Spare parts for our old cars
A statement made at the weekend by the chief organizer of the upcoming West Africa Automotive Show left me thinking again about maintaining an old car in Nigeria. The man, Mr. Jamie Hill, said over 60% of the vehicles that ply Nigerian roads are over 12 years old. No wonder that so many vehicles on […]
A statement made at the weekend by the chief organizer of the upcoming West Africa Automotive Show left me thinking again about maintaining an old car in Nigeria. The man, Mr. Jamie Hill, said over 60% of the vehicles that ply Nigerian roads are over 12 years old. No wonder that so many vehicles on our roads are puffing and smoking, due to worn out rings in the engine. Some vehicles almost choke you with acrid smoke if you are driving behind them.
Many vehicles on our roads do not have good brakes, due to both old age and poor maintenance. It is a risk in Nigeria to drive in front of, especially, a tipper truck. Too many tipper trucks don’t have good brakes even when they are fully loaded with sand or bricks. Whenever I come across one on the highway, I ensure that I drive behind it, rather than in front of it, remembering what the late singer Gambu once said, that “put evil in front of you because if you leave it behind you, it will catch up with you.”
Too many vehicles on our roads do not have brake lights, rear lights or turn signals or sometimes all of them. When you are travelling on the highway at night, you may suddenly come up to a huge truck, trailer or petrol tanker that has no lights at all. If you are lucky, it is the smoke billowing from its exhaust that will alert you to its presence. Conversely, on modern Nigerian roads, every motorist drives with his full lights on. Three decades ago on Nigerian roads, every motorist “dimmed” his headlights when another vehicle was approaching from the opposite direction, but not anymore. Everyone who drives for many years on Nigerian roads these days is almost certain to have problems with his eyesight, which is good business for eye clinics.
Anyway, Mr. Hill was making a case for local manufacture of vehicle spare parts, which he said we will need in massive quantities since we have 11.5 million vehicles on our roads right now. Having patronized roadside mechanics and spare parts dealers for nearly four decades now, I made a quick mental arithmetic of which vehicle spare parts we need the most now and in years to come.
We need a lot of spark plugs. These small cylindrical objects are the ones that cause a spark in the combustible fuel/air mixture in the engine chamber, which heats up the air, which expands and pushes the piston, which in turn rolls the shaft, which in turn moves the tyre. Quite often when your vehicle refuses to start, plugs are the first suspects, unless if your fuel tank is empty. The other visible culprit in the failure of vehicles to start is the battery. Up to ten years ago, all our batteries had battery acid, the very powerful sulphuric acid, which a motorist had to “top” regularly. Battery acid was very corrosive to the hand and to the surrounding panel of the vehicle. In the olden days if you bought a new battery, you had to wait several hours for it to be filled with acid and charged with electricity. The batteries of nowadays are “dry charged,” without acid. As soon as you buy one, it is fixed on your vehicle and you are ready to go.
Related to the battery are other electrical parts that contribute a lot to a Nigerian vehicle’s problems, namely the kick starter [ignition] and the alternator. The kick starter needs a lot of power to “kick” and if the battery is weak, it will not be able to start it. Correspondingly, if the kick starter’s brushes, bushings or Solonel switch are faulty, they would quickly run down the battery. Two decades ago, most of our vehicles were “manual” so if either the kick starter or the battery malfunctioned, they could be pushed to start. The coming of automatic vehicles pushed out the push option. The ready culprit in battery failure is the fan belt. If it cuts or is loose, the alternator will not charge the battery and it will rundown. Fan belts are the most available of all vehicle spare parts in Nigeria; they are found even in small roadside villages. Less common are power steering belts, air conditioner belts, timing belts, timing chain and valves.
The fan belt also rolls the pulley on the water pump. If the water pump is leaking, the water in the radiator will seep out, which in turn would lead to overheating of the engine. If the motorist is not alert, overheating will melt the gasket, water will mix with engine oil and the plugs cannot spark. Other culprits in vehicles failing to start are the carburetor, now largely replaced by injector; hammer, fuel pump and oil pump. If the latter fails, you have a big problem because the engine could “knock.”
Another common spare part is the master cylinder, which holds the brake fluid. Inside it are some small circular rubbers which, when they get damaged, the brake fluid leaks and the brake collapses. This could happen suddenly, sometimes when the vehicle is travelling at high speed. Also problematic is the master siphon, though it is more durable than master cylinder. A small, well hidden part that many motorists do not know about is the release bearing, which it tied to the clutch. When a good mechanic drops the engine for a major repair, he advises the motorist to change the release bearing so that you do not have to drop the engine one day just because of it. Its like when a surgeon opens your tummy for a major operation, and seizes on the chance to remove the appendix.
A common problem for front-wheel drive vehicles, such as Hondas, is the shaft which rolls the tyre. What often destroys the shaft is a leakage that enables the grease to sip out and for sand particles to enter. Our roadside mechanics complain that Nigerian motorists do not have their shaft inspected until it starts to make a creaky sound, by which time it is too late to save it. Shafts are destroyed by potholes and bad roads. Vehicles that have a back-wheel drive, whose shafts are in between the rear wheels and connected by a back axle, suffer less problems than front-wheel drive vehicles.
Then also, we need a lot of stabiliser spare parts such as lower arm, ball joint, bushings, brake pads, brake discs and calipers. A lot of tyres too; Michelin, Goodyear and Firestone tyres used to be common in Nigeria but these days we only have Hankook and other Chinese and South Korean tyres. They are cheaper but much less durable than the ones of old. Still, many motorists cannot afford new ones and they “manage” with Tokunbo tyres. A Tokunbo tyre is very dangerous. It was used in Europe, then shipped for weeks to Cotonou, where sea spray weakened it even further. It suffers more corrosion at the ports and while being smuggled into Nigeria. These are the tyres that often burst when a vehicle is travelling at high speed and cause many accidents.
Then come the costliest spare parts, namely rings, piston, bloc engine and crankshaft. When a vehicle’s engine knocks, often due to carelessness because the owner did not top the engine oil, he might need another crankshaft. However, it can be cut to 0-10 and even to 0-20, which makes the engine weaker and slower. Two other things: gear box and brain box. Few mechanics know how to fix the gear box, which has many fine teeth, and only the biggest vehicle electricians can fix the brain box. These days, roadside electricians have computers to diagnose and reprogram it.
In Nigeria, wheel covers regularly fly off into the bush due to deep potholes on the highways. Village locals collect them from the bushes and resell them at emergency stalls along the highway.