter how rare" - has appeared as a new innovation. CCW adds "Nissan says that a panel, component or pressing can be remade as long as the drawings exist. If no drawings are available but a single part remains, it can be scanned and copied. Nissan's process, referred to as dual sided dieless forming, is described as needing no tooling or presses to work." Nissan says that it is intending to reproduce parts for its heritage models in the long-term but says it is also planning to commercialise the technique more widely.   The response from the classic vehicles community has seen some groups congratulating the innovators. The Federation of Historic Vehicle Clubs (FBHVC) says "we welcome news of any new technology that makes life easier for those restoring and preserving historic vehicles". Of course cost will be a concern for many enthusiasts and replacement parts specialists and restorers but often, where the original tooling has been lost, the front end investment in new tooling can make the viability of a resourcing project difficult. Where a parts specialist does go ahead with a new parts project inevitably those costs have to be passed through to the selling price plus the specialist, often with the cooperation of other leading parts specialist, then have quite high costs for holding initial stock levels from minimum economic production runs. The new technology could help reduce both the front end cost, the production cost of new parts and the funds locked up in stockholding. Tony Lake, an MGBGTV8 enthusiasts and in earlier times an engineer with a heavy mechanical plant compamy in the UK, says "if you google “dual sided dieless forming” there is an excellent youtube video of the technique (see link alongside). I suspect this is part of their rapid prototyping process for new models after the clay styling stage. In the video clip it looks like they’ve made a bulkhead piece. I wouldn’t hold my breath for low costs though as there is some pretty fancy engineering going on here. Between CAD and CAM and digital scanning it will be easy to rack up quite a bill. I guess owners of old cars with damaged sheet metal will still look to the craftsman who can cut and shut so expertly. I’m working on an Alvis TA21 at present and all four wings will be handled like that."