Technical Anybody know how to speak "parts counter"?

I saved a lot of the old catologs(new then) the parts man at our Orleillys calls me sometimes to check on old parts. We’ve worked together for over forty years. We have an agreement : he is supposed to sell me what I need, not what I ask for! Lol. Bones

 

Don`t bitch at the parts man, he has 5 million parts to chose from. He can not read your mind.

 

78 Chevy pickup, kinda our go to for a 350.

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Always go in there with a part number from their website, if your going to use these type of places, then you have to accept their limitations. The short SBC fuel pumps everyone likes I would use a '68 truck or Camaro. I tend to give these guys a little slack, they're young (we all started somewhere) and most aren't into the same cars (unless you secretly like the Fast and Frivolous movies).


Support your local mom and pop auto parts or they'll go away.........

 

Oreily has it listed. Sadly, it’s out of stock.

https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor



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I have done over 50 years behind various parts counters. Sort of a life sentence.
Way back, my first boss pointed out that the customer would not be standing there if he did not have problem. It was my job to sort that problem. If I could not help, at least refer him to someone or somewhere that could help..
He also pointed out that customers rarely say 'thank you' for wrong parts. Both lessons worth learning.
I always enjoyed the challenge of finding the difficult or 'impossible to find' items. Still do.
That said, if only customers would quote the Make Model and Year, life would be much simpler.
Today I replaced the rear tube shocks on my '32. The old ones had insufficient damping and I wanted something firmer. Our local undercar supplier took a couple minutes to sort an alternative - not in stock, but arrived overnight.
Now fitted, and car rides much better. I call that good service.
Garpo

 

I first read this about 40 years ago, and I'm sure a lot of you have also.

The Counterman's Lament

I work behind the counter, at a car and truck parts store, sometimes I'm called a genius, sometimes I'm called much more.

I'm really just a counterman, but when the job goes sick, the experts come and ask me; "What makes the damn thing tick?"

I'm supposed to know the numbers, of valves and bolts and gears, on every product that's been made, for more than forty years.

Mind Reader, Magician, and Handyman oh Lord, I'm supposed to be an Edison, combined with Henry Ford!

But life would be so simple, and I'd smile from ear to ear, if people would just tell me, the Model, Make and Year.

 

This thread wasn't meant to be about picking on the parts guy, I was just asking about what kind of cars you can look up when yours is too old for the database so they can find you something. These were the kind of answers I was looking for.

 

Several years ago I priced a rebuilt trans for a 6 cyl chevy pu. The counter girl looked it up, said they showed $xxx for a chevy, or $xxy for a BOP one. When I told her I did not have a Buick Olds or Pontiac
she told me no one had ever told her what BOP stood for. Can't really fault the counter girl if their training is that poor, she was actually grateful someone told her.

 

We still have a locally owned parts store but shortly after I got the 37 done they got rid of all the parts guys that really knew what they were doing and hired in people that they could pay less so I quit buying from them,if I am going to deal with those it will be from a parts store that is much cheaper.

 

Ask for the person in charge of commercial acconts. They seams to have been doing it longer and sometimes know more than the high turnover front counter workers.

 

Reading this thread, makes me smile and feel better that I'm not alone at the parts store. I searched around here when I retired/new area, found an Oreilly store that will take the time to find what I need for my hobby cars, IMO it's on me/us to help them in parts search as for these young people are starting out, remember when I was young, parts counter man helped me out. In defence of counter people today, so many cars/parts and it's a tougher job than most think, not high paying either. The manager offered me a part time job after a while, he likes old car guys, hires them part time when possible, $10/hour, now I understand his help problem.

 

This thread got me thinking about that 3 foot long row of parts manuals that sat in the counters of parts stores in the sixties. They probably went back to the twenties right? 40 years. Now sixty years later that row would have grown to 8 feet long with just the manufactures from that era. But now we have at least 2 maybe 3 times that many active car makers. So that's what? 16,24 running feet of parts catalogs? Yikes! do they even make counters that long? Not to mention the amount of parts shelves in the back to stock everything. And that 'puter only takes up 2 feet or so.

 

Well...it depends! If I'm looking for a fuel pump for a SBC, I figure out what kind of car the pump I want would be found in, then look up the pump for that car, and see if it has the features I want.

See, you really do need the year/make/model. The computer counter guys aren't picking on you, they want to get you the correct part.

Also, it has little to do with how old the car is vs. the database. Look on Rock Auto, they have listings for parts for cars from the 20s-30s. There just are not many parts for those cars still available in the normal parts distribution system.

But yeah, having worked at a junkyard, and run a repair shop years ago, I got pretty good at knowing what cars have which parts, and that lets me easily make up an application to buy a part for an old car with an engine swap.

We're really lucky to have online resources such as rockauto.com to find parts. It's fun...just guess at what year/make/model car would have the part you need, then look at the picture of the part that was used on that car on rockauto, and if it's right, you can get it from the local parts store, or order it online. If it's wrong, you can modify your guess, try a different year, or a different model, etc.

 

It's amazing,,,, the smart phone has more computer power than NASA had available for Stanley Cubric's moon landing that NASA forgot how to do again.

Here's the problem, the computer only know what the programmer installed. The programmer probably never got his hands dirty. There's all kinds of glitches and I find a doozie at least once a month. The more you go the more you find. The counter folks say they will have it changed but I don't think it's so easy to correct a database.

 

The programmers don't maintain the database.

 

Seems that nobody maintains or corrects the database.
Also seems that the only folks who ever think a computer could ever be wrong are the ones old enough to remember life before computers where the foundation for everything. Those young enough to have no life experience before computers can't grasp the idea that it might be wrong. It's strange to say the least.

 

I've even found a few printed words that are wrong, over the years. I don't think it's the medium, it's just not easy to get everything right.

 

Dad ran computers for a major plumbing manufacturer and I remember a plaque he had on his desk, it came from IBM in the late 1950’s.
Four simple letters- GIGO
Garbage In, Garbage Out. The computer is only as good as the information entered.

 

This post reminded me of my experience at an independent parts store I worked at years ago. One of the products carried was small engine parts. If you wanted parts for a Briggs, you needed the serial number. Many customers would ask for points, for example and if you asked them for the S/N, they would tell you "they are all the same". So I would go down the aisle and return with 4 or 5 different sets and set them on the counter. Or just grab the first set I came to and give that to them. The response was quite often "are you sure those are right?". Must be, they are all the same.

 

this one really sticks in my craw (whatever a craw is) when I was doing a complete brake job on an early V8 Aston Martin Volante. I knew going into this that finding parts for a weary old Aston wasn't going to be easy, but amazingly found most everything it needed from online vendors and local NAPA stores until I found the brake boosters needed rebuilding too. Yes there are two of 'em squeezed in behind the headlamps and ridiculously plumbed all the way from a vacuum source behind the intake manifold and juice lines from under the driver's seat where the master cylinder resides. The boosters were actually causing the brakes to lock up and you can imagine quite a scary thing to happen when in traffic, etc. So I eventually found a parts source for the booster rebuilds at a New York Aston Martin dealership (yecch; a dealership) that would not sell me the rebuild kits and required I ship the boosters to their restoration shop for only their people to rebuild 'em. So that's what I ended up doing. They did a good job on 'em, no complaints therein, but certainly not all that complicated to replace o-rings & internal parts for me to tackle. In order to ship them I had to disassemble anyway to bleed out the brake fluid completely, so I could see how they were designed. God how I hate over-engineered foreign luxury cars. Never again.

 

So I did a little digging around my parts department (I work at a Buick dealer) and found some hardware cabinets waay back in the corner under the stairs. I was told it was some old junk. Turns out it was full off "brand new" hardware that would have been used in the 50's-60's! I'm gonna walk over to the Chevy building and see if they have anything stashed away too

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gotta love it...new 50 year old parts!

 

I'm very lucky. I have a real parts store just 20 miles away. The owner and his manager have the numbers in their head. Give them a number from rock auto and they can walk to the back and get it. Well worth the drive. They have great sense of humor also.

 

Last Fathers Day morning my Son and I are getting ready to head off to the L. A. Roadster Show. The solenoid on the roadster dies. Tapped it a few times with a hammer handle and still no go. So we jump in my F-250 and head off to the Oreilly's to get a new one. Well the young gentleman behind the computer screen has no idea what a solenoid is. So I tell him it is for a '64 Galaxie.... "What's a Galaxie?" OK It is for a '66 F-100... "Is that like a F-150?" Well sorta. Finally an older guy, probably 35 or so walks up overhears the conversation and goes down an aisle and retrieves a solenoid. He tells the kid we just call it an old car solenoid. It was a perfect fit, even the mounting holes matched. Sometimes you get lucky.

 

I worked a Ford parts counter from 1971-1979 and 2004-2017. the computer catalogs for anything about 1990 & newer now are vin driven, but it almost all but eliminates mistakes cuz it displays what parts were on that car from the factory. it can take twice as long to look up parts without the vin cuz you have to guess what model it came from. it does get frustrating having someone wanting an axle seal for a ford 9" but not knowing at least what year its from. give us a place to start looking. the independents are as a whole pretty poor, but you get what you pay for (employee wages). the young guys dont know anything but following their computer prompts, technology has created a generation of people that cant think for themselves. most dealer parts personnel know a lot more than independents & have been doing it a lot longer. just remember we all had to start somewhere.

 

It's kind of like the 710 caps it depends on which side of the counter you are on.

 

As car guys, we carry some responsibility in this, where I go, they have seasoned guys, but also have a young woman who doesn't know if her butt is punched, bored or ate out by maggots. So....I teach her what she is selling, she has learned about glow plugs, shock absorbers, spark plugs, u joints, everything I buy there, she gets a lesson in how it works, and I dare say, she will be a damn good parts person one day.
So before you get impatient, give them a lesson if they'll listen, and they'll be better.

 

Part number 121G as in 1.21 gigawatts...lol. that's great

 

Just happened today...
Me: I need a 12 volt 30 amp voltage regulator that looks like this<showing picture on my phone> its probably a Standard VR35
Parts kid: ummm ok. What year?
Me: I think it's a Standard Manufacturing part number VR35
Parts kid: ok...what Make?
Me: <thinking to myself ok, I'll play> it's a 1930 ford Model A coupe, the engine is a 53 V8 flathead from a ford F1, the trans is 86 Camaro 4 speed and the rear is from a 51 ford f1. Let's try a 1957 ford thunderbird.
Parts kid: ok... <click click click click> <turning the screen to face me still holding out my phone with a picture of the part> does it look like this?
Me: holding my phone up next to the screen>....nope.
Parts kid: ummm. Hold on a sec... <yelling to the back of the store> Hey Charlie!
Charlie: how can I help you.
Me: I need a 12 volt 30 amp voltage regulator. I am pretty sure it is a Standard VR35
Charlie: ok. What year?

True story....