Part of the engine assembly part of the shop, which is just to be moved and rebuild at a specially set-up part of the front of the shop in the next coming weeks:
A lot of the specialty items I inquired about were not in stock any more. Some batches took several years to sell and were not worth the risk of the large initial investment, so I understood. 'Everybody wants 'Old-school' these days' was the (sad, but probably very true) reason...
More than 90% of his parts he used himself on cars he gets in to build for (mostly wealthy) customers. The time spend on telephone calls about how to use those specialty parts is also making him consider not to sell them anymore to others...
Luckily for the winter (= rebuild) time, some specialty parts will be in stock again.
We talked engines for some time, while his employee was busy building an engine (...). Needless to say it was a very informative and extremely interesting visit!