Money Saving Tips

[mplex2000]

Hope this will help some of you guys out. In case you didn't know, Autozone has a rewards program going on until November something. Everytime you spend $20 or more, you get your reward card punched. After five punches, you receive a $20 giftcard.

I've been stopping at Autozone (or multiple ones) on the way home from work each day, spending as close to $20 as I can so that I get at least one punch a day. I bought almost all of my suspension parts from Autozone, and you know, a lot of that stuff comes to $20 or so each or per pair (ball joints, tie rod ends, etc).

You have to watch out though...most of what I got from them was either Perfect Circle or Norris McQuay, (the old and new names for Dana parts, respectively). Some parts are their house brand, Duralast (they use the same part numbers, so you don't know what you're getting until you see the parts). The problem with that is that some of them are Federal Mogul parts, some are cheapo Taiwanese parts. I had to buy the pitman arm elsewhere (got Moog) since I didn't want the cheesy Duralast one.

At any rate, I've gotten $120 in gift cards so far...which just about made my P/S gearbox free.

Last thing on Autozone - I've gotten them to order Holley and Mr. Gasket parts. Stuff I needed anyway, which they can order at a decent (or lower than other places) price, plus it gets you a punch on your card. A quick kit for a Holley DP was only $25.

Also, if you search for manufacturer part number on ebay, you can turn up some good deals. I got the upper and lower shafts (Moog) from an unclaimed freight company for $25 each, less than half of new price. I also got a set of Gabriel shocks (all 4) for $38 shipped.

Auto Drive parts which are available at O'Reilly's are good parts (suspension) and are many times just rebadged Moog parts. O'Reilly sells both, but Autodrive is cheaper.

A good source for Moog at a discount is www.carparts.com. Sometimes their prices for a part will be higher than other places, but most of the time it is less.

If you're doing your suspension, you will save a lot of dough just buying all the parts yourself rather than buying a kit. Since there's no bushings in the suspension except for the rear trailng arms, it's easy to piece it together yourself while saving $50-100 off of a kit price!

Give a post if this helped you, and pass the word along. Maybe everybody else already knows this stuff, but I'm so cheap I spend a lot of time working on money saving "schemes"!!

-Chris