All my years I haven't. But I only buy somethings from teh dealer and some aftermarket. Jionts I go after market like OX or CTM. Bearings, dealer. Alt, lifetime from PEP Boys, BAttery Red top Optima. Engine custom built.

 

Ok now this is funny. I have bought numerous bearings for my friends and my self for our mud trucks and never had a problem with them from advance. They always have been a name brand bearing, as long as you dont buy the cheapest they have. Now the bearings I have had problems with are the ones that are the stores brand, ie. napa, parts master, auto value, etc. It is always a chance that you just got a set of bad bearings, even though they are name brand they are made by the millions and they only check around the 50th one made. FYI almost everything is made in china, and if it says made in USA it is most likely made in china, shipped over, one thing added or changed, and then stamped with made in usa.

 

Well, I have been burned a couple times besides this with crap parts from those to stores. I keep buying because I am lazy I guess. BOTH are on my way to and from work. NAPA and the Federated dealer are cross town drives from me. The Federated dealer laughed at my Thermoquad carb when I was looking for a rebuild kit for it.
Well, that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in that store. The NAPA place service is EXTREMELY slow. It doesn't warrant a special trip out there to wait around. All the dealership are way out of the way for me too.
Kind of a sorry situation indeed.

 

I know for a fact that Autozone has Timken bearings.

 

Well, even if the autozone/advance stores have different specs for their bearings, the name brand bearing makers would not use them. Think about it. If timken makes a bearing that uses a lower spec than normal just to sell them to autozone, and you buy it, and it fails, then you will no longer trust timken.

It would be suicide for a name brand company like timken or spicer to make parts of inferior quality and sell them to cheap parts houses and still let them use their name on them.

I'm beginning to think there's a skunk in the works somewhere that either used no name parts, or did the work wrong, or failed to check everything out properly.

 

I agree; never had a problem with a Timken bearing; Companies like Timken get thier specs from the manufacturer, not from the retailer.. I wouldn't believe a word of that.

 

sorry Todd, but your friend is full of B.S. i think what you will find is that you were naive and there was nothing wrong with your bearings in the first place. as a matter of fact, i wouldnt be surprised if they are still your original bearings, and werent replaced. unless you were there to watch the labor take place, i think you have been had.

 

I would have laughed at this if it came from anyone else. But I'm not a professional mechanic and not someone who wrenches for a living. This guy lives, eats, and breathes it.
But what he is describing is well known to happen in other manufacturer/vendor relationships. For example, Walmart puts a lot of pressure on there suppliers to cut corners to make their products cheaper. Many have told Walmart to take a hike and ended up going under. Would this kind of thing be out of bounds for auto parts who customers are mostly not professional? I doubt it.

And really, A company that is concerned with quality won't well you 3 bad power steering pumps in a row. Autozone did that to me once.

sorry Todd, but your friend is full of B.S. i think what you will find is that you were naive and there was nothing wrong with your bearings in the first place. as a matter of fact, i wouldnt be surprised if they are still your original bearings, and werent replaced. unless you were there to watch the labor take place, i think you have been had.

 

A manufacturing company would have to stop production just to set up and make a lower grade bearing. Its not cost effective to stop production to make a special bearing for a certain store. Although Advance and Auto Zone are huge they are just a small piece of the pie when compared to all the other auto parts stores combined. Now I know for a fact that the parts stores house named parts are of lesser quality. I've used ball joints from O'Reillys and were thier own brand that lasted a year.

 

I would have laughed at this if it came from anyone else. But I'm not a professional mechanic and not someone who wrenches for a living. This guy lives, eats, and breathes it.
But what he is describing is well known to happen in other manufacturer/vendor relationships. For example, Walmart puts a lot of pressure on there suppliers to cut corners to make their products cheaper. Many have told Walmart to take a hike and ended up going under. Would this kind of thing be out of bounds for auto parts who customers are mostly not professional? I doubt it.

And really, A company that is concerned with quality won't well you 3 bad power steering pumps in a row. Autozone did that to me once.

sorry Todd, but your friend is full of B.S. i think what you will find is that you were naive and there was nothing wrong with your bearings in the first place. as a matter of fact, i wouldnt be surprised if they are still your original bearings, and werent replaced. unless you were there to watch the labor take place, i think you have been had.

Yeah generally speaking Walmart deos that shit with alot of stuff

Larry

 

i used to manage an advance auto in mathews NC and i'll tell thats BS the parts are know different sorry dude your friend is wrong!