Help with layered navigation and car make module problems

Hi,

First off i`m new here so a big hello to everyone in the community Been using opencart 1.5.1.1 for a week or two now and so far must say I am very impressed!

I have been putting a store together using the limited knowledge I have. The nature of the store is car parts ranging from body panels to engine components.

To help navigation I first off bought the layered navigation module thinking I would use attributes for filtering. I then realised once all attributes are entered the list would be HUGE by the time you factor in every make/model of car plus every single part we supply. I then thought I would get the make/model/year contribution to filter the cars and disable the attribute section of layered navigation (but still use price filtering/category filtering etc)

Now after installing both of them I have realised a big problem...... They dont work together!!!! You can filter the make/model/year etc, but then when you go to filter things further using the layered navigation the car search forgets and resets back to all cars. Does any one know of a way to work around this or make the two work together. The main problem is the make/model module "forgetting" the search options the moment one of the layered navigation filters is selected. The way I want it to work is to further filter the results.

I would be EXTREMELY grateful if anyone can come up with a solution to the problem as I have just spent out on two modules that could potentially be a slight waste of time as they dont work the way I hoped.

The only other thing I can think of is to just use the layered navigation but if its possible to isolate only certain attributes to display in the menu and "hide" the unwanted ones.

Thanks in advance

The same thing happens with the category search. What I want to do is use the car make/model/year search but try and get it to "remember" the settings so the results can be further filtered by category or layered navigation. An example of what I am trying to achieve is here in the top left, car selector.... http://www.vividracing.com

Select a car and it remembers the settings while you browse around the store using other navigation only displaying results for that car.

Thanks for any help. This is becoming a major problem trying to get the navigation how I want it and if someone can come up with a working solution I can work with I would be more than happy to send a few £ over by Paypal as a way of thanks.

Another problem I am having aswell is that the "engine" field is not required on all products. A lot of products are things like body panels so it is not needed. Any idea how the "engine" field can be removed or maybe changed for Chassis type or something as this could be slightly better for my needs.

Thank you

Any ideas on this one? I`m stuck for what to do and want to move forward with the site as soon as possible.

I am not a coder but know very very basic stuff and am keen to learn. I think what it needs is some sort of session so it doesnt forget whats been selected, kind of like how the shopping cart works. How can I go about doing something like this?

Is there any suggestions on this? I need some way of filtering cars/parts etc for the site and I am a bit stuck until I find a suitable solution. If someone has a module or a way of doing this I am happy to pay for it. It just seems the layered navigation and the make/model filter is not what I need. Mainly because the make/model filter does not remember the selection between page reloads and it is not possible to assign more than one product to a car.

I have just released a year/make/model filter mod that is the proper way of doing what you want.
http://spotonsolutions.net/vehicle-ymm