Do you buy the scariest cheap parts?

In reply to novaderrik:

northern auto and rock auto sell the same mfg companies for parts, but prices are different between the two.

If I've never heard of it, it's not going on my car.

That said, I've been in the parts business for a few years now. There are very few companies that I've never heard of. (of course, some of them I have heard of, aren't going on my car either...)

In reply to Swank Force One:

Thanks good to know that ahead of time for a change.

I would never use the cheapest parts on an engine rebuild. Time is too valuable to waste doing the job twice. On the GS430 head job, I bought the Lexus (well, okay, Toyota ;-) gasket kit. It hurt to spend $300 on gaskets, but I've seen the cheap gaskets and they are NOT as good. I know there are other brands that are okay, but I didn't have time to shop around that much.

I did use an eBay kit to do the timing belt on my old LS400. It was listed as being the name brand parts that would be original to the car, and they were. It was NSK bearings, Aisin water pump, everything was great quality. So the mid-priced stuff can be really good too.

The way I look at it, doing it on a daily driver doesn't make the job any less sucky to do the second time. Some times it's worse since you "have to do it."

It depends on how hard the part is to change and what it does.

Take brakes for instance, I usually buy the good stuff. I've been running Autozone's best grade on my vans. They last 50-60K and seem to hold up well on a 6000 pound van. The cheap ones last less than 20K. The T-Bird gets Centric rotors and EBC pads. The Lemons car gets Centric rotors and Porterfields. You get what you pay for when it comes to brakes.

Alternators? The vans get the cheap ones. They are easy to change. So far, no problems. My wife's mini-van got the good stuff. That one was a bitch to get to because the entire engine cradle had to be dropped to get it out.

Bearings and such, I usually get from Bearing Distributors. I don't even bother with the auto parts stuff. I've had crappy bearings destroy a spindle before. Never again.

Gaskets? Fel-Pro or OEM for me. I hate doing stuff twice, especially for a leak.

Belts? Get the good ones. I did a belt on the wife's Liberty yesterday. I bought the best they had, made by a company that actually makes belts, rather than repackaging the cheapest stuff they can find. A belt failure on my wife's car would probably end up taking out the engine before she noticed something was wrong.

Clutches? Get the good stuff. I've never seen one of those that was exactly east to get to.

Radiators? I used to buy the cheapest ones I could find. Until I did 5 of them in a van over the span of two years. If you need a radiator done in an E250 give me a call. I did the last one in 18 minutes. The last one was a Motorcraft. That was two years and 80K miles ago. I'm done with cheap radiators.

Other non critical parts I really don't care as long as it fits and works. I'll usually buy the cheapest thing I can find or whatever they have on the shelf.