It’s becoming very difficult to get good car parts. Many of the companies making them have just given up on quality. There’s a good chance now that a brand new part you just bought and put in is faulty or defective in some way.
Needed a fuel pump on my 90’s jeep, but the only options only had bad reviews. Bought one and the fuel pressure regulator on the new one failed in like 3 months. (Jeep decided in that year to put the regulator on the pump assembly instead of under the hood, and never sold them separately so you had to replace the whole unit, or try to frankenstein something together with a different pump and regulator, but the tank had to come off the car regardless.).
I’ve heard its pretty bad, esp if you’re a shop trying to fix customer vehicles. Can’t fix old cars, and new cars aren’t built to last nearly as long and are so expensive.
I’m very concerned about this. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Tarrifs? Or run-of-the-mill billionaire MBA driven enshittification?
Any hope this situation may improve in the future? It simply doesn’t seem sustainable to me. Plenty of people are avoiding new vehicles so there is enough demand to get better suppliers in the game.
Yes, I got a re-manufactured brake caliper from a chain auto parts shop last autumn. It leaked, so I let a shop deal with it when I took the vehicle in for other work. They couldn’t stop the leak, so they got another, identical one. It also leaked.
They had to get a caliper from NAPA, instead, so I have mismatched brake parts. (Not a real big deal; they work.)
There’s a bunch of fakes out there now, especially on Amazon and eBay. Look up Bosch fuel injectors on eBay and you’ll find a bunch of suspiciously cheap listings from accounts with very little feedback.
Bought a new oil cooler for one of my cars not long ago. Couldn’t find a single one that was free of complaints - that it leaked or the body cracked after a couple hundred miles. Ultimately went with the one recommended by GM, and I still feel the need to check it every few days.
It’s becoming very difficult to get good car parts. Many of the companies making them have just given up on quality. There’s a good chance now that a brand new part you just bought and put in is faulty or defective in some way.
It’s a nightmare.
Needed a fuel pump on my 90’s jeep, but the only options only had bad reviews. Bought one and the fuel pressure regulator on the new one failed in like 3 months. (Jeep decided in that year to put the regulator on the pump assembly instead of under the hood, and never sold them separately so you had to replace the whole unit, or try to frankenstein something together with a different pump and regulator, but the tank had to come off the car regardless.).
I’ve heard its pretty bad, esp if you’re a shop trying to fix customer vehicles. Can’t fix old cars, and new cars aren’t built to last nearly as long and are so expensive.
I’m very concerned about this. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Tarrifs? Or run-of-the-mill billionaire MBA driven enshittification?
Any hope this situation may improve in the future? It simply doesn’t seem sustainable to me. Plenty of people are avoiding new vehicles so there is enough demand to get better suppliers in the game.
Yes, I got a re-manufactured brake caliper from a chain auto parts shop last autumn. It leaked, so I let a shop deal with it when I took the vehicle in for other work. They couldn’t stop the leak, so they got another, identical one. It also leaked.
They had to get a caliper from NAPA, instead, so I have mismatched brake parts. (Not a real big deal; they work.)
There’s a bunch of fakes out there now, especially on Amazon and eBay. Look up Bosch fuel injectors on eBay and you’ll find a bunch of suspiciously cheap listings from accounts with very little feedback.
Bought a new oil cooler for one of my cars not long ago. Couldn’t find a single one that was free of complaints - that it leaked or the body cracked after a couple hundred miles. Ultimately went with the one recommended by GM, and I still feel the need to check it every few days.