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 Burton 2CV 
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Joined: August 31st, 2016, 12:12 pm
Posts: 322
Location: Hawkins County, TN. USA
Post Burton 2CV
I've complained in the past about how shipping from Germany to the US using DHL is expensive (2kg cost around 50 Euros), slow (2 to 3 weeks) and the package always looks like it took a detour through hell.

Shipping from the UK is fairly reasonable especially through the Royal Mail and not too slow (~ 2 weeks) and usually arrives in good condition.

Germany and Slovenia seems to be the most expensive and the slowest. But Hungary and Romania is fast and cheap.

China is always cheap but takes about 2 to 3 weeks. Hong Kong is cheap but, 1 month minimum.

My parents didn't know what to get me this year and like always I tell them "you can't go wrong with car parts or tools"!

So they gave me some money to buy what I wanted instead. I held off a bit on some stuff thinking if I ordered them now, then would be here about a week before Christmas. Boy was I wrong!

I went with Burton 2CV out of the Netherlands. Mainly because they offer quite a bit of improved versions of parts they had specially designed like silicone dump tubes instead of those shitty cardboard pipes that divert hot air from the heat exchangers to the wheel wells. My 1500 PSI pressure washer killed them when I degreased the engine compartment! I know I should have removed them, wasn't thinking ahead on that one.

I ordered this stuff on November 28th Sunday night (which would have been before Monday morning over there) and it arrived Wednesday the 30th! How is that possible?

I ordered some 2CV stuff from a guy here in the US and it took about a week to arrive! I think Burton used UPS. Shipping was reasonable. I couldn't find the weight on the invoice but shipping was only 53 Euros and I think the package weighs about 40 lbs.

The only thing is I don't think my package tray is in this box unless it's folded or is in two pieces. I didn't have time to open the box last night after working 12 hours, was too tired. It maybe in a different package that is still on the delivery truck or at the depot.

Last year my wife ordered me some Trabant parts for Christmas and it seemed to arrive in about a week and a half. I figured around this time with the extra packages, it would have taken longer.

Maybe due to Christmas these shipping companies are working extra hours and using allot of temp workers. Last year this Ryder box van pulled up behind my house which looked suspicious so I came out and asked, "Who are you?" He said FedEx. So I asked him why he was in rental van and he said they were renting moving vans during Christmas and using temporary seasonal workers to handle the excess packages.

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December 1st, 2016, 3:27 pm
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Joined: June 22nd, 2014, 8:09 pm
Posts: 1179
Location: Reading, Berks UK
Post Re: Burton 2CV
Thats funny, Germany has been amazing for me with postage. I buy stuff from German Ebay for my Mercedes and it has been amazingly quick - quicker than domestic postage in the UK!
US is a different kettle of fish though isnt it. I do like how UPS seems to do tracking as a matter of course, with lots of info on location. I've had really great service from US UPS when buying the Merc stuff. In the UK the tracking is most definitely not a matter of course, or accurate.
France seems the one to avoid, oddly. Bloody diabolical in my experience. You can track things and then it literally just disappears.


December 1st, 2016, 5:47 pm
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Joined: August 31st, 2016, 12:12 pm
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Location: Hawkins County, TN. USA
Post Re: Burton 2CV
Ianredspecial wrote:
Thats funny, Germany has been amazing for me with postage. I buy stuff from German Ebay for my Mercedes and it has been amazingly quick - quicker than domestic postage in the UK!
US is a different kettle of fish though isnt it. I do like how UPS seems to do tracking as a matter of course, with lots of info on location. I've had really great service from US UPS when buying the Merc stuff. In the UK the tracking is most definitely not a matter of course, or accurate.
France seems the one to avoid, oddly. Bloody diabolical in my experience. You can track things and then it literally just disappears.


Burton told me the parcel tray was not a stiff piece of fiberboard covered with gray felt as I thought. Mine was missing and there was this 1.5' gap between the rear seat and boot hatch.

So it must be just a piece of felt with stiff edges rolled up inside the box. I may need some help on how to install it. I don't recall any seeing any mounting points on the car. These seems to be allot of bits and pieces missing on this car.

Concerning shipping:

I once ran into an issue with a package from Germany. Of all things, I bought an old DDR era telephone.

The phone cost me $20 but shipping was around $55. After three weeks I had not seen it and I contacted the seller. For some reason I could not track the package through DHL but he said he could and said it had left Germany. But from there it went off the radar.

Well about three months went by and I was wondering where my package was. Then one day it showed up. After inspecting the shipping label, I noticed the guy wrote the postal code between my name and my house number and street instead of at the bottom!

So I guess the computer kicked it out of the system into a pile and eventually it took human intervention to get it to it's destination.

Which all gets confusing once a package leaves it's country.

The US and the UK uses about the same order except instead of the county, we use the state and a 5 digit postal code. Canada uses the same order as the US but their postal code is like the UK.

I think years before they started using postal codes, you had to include the county or a letter might take ages. There are over 3000 counties in the United States! Postal codes have made it easier because years ago mail might have to bee bop from one town to another because some states have towns with the same name but in different counties. I think there are 27 cities and towns named after Bristol in the United States!

Despite the fact I hate to talk on the phone, it's more/less a conversion piece. But it's actually functional, rings and dials after I connected the two corresponding wires from the phone jack. The carbon microphone caused allot of static in the earpiece so I had to scavenge one from an American phone. Now people say I sound like I am talking through a tin can!

I was surprised I did not find a Stasi bug inside the phone!

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December 1st, 2016, 9:55 pm
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Joined: June 22nd, 2014, 8:09 pm
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Location: Reading, Berks UK
Post Re: Burton 2CV
The parcel shelf is more like a hammock. If the car didn't have one ever before, you'll need the bracket pieces that go on the bolts that hold the bootlid/end of roof on, and drill a couple holes in the seat frame.

Yeah addresses abroad are often really critical with the order aren't they.

I had a wedding invitation in the post with just the name of the person and the name of my big long road on. All the way from India I think. Managed to find the guy with Google, I enjoyed giving it to him.


December 2nd, 2016, 12:17 am
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Joined: August 31st, 2016, 12:12 pm
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Location: Hawkins County, TN. USA
Post Re: Burton 2CV
Ianredspecial wrote:
The parcel shelf is more like a hammock. If the car didn't have one ever before, you'll need the bracket pieces that go on the bolts that hold the bootlid/end of roof on, and drill a couple holes in the seat frame.

Yeah addresses abroad are often really critical with the order aren't they.

I had a wedding invitation in the post with just the name of the person and the name of my big long road on. All the way from India I think. Managed to find the guy with Google, I enjoyed giving it to him.


The parcel shelf was in the box. The ends are folding over into loops and it looks like a rod goes through. Sort of like the seats.

There are some bracket with holes on the sides near the boot hatch that looks like a rod would pop into but I don't see anything near the seat back to attach it to. Maybe it will make more sense when I try to install it.

Yeah one of my relatives sent my Grandmother a Christmas card. It arrived like three months later. Someone from another state forgot to put the state and postal code on it on it so it bee bopped from Rogersville Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi and back to Tennessee. This thing looked like a passport where it was stamped so many times!

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December 2nd, 2016, 11:17 pm
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Joined: October 22nd, 2014, 10:59 pm
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Post Re: Burton 2CV
on the hammock there is another rod with flattend ends which is bend like the upperbar of the rear seat. It is screwed on there with 2 parkers.


December 2nd, 2016, 11:30 pm
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Joined: July 9th, 2009, 10:27 am
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Location: Bagshot Park
Post Re: Burton 2CV
The seat side of the hammock screws (small self tapper sort of things) into the metal seat frame of the bench seat- the holes are already there.


December 3rd, 2016, 11:24 pm
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Joined: July 9th, 2009, 10:27 am
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Post Re: Burton 2CV
As for postage....

I get parcels from Hong Kong for work via standard post in about two days, West Indies is about three via standard air mail and Africa about three as well - the stamps are very sought after.
We get packages from Brazil in about five days in air mail.

EU wide DHL will deliver most things the next day, ups is not as quick and will take another day generally. FedEx isn't bad either.


December 3rd, 2016, 11:28 pm
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Joined: March 24th, 2009, 9:18 pm
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Location: 15340 Mourjou France
Post Re: Burton 2CV
Good luck with those silicone heat dump tubes, James. Obviously they will last forever, but I found that fitting them into the wing was a job that took a lot longer than with the cardboard ones. And involved a great deal of cursing and scraped fingers.

I live in France and I find that deliveries from England often arrive quicker than ones from France, but that might be just a rather leisurely attitude to selling on the internet here in France.

What really bugs me is the vendor's software that requires you to complete fields for parts of the address that don't exist: my address is placename/postcode/town/France, with no street, street number or housename, and no county either. Sometimes a dash is acceptable, sometimes not, but quite often the address comes out in quite the wrong order for France (eg with the postcode at the end).

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December 4th, 2016, 6:53 pm
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