"Basics of Basics" Parts store tricks to get the parts you need.

[joedoh]

great advice. I work as an integration engineer and the amount of commonality in parts and systems is staggering, interchange opportunities are designed in.

[MARTINSR]

Originally Posted by joedoh

great advice. I work as an integration engineer and the amount of commonality in parts and systems is staggering, interchange opportunities are designed in.

This is something that I really didn't understand until just a few years ago when talking to a cousin who has lived in the Detroit area his whole life and worked in the manufacturing end of the auto industry.

I knew that the auto maker didn't "make" the car years ago. GM,Ford, Nissan, Mercedes, they don't "make" cars, they "assemble" them. They assemble them with parts they buy. They stamp the steel (most of it) weld it together, and then bolt on a bunch of parts they bought just like you or I could. Now, often these parts are made by companies they own, that is they have bought over the years like AC/Delco I believe is owned by GM. But they also get a lot of parts from companies they don't own. My cousin was working for NSK bearing and they sold bearings to Toyota for instance.

So that being said, often these parts are gotten from the company that made the lowest bid to the auto manufacturer. They are available elsewhere, often on other cars, equipment, tractors what ever.

Now, things are changing big time, over the last few decades these auto manufacturers have gotten more and more tight with these components making them make or model specific....so they have parts that you must buy from them, it's just business. Where once you had an 1157 bulb on every car in your family (as I do with all my old cars, trucks, trailers) now your car will have a special light that you need to go buy at the dealer (this quickly changes of course when there are enough out there that the AM makes it).

But this is something that really hit me when I got my Rambler, AMC was big on getting the cheapest parts, they often were simply from another vehicle like a tractor or something, and they were cheaper because they "existed"and they made their car fit it, instead of giving the manufacturer of the part a design they had to make for them....which would cost more.

There were a lot of other uses out there for many of the parts on my car, thus they are still available from a number of sources.

That is where the coloring books come in handy.

Brian

[meter swinger]

I just went through this yesterday with my DD a nissan maxima.
The bearing burnt up on the A/C compressor. A new compressor is 400.00 ish + the cost of getting the system recharged. Nobody i mean even the "go to guys" i use at the parts stores could come up with anything other than a new compressor. It took awhile hunting the forums and part numbers but i eventually found the same size bearing although a different brand by cross referencing numbers. The bearing was 11.99, and the local starter/ alternator repair guy pressed the old one out and pressed the new one in for 5 bucks. I didn't have to take the compressor of the car, only the pulley.
I think the system in the stores is by design so you will give up and they can shake you down for more $$$.