OEM? Ha!
There is a company selling parts here and it is called OEM.
Brilliant!
The not knowing people are told to buy OEM so I'd guess they think these are them. lol
Just more crap.

Powerstop Z23 on my Subaru, and Z26 on my Vette. #2 choices

rjp

I put a heater core in my pickup. That's a two day job, full dashboard removal and reinstall, for a shade tree like me.
The part I got from Rock Auto was the best on offer, and it was still inferior in every way to the original factory part - as was a replacement unit from the dealer, so I'll have a radiator shop braze up the original core and I'll keep it as a spare.
Thing is, there was no way I was going to pay big, big bucks to have a mechanic do this work, because if there are rattles in the dash, I want to know it's because I effed up and did a bad job, not because I paid someone to botch the job.


Car repair is such a ripoff anymore. Durable goods aren't durable, no matter how much you try and buy a quality piece, skilled labor is hit and miss, and all of us have been victims of the race to the bottom (line) when sourcing spares.

****, the other day my bro's GF was told she needed to do a water pump and timing belt on a honda civic for $1500.00. SHe **** her pants, and was about to have her kid tear car apart-

1. Car isn't losing coolant.
2l It's got 80K miles- a 2017 Honda CIVIC, more reliable than gravity itself.

I told her to leave the car alone, it's perfectly fine, and to go blow the money on hair and nail jobs.

Auto repair is outright theft these days.

rjp

On the flip side the other day I took my diesel dually into the local tire/repair shop . I am now towing a 5th wheel camper and wanted the brakes done .

Four rotors and pads . Adjusted the ebrake . Replaced two leaking axle seals . Added two quarts of gear oil . Did a brake fluid flush and bleed .

They did a brake pad break in to end their portion . Total price $1200.00 . I could have done the work myself but not the same day like they did . I climbed in the truck and drove home . Everything was exactly as I expected .

Long term I have no idea about the longevity of the parts they used . All aftermarket but OEM equivalent . I have used this shop in the past and always happy with their work . There are good shops out there .

I bought the front brake pads on my El Camino that were GM Mr. Goodwrench originals for $12 for the set. That was 8 years ago or so.

The only parts I buy on Evil-bay are old used parts that are no longer available new.

I was did not know Moog was junk now. I had my upper and lower ball joints replaced on the El Camino, and the old Moog parts were warrantied. That was many miles ago. I have worn out two sets of ball joints after 387,000 miles. Tie rods seem to last a lot longer. Keeping them greased helps a lot.

I feel for guys that have shops, as they can't rely on the parts chain any more than we can.
I love my old Mercedes, but what is going to kill them is parts availabilty. MB has really cut back on stuff for legacy vehicles, and the aftermarket isn't to be trusted. And yeah, lots of jobs are major hours do to the vehicle's complexity, and they're things I'd not do twice...

I haven’t worked on a Honda, but could it have been that the timing belt service was needed and It becomes smart practice to just replace the water pump while it is all apart?

There are good shops out there, but I think it's no more than 0.5% (and that's being generous). It's a shame and makes me glad that I can do most work (although I'm less interested in doing it than I was 10, 15, 20 years ago.

This is the deal on a lot of Hondas, except that car has a timing chain.

What is the name of the ripoff artist shop?

Right, "timing belts are good for 90-ishk, so do it now and you won't be stranded on the side of the road. And while we're in there, it would be silly to not do the W/P."

I don't know about Honda timing belts, but in the past I've always heard that rubber belts should be changed at around 90k. I have myself changed some at 100-110k figuring that I was already on borrowed time, and at the same time did W/P, thermostat, etc..., whatever the "while you're in there" stuff is for the specific model.

But I get it, I've also had shops tell me "you need brake pads" when the pads were <3mo old. I've also been witness to shops either trying or successfully screwing folks whether due to incompetence or fraud. The end result is not trusting any of them unless you can find enough folks that swear by them and then they prove themselves.

Threads like this make me glad I don't GAF about cars less than 30 years old. They're just appliances to me now.
Pay the man, fix the damn thing, and KEEP THE RECEIPTS.
Sorry to be so cynical, but modern cars and trucks bore me, piss me off, and cost me a lot of money. I hate them. The last new vehicle I owned that I liked enough to want to turn a wrench on it was a 2003 Tundra - and it rusted out on me.

Looks like the only PS pads for my boxster would be Z23 or "stock replacement".

It wouldn't bother me to get a set of pads that work well and have less dust than the stock/OEM pads that I've been running for the last 10 years.

I put Padjids 911 for DE events. They sucked for street use, squeaked and overheated the rotors. I don't know why they don't retract properly.

Our 2017 Civic Hatchback is the one I have been working on . Had to since new
235K on it now.
Origianl HJ20 pump is in it.
It has a timing chain.
Their weak point is the head gasket
Make sure you check the coolant level once in a whilest .
The AC condenser all go bad and the recall covers them.
The bad part of the car is that the dealership here just does not care about the customer .
For sure, I could state all the reasons, but in the end that's the point.
Maybe that's the new Honda approach? IDK
I will never ever buy from them again.
I think another Toyota is the next one, again.

Textron is the only manufacturer of bushings for landing gear mains for Cessnas with tubular gear (cannot get OEM at all); their bushings are a thick, metal sleeve with a urethane liner on the inside (originals were regular rubber liner), and while they look fancy, Textron produced a large batch of them that the urethan deforms and detaches from the metal bushing in a seriously short amount of time. Talk about a pain in the ass, repeated job, not to mention one needs to catch the failure before the steel gear leg chews up its big aluminum mounting boss.

Oh, and I just got a new one (was on back order for 6 months), to replace on a customer aircraft, and one end of the urethane liner looks like it was trimmed with a dull pocket knife, whereas the other side looks perfectly formed in a mold, so this will likely be a rejected/returned part. They are about $600.00 each. I guess it's not just autoparts that are lesser quality today.

Wow! Carpy aftermarket autoparts are one thing, but you would think that air plane parts wouldn't have the same issue all things considered.

Car has a timing chain!

rjp

A local shop in Tacoma, WA. Someplace I certainly would NOT frequent.

Seriously, that state is a desert wasteland for honest wrenches. I get calls all day, every day from friends/family in the area being terrorized by these idiots.

$1500 brake jobs on Honda, "Leaky" water pumps that never empty the radiator, or my own Acura which I gave to my brother that required "brakes"- like 3,000 miles after I did them myself.

I told her and my brother, when the time comes, DRIVE TO PORTLAND OR. There, the culture of the friendly indy (Like John Walkers. Workshop) still is alive and well.

What I would do, I can't stand and will not pay someone who treats me like an ATM-end of story.

rjp

Definitely a rip off then. Wankers!

Car was a 2015 Civic. Known around the world as a mainentance nightmare
 

+ it was Honda themselves quoting that nonsense. Probably Honda of Fife, just, amazing.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1746147758.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1746147758.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1746147758.jpg

There are a couple of ways to measure H20 in brake fluid.
test strips for one.
or
a meter .


https://rxmechanic.com/best-brake-fluid-tester/


Pretty simple.

My take is that you have to find a good brand to have any sort of chance at the Chinesium lasting. Different quality controls from the better name brands lead to better Chinesium. For instance, a Moog or other "brand" bearing made in China is still lightyears ahead of a Detroit Axle or the ones on Amazon with weird names.

LOL at that text chain, I have had so many similar exchanges over the years. Eff those places, it’s predatory how they take advantage of people who don’t know any better.

The only problem with that is, a pretty hard experiment to do.
If one buys rotors from the auto parts store, they all come in the plain Jane white box.
Who made them?
It just says made in cheeena.
As for bearings and stuff, I don't ever remember being offered varied prices or quality differences.

I'll have to keep this thread in mind and reply back in the fall. We're replacing Duralast rotors on my son's Rav4 with some Dynamic Friction rotors. It might be an unfair comparison since I'm replacing soft lines, calipers and rotors. But the front brakes have a wicked pulsation to them that developed not long after replacing the front rotors and pads the last time. The front calipers compressed easily and the guide pins weren't stuck. I greased the guide pins and checked the rubber boots on all four corners. We'll see how it goes. My luck with Carquest rotors and calipers isn't fantastic either. Surface delamination and torn piston boots. Oh well, we'll see how things go.

Something I have learned.
'We who live in the salt country use lots of anti-seize.
We have to!
Buit it needs to be spread very, very thin between the wheel and hub or caliper, and thin between the caliper and hub.
If too thick, I understand it promotes warping as it does not squeeze out even enough .

Have you ever noticed on Amazon, a list of parts that have the same picture, but different brand names. Ching. Ding. Wong. Long. Bing. Etc. And the same price.

Yeah, whether it's auto parts or almost anything else that you can imagine.

^^^^
I've got my eye on you...

Yep, almost certainly a spam bot. 8 posts, name a likely random letter collection. Many of the posts are only one or two words. I think all of them are <1week old. Need to wait for the links to show up.

Cha-Ching is the parent co.

Do yourself a favor, and do NOT get the Bosch Reman. We got tired of warrantying them and will never sell another. Another option to consider is having your starter rebuild locally by a quality auto-electric place.

Cheers

I notice the local rebuild shops are getting rarer and rarer around here !
It's going to come to pointthe of shipping them somewhere, as the crap one gets at flaps is mostly a paint job.

Same here. All my contacts are retiring.

Hell, 15-20 years ago, I needed a machine shop because my son overheated a 4.0L jeep cherokee. It took a lot of calling around to find a machine shop that was still in business. I did get the alternator in my old 911 rebuilt at a rebuild shop about 26 years ago.

Google seems to think there's still quite a few places in Houston.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1746733721.jpg

When the alternator on my 911 started rattling from worn out bearings after I had it rebuilt 20+ years and 100,000 miles of so, I pulled it out, and started trying to find a rebuild place in OKC area. The guy that did way back then closed 15 years ago. I finally found one guy that literally grew up rebuilding starters, alternators and generators. So I drove 40 miles to his shop, and it was a huge building with thousands of cores and one small workbench. He had it for a week, and it looked good.

Putting the alternator back in with the air diverter is a royal pain with short wires and tight working conditions. I got it buttoned up, fired up the engine, and the alternator light cam on. Crap!

So I tried to call the guy. The phone just rings and rings and never picks up, or has a message. For all I know he died, went out of business or is in the hospital. I don't really want to drive all the way there to find the doors locked if he is out. I need to call him again to see if he is back.

In the end, I bought a new $700 Valeo just like what I had rebuilt. It is working perfect. I can't find another rebuilder in this area. They are all out of business. It is like finding a radiator repair shop. They are just gone.

Moog was owned by Federal Mogul which was bought by Tenneco. Driv is the aftermarket company owned by Tenneco. Driv also includes, Monroe, Walker, Fel-Pro just to name a few. Warehousing and some assembly is in the USA but content can come from any Moog facility in North America, Mexico, Asia or Europe. You really need to check the label on the box for the manufacturing country of origin.