Re: U-joints Q\'s
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Ya that is sorta true. I have always been able to get the true spicer stuff from napa or car quest they both have them in stock regularly. I even got the spicer 760's from carquest once. They can even get me the 806 (D60 cold forge) if I give them a day or two and a spicer part number. I might just be lucky though. Oh I do not have an account with them at all. Some of the local 4x4 shops (real rigs not chrome) have spicers in stock too. To bad for you Tim. I can get you some Napa and CQ spicer PN's if you want, just let me know.
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Actually I've got 5 Spicer U joints behind me in a box waiting to be installed on my truck so I don't need part numbers.
I do, however, need to know how/where they're getting them from. I can tell you that they're not getting them from within our own system.
Carquest will allow us to make outside purchases to sell parts to customers as long as a decent profit margin is maintained. If there is a place that I can buy Spicer U joints at wholesale so I can retail them to my customers, I would love to know where it is.
I have spent quite some time on the phone, but unfortunately the places that my store deals with don't have them. If there is a place, I can't figure out where it is! Trust me, I've tried.
Officially though, the Carquest system (our own warehouses) do not carry Spicer u joints. If someone is getting them for you, they're sourcing them from the outside and then retailing them to you--which would be fine for me to do, if I only knew how to get them (if I knew which distributor had them so I could order them I'd have a shelf full).
Unfortunately, the store that gets you your Spicer joints may not want to give up their source because if they told you, you might just go there to get them instead of the store.
One of the main things we pride ourselves in is that we don't sell price--we sell service. We will get any part for a customer and the only guidelines we have is that the store must make a reasonable profit. You name it--I can get it though my work typically, but sometimes the pricing sucks.
That said, I'd love to be able to offer my customers Spicer joints, but I have yet to find a source other than my local driveline shops to get them from, and they will not sell them to me for wholesale price.
EDIT:
I also forgot to mention one thing--Nothing at Carquest comes with a brand name on the box (some do, but Carquest is the brand and you'll see a small "Moog" or "Federal Mogul" or other logo elsewhere on the box. If you bought a branded part at the store--it didn't come with within the Carquest system.
Also, some Carquest stores are not corporately owned. They are independant auto parts stores that happen to have a Carquest franchise affiliation. There are many reasons why an owner may choose to do it, but the big one is that our warehouses stock everything--even dead part numbers and their pricing is very good.
It's possible that your store is indepentdant and that's why they carry more lines of what they want than my store, which is corporately owned. Very few items that we stock in our store do not come from within the Carquest parts system, but if their is a demand for a part that Carquest doesn't have, my boss has no problem having us order it as long as it will sell.
That's why we've got shift kits, MSD, Mr. Gasket, etc., IN STOCK. We also order Fel Pro gaskets (shhhhhhh) on a regular basis even though our parts system doesn't carry them.
Spicer PNs for life series non greasables:
D60 wheel joint 5-806x
1410 joint 5-801x
1350 joint 5-799x
