My Russian Connection (Matt)

For four years now I have been searching for a new radiator for our vintage 1992 Toyota Hiace truck. The owner before us had been soldering the radiator since 2007. The truck was imported to PNG from Japan.  In 2013, I ordered the radiator from a company in Japan, the only place I knew where to look. They came back to me only to say that the radiator was discontinued and they could not get it. It was re-soldered and still continued to leak. I kept nursing the truck along and kept looking. This year it developed a worse leak and got to the point where it was draining completely everyday.  This year a company here told us they could get one out of Japan and we ordered again, but after waiting 6 weeks we were told they couldn't order it after all! I found one on a Chinese website and we ordered it only to have our money credited back when they came up empty-handed. I had looked into having it rebuilt, but the price was high and I would have to take the radiator out of the truck and send it overseas. Frustrated. Demoralized.

 Our one-of-a-kind 1992 Toyota Hiace truck.

Finally I found one, but it was in Russia. It was in South Eastern Russia, as close as you can get to North Korea! The website was not in English, and I would describe my Russian as "weak".  They were able to help a bit with a chat person who spoke some English. I was not ready to buy at that time. After taking a break for a few months I decided this was my only option. I used Google translate to translate the first page, but could not get it to work on anymore pages.  After spending an entire morning translating every word one at a time through Google, I got to the payment part only to find out they would not take credit cards and I had no way to pay them! Also, they could not ship internationally. Extremely frustrating. At this point I realized there was nothing more I could do and decided I needed to leave it in God's hands.

"What's wrong with your truck?" "What's a radiator?"

Progress?! I found out that my friend Jon Jagt had some sort of confusing connection to Russia. Jon said he would contact his Dutch cousin, Marcel. As I understand it, Marcel used to live in Moscow and had a friend there named Boele. I think Boele is the kind of guy who get things done. When Boele was contacted, he was also unable to ship the radiator internationally. To my surprise however, he just ordered it and had it sent to himself in MOSCOW. Say What?!! That was the wrong direction and about twice as far away. I knew shipping would be high from Russia, but 1100 Euros ($1,300 USD)? That was bad news. I figured I could just pay Boele for the radiator and he could keep it, since I had no intention of paying $1,300. Marcel then figured out that it would be less than 300 Euros to ship it from the Netherlands and because Boele or one of their friends was flying from Moscow to the Netherlands they decided to check it as a part of their luggage. Astonishingly, they were not charged customs and they were able to ship it from the Netherlands to our purchaser in Australia, Martin (who had also tried to find this radiator for me more than once). Our aviation department then flew the radiator from Australia to our center here in the Highlands. I almost can't believe it!  This week our radiator was installed by our mechanics and is working great! It would not be here if it weren't for the huge help of Boele and Marcel! 

Our Radiator has seen parts of the world that I most likely will never see.

 

The Jagt girls!  Providentially the Jagts were walking by when our package arrived.

If you have read this far down, you must like radiators or cars. Thanks to everyone who helped us with this endeavor: Marcel, Boele, Jon Jagt, Martin, Auto Shop, our Aviation Dept, those who helped with the finances, and God!