Parts for Older Tamiya kits

In addition to the great info above, if it is still in production, Tamiya will provide replacement parts.  Also, Tamiya sells whole sprues from their kits at a reasonable price as well.

Here is their Customer Service/Parts info.

Here are a couple of links to parts yards. Both are good guys who help modelers by providing a parts service. All they ask for is return postage. It's usually only a couple of bucks and not paying gets you on a bad guy list and you'll be banned from future use.

Todjager's site in the US: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/todtjager/

J-Marc's site in Canada: http://pages.infinit.net/jmarcpe/summary2000.htm

You can also post part wants onto modeling sites like HyperScale's Tank Talk, Armorama, Missing Lynx and others.