Mopar parts going fast!
12-14-2008, 07:32 PM
#16
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I had to wait 6 months for my shifter but they finally got it in. 88 bucks and the date of delivery kept getting pushed back. I figured it would never come thru but it did. Looked like it came from the stock of a dealer somewhere in Cali from the tag on it.
12-15-2008, 06:05 PM
#19
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01-05-2009, 03:46 AM
#20
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Also, one other thing to mention here regarding how Chrysler (which owns both Dodge and AMC) do business:
When they no longer manufacture something, they load a bunch of the parts they have in stock up onto tractor trailers and under the tightest security imaginable, they truck the stuff off to landfills and bulldoze it into the ground EV1 style. There were people - people I know - who tried to buy the warehouses out, had financing and lawyers all lined up, everything they wouldn't let 'em do it. There is a landfill somewhere around Houston I have heard about where AMC parts (still in the plastic wrap) have started to come up out of the ground. I heard the Chrysler machine bulldozed a massive mountain of AMC parts when the Kenosha plants were torn down.
Even if you keep buying parts, Dodge will stop making them. In fact, they already have. They will never make another first gen part again, unless that part happens to be used on something current. Any parts you do get from the dealers now are parts that happened to have escaped the ax somehow or have been sitting on a dealer's shelf somewhere or at a dealer group's warehouse.
There will be a push soon (if it already has not happened) to purge any NOS 1st gen parts still around. Once that happens, the supply is REALLY going to dry up. Those of you who have fiends at dealerships should talk to them about buying out whatever stock they have before it either gets sent for scrap or gets bought up by hoarders, people who know what its worth and will try to sell it for a fortune. We have a few people like that in the AMC hobby who got ahold of the remaining stock of a few important parts and they took something the dealer used to sell for $30 and that they got a whole bin of a couple hundred at auction now they try to get $300 for it. They have the last of the supply so what do you do.
I don't know how Dodge does their numbering from year to year and generation to generation, but there came a point in time during all of AMC mergers and acquisitions when all of the new parts were 9 digits numbers and the old stuff was eight and we lost a mountain of parts then, because it was real easy to tell the difference and so there was a big push by the dealers to get stuff with eight digits on it returned to the warehouses for credit since there likely would not be a chance to do it in the future. When it went back to the warehouses, it eventually found its way to a landfill or a crusher or whatever.
The guy I get my AMC parts for used to be the parts manager for Beyer Automotive Group in Central Ohio, which inherited a huge number of AMC-turned Chrysler dealerships. They have a massive warehouse and the parts manager somehow managed to keep all the stock from getting sent back and even got the management to let him order even more of the stuff in. So while most dealers were sending AMC stuff in for credit, he was ordering more back in. He knew what was going on and knew it was the last time. Then he somehow convinced management to let him buy all the AMC stock and he left and started what is now Kennedy American, Inc. He also gave Chrysler a good kick in the pants during the merger time and got the dealership a check for $280,000 or some crazy thing for like $8,000 worth parts that he ordered in when they went up as deleted items and then sent back to the factory under another program.
For Dodge people, it wont be so easy. Alot of AMC dealers were mom n pop, not the massive corporate dealers we have today. Alot of those old AMC dealers never returned anything cause some old guy owned the dealership, was the only one who worked there and no longer cared enough to bother with it so when he died the family would sell off the dealership (which probably was the size of a shell station - most of them only had room for 1 or 2 cars in the showroom) which included the parts pile or whatever. Smart people bought up pules of this stuff in the 1990s and now make a living selling it off. All of that stuff is gone now, rare is it that a pile of AMC parts goes up for auction anywhere and when it does people get on planes and everyone knows about it.
Dodge dealers are big corporate places, there wont be any families inheriting warehouses full of parts and dumping them when dad dies. Right now, those of you who know somebody high up who works at a big Dodge dealership that has multiple locations and a central warehouse would be doing good to ask around and see if you can negotiate a buyout of all the first and second gen parts. Most of the time, these dealers just want to get rid of the stock and if they cant send it back to the warehouse for credit somehow, it is just cash sitting on the shelf. Now is a good time to hit these places up with the economy going to crap and the dealers starving for cash. Mortgage the house if you have to, cause you be able to quit your job and make a living selling this stuff in a few years. If you think I am kidding, just wait.
---
As a matter of fact, its already started happening. There is a heater hose on my truck, that little elbow right off the heat exchanger manifold thing - that the dealer can still get but they want $90 for them. Its a hose 3" long makes a sharp 90 degree turn. Well, I bought two of them. One for my truck, the other as a specimen. When they get here I will put the one for my truck on my truck and the other one I will send off to the engineering company if I cannot find a generic part to replace it with in the current market.
They'll do an Autocad on it (and thank god I know the guy who runs the place, I'll only pay $50 an hour for the drawing instead of the normal $300 a an hour they bill) and then I will have a couple of thousand of them made for about $1 each and I'll start selling them. Yes, I am aware I could probably use a 90 degree cast iron elbow and two pieces of hose or something else in place of it. I don't want to. Nor do I think anyone should have to pay $100 for something that's worth $20 retail max and costs $2. I'll make back my investment, Dodge can kiss my you know what as far as patents and whatever, 1st genners will have guaranteed availability on a part and the next time I find something I cant get for a reasonable price, around we go again. Pretty soon, people that are doing this will be your only source for alot of parts as the supply of NOS OEM dries up.
When they no longer manufacture something, they load a bunch of the parts they have in stock up onto tractor trailers and under the tightest security imaginable, they truck the stuff off to landfills and bulldoze it into the ground EV1 style. There were people - people I know - who tried to buy the warehouses out, had financing and lawyers all lined up, everything they wouldn't let 'em do it. There is a landfill somewhere around Houston I have heard about where AMC parts (still in the plastic wrap) have started to come up out of the ground. I heard the Chrysler machine bulldozed a massive mountain of AMC parts when the Kenosha plants were torn down.
Even if you keep buying parts, Dodge will stop making them. In fact, they already have. They will never make another first gen part again, unless that part happens to be used on something current. Any parts you do get from the dealers now are parts that happened to have escaped the ax somehow or have been sitting on a dealer's shelf somewhere or at a dealer group's warehouse.
There will be a push soon (if it already has not happened) to purge any NOS 1st gen parts still around. Once that happens, the supply is REALLY going to dry up. Those of you who have fiends at dealerships should talk to them about buying out whatever stock they have before it either gets sent for scrap or gets bought up by hoarders, people who know what its worth and will try to sell it for a fortune. We have a few people like that in the AMC hobby who got ahold of the remaining stock of a few important parts and they took something the dealer used to sell for $30 and that they got a whole bin of a couple hundred at auction now they try to get $300 for it. They have the last of the supply so what do you do.
I don't know how Dodge does their numbering from year to year and generation to generation, but there came a point in time during all of AMC mergers and acquisitions when all of the new parts were 9 digits numbers and the old stuff was eight and we lost a mountain of parts then, because it was real easy to tell the difference and so there was a big push by the dealers to get stuff with eight digits on it returned to the warehouses for credit since there likely would not be a chance to do it in the future. When it went back to the warehouses, it eventually found its way to a landfill or a crusher or whatever.
The guy I get my AMC parts for used to be the parts manager for Beyer Automotive Group in Central Ohio, which inherited a huge number of AMC-turned Chrysler dealerships. They have a massive warehouse and the parts manager somehow managed to keep all the stock from getting sent back and even got the management to let him order even more of the stuff in. So while most dealers were sending AMC stuff in for credit, he was ordering more back in. He knew what was going on and knew it was the last time. Then he somehow convinced management to let him buy all the AMC stock and he left and started what is now Kennedy American, Inc. He also gave Chrysler a good kick in the pants during the merger time and got the dealership a check for $280,000 or some crazy thing for like $8,000 worth parts that he ordered in when they went up as deleted items and then sent back to the factory under another program.
For Dodge people, it wont be so easy. Alot of AMC dealers were mom n pop, not the massive corporate dealers we have today. Alot of those old AMC dealers never returned anything cause some old guy owned the dealership, was the only one who worked there and no longer cared enough to bother with it so when he died the family would sell off the dealership (which probably was the size of a shell station - most of them only had room for 1 or 2 cars in the showroom) which included the parts pile or whatever. Smart people bought up pules of this stuff in the 1990s and now make a living selling it off. All of that stuff is gone now, rare is it that a pile of AMC parts goes up for auction anywhere and when it does people get on planes and everyone knows about it.
Dodge dealers are big corporate places, there wont be any families inheriting warehouses full of parts and dumping them when dad dies. Right now, those of you who know somebody high up who works at a big Dodge dealership that has multiple locations and a central warehouse would be doing good to ask around and see if you can negotiate a buyout of all the first and second gen parts. Most of the time, these dealers just want to get rid of the stock and if they cant send it back to the warehouse for credit somehow, it is just cash sitting on the shelf. Now is a good time to hit these places up with the economy going to crap and the dealers starving for cash. Mortgage the house if you have to, cause you be able to quit your job and make a living selling this stuff in a few years. If you think I am kidding, just wait.
---
As a matter of fact, its already started happening. There is a heater hose on my truck, that little elbow right off the heat exchanger manifold thing - that the dealer can still get but they want $90 for them. Its a hose 3" long makes a sharp 90 degree turn. Well, I bought two of them. One for my truck, the other as a specimen. When they get here I will put the one for my truck on my truck and the other one I will send off to the engineering company if I cannot find a generic part to replace it with in the current market.
They'll do an Autocad on it (and thank god I know the guy who runs the place, I'll only pay $50 an hour for the drawing instead of the normal $300 a an hour they bill) and then I will have a couple of thousand of them made for about $1 each and I'll start selling them. Yes, I am aware I could probably use a 90 degree cast iron elbow and two pieces of hose or something else in place of it. I don't want to. Nor do I think anyone should have to pay $100 for something that's worth $20 retail max and costs $2. I'll make back my investment, Dodge can kiss my you know what as far as patents and whatever, 1st genners will have guaranteed availability on a part and the next time I find something I cant get for a reasonable price, around we go again. Pretty soon, people that are doing this will be your only source for alot of parts as the supply of NOS OEM dries up.
01-05-2009, 07:20 AM
#21
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Just a thought, I've been seeing allot of commercials for the Cricut. It's a scrapbooker's machine that has become increasingly more popular. Anyway, they offer a deep cut blade for thicker materials. I'm sure they offer a digitizing service and could copy the gasket so it could be reproduced on the machine. All you need after that is the gasket material of your choice in sheets to feed into the Cricut. Somebody has got to know somebody who has one.
01-05-2009, 12:54 PM
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Just a thought, I've been seeing allot of commercials for the Cricut. It's a scrapbooker's machine that has become increasingly more popular. Anyway, they offer a deep cut blade for thicker materials. I'm sure they offer a digitizing service and could copy the gasket so it could be reproduced on the machine. All you need after that is the gasket material of your choice in sheets to feed into the Cricut. Somebody has got to know somebody who has one.
01-05-2009, 02:07 PM
#23
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It's actually a pretty cool little gadget. You can do vinyl letters, cut magnetic tape, etc. You do have to use a couple special blades but I think it's possible. I looked on line and the "as seen on tv" version is $400 shipped to the lower 48 and if you chose to pay for it all at once you get a deal on the deep cut blade.
01-05-2009, 02:43 PM
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I would cancel my order for those gaskets and order these. Look just like the factory cab lights on my 1993 and they are $70.00.
http://www.kcautomotive.com/pacer.htm
http://www.kcautomotive.com/pacer.htm
01-05-2009, 10:13 PM
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It's actually a pretty cool little gadget. You can do vinyl letters, cut magnetic tape, etc. You do have to use a couple special blades but I think it's possible. I looked on line and the "as seen on tv" version is $400 shipped to the lower 48 and if you chose to pay for it all at once you get a deal on the deep cut blade.
01-06-2009, 09:05 AM
#27
Registered User
steering box mounting plates
As of 1/6/2009, the 'parts depot' in Detroit is showing a stock of 3,104 of these brackets (part number 5203 7876). List price is $17.30 and if your local Dodge dealer really likes you then your price is $13.84.
12-02-2011, 10:36 PM
#28
Registered User
Preheater relays are available brand new for $26.29. The reason Dodge doesn't carry them is too many people know that.
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...CRuyompoXR0%3d
In a pinch, a Fricken-Stratton replacement starter solenoid will work just fine at about $14 retail.
I agree that if yer going to drive old iron, you have to be creative. Iron frame parts can always be fabricated. There are uses for silly-cone, but there are also some amazing other sealants like Lexel that work better in most cases.
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...CRuyompoXR0%3d
In a pinch, a Fricken-Stratton replacement starter solenoid will work just fine at about $14 retail.
I agree that if yer going to drive old iron, you have to be creative. Iron frame parts can always be fabricated. There are uses for silly-cone, but there are also some amazing other sealants like Lexel that work better in most cases.
12-03-2011, 12:38 AM
#29
Administrator
12-03-2011, 12:47 AM
#30
Administrator
Please tell me where I can get a new set of arm rest pads for my 1991-D350, I believe they are now made of unobtanium.
Also please order me a set of cowl repair patches.
Jim
Also please order me a set of cowl repair patches.
Jim