The overall goal of the parts store interaction goes like this: Customer comes in with a need, counter clerk helps with said need, customer has a pleasant day afterwards. That means that the first transaction was a success, or that the customer gave up and took the problem car to a mechanic. If they come back once, ok, we can fix whatever happened. If they keep coming back regarding the same issue, however, we have a parts bomber.
What’s a parts bomber, you ask? That’s easy. Say the car in question just isn’t running quite right. Instead of properly diagnosing the fault, which admittedly would take a few hours and a bit of skill, let’s say that our shade tree mechanic has set their sights on the carburetor. While there are many other factors that could be causing the problem (whatever it is), they are going to come in and buy that carburetor. From the counter clerk’s perspective, awesome…that’s a good sale! But then they’re back within an hour or two with the carburetor. It didn’t work. You must have sold them a bad carburetor. Great…the cycle starts. Could it be the carburetor…or maybe it’s the distributor. Yeah, maybe it’s the distributor, so they’ll take that, plus plug wires. Seriously? That’s another few hundred dollars out of pocket. It might mean sales for me, but returning that carburetor goes against the sales figures. Next day, they’re back. That didn’t help their problem either. Without going to look at their car for them, you are now in this cycle of sell-and-return, which doesn’t do anybody any favors.
So what do you do? If you are lucky, you get them to haul their junk over to a real mechanic, but we all know how likely it is that a shade tree mechanic is going to bite on that deal. They know what they are doing, dammit! They’ve been wrenching for years! A good store should be able to direct them to a good shop, but if the customer continues this parts-rental service, some stores will call them out and stop accepting returns except under the strictest conditions.
Oh, and our hero here? Anybody wanna hazard a guess on what his problem really was? It was a cracked spark plug that wasn’t doing its job. Bravo, genius. Yes, it would take some time to take a look, but think of all of the time you would have saved yourself…and me.
but hang on…if he’s bought a carby and tried it, that means he’s run fuel through it, at the very least got his grubby little mitts all over it and destroyed half the packaging….I highly doubt I’d give the guy a return on it. Same with the dizzy, he’s jabbed it into his grubby engine and got crap all over it…I’d say sorry mate, you bought it, its now not in `as bought ‘ condition, don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out….
I was thinking that, too.
I thought that plug wires were a one-time deal, too.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve kind-of parts bombed before, but I kept what I’d bought as spares; returning them all seemed like such a dick move, and at some point I knew I would need that alternator and starter, so they were worth keeping. Yeah, it was a loose engine ground strap.
done the same some times it happens. but i keep the new part on the car and keep the old one as a known good spare for future diagnosis
Heard a bunch of terms for that kind of mechanic. We usually refer to that kind of “diagnostics” as dart-throwing. Got no idea what the problem is so they just keep throwing parts until they make one stick.
We always called it shotgunning parts, but same thing.
Yep the old shotgun method
What is even worse than a shade tree mechanic doing the parts bombing, is when a commercial parts account doing consistent parts bombing and getting away with it because the upper management is in on it.
Every pro mechanic or shade tree mechanic runs into an issue that is hard to figure out once in a while. The easy thing to do then is to start swapping parts when your troubleshooting capabilities are exhausted. We have all done it if you have worked on cars for very long.
As for me, I chased a miss in my pickup for a few months before finding a cracked spark plug. I had even changed the plugs while trying to find the problem and apparently cracked one of the replacements. Doh!
I can sort of understand this approach if you are a home mechanic with no idea whats wrong, but what utterly shits me to tears is when a supposedly professional garage pulls this crap AND nonchalantly list all the parts they bought that didn’t do anything… seeing this crap happen to my parents when I was 14 or 15 is actually what made me commit to fixing everything on my cars myself so that at least is a plus.
The reason why I work on my own cars. In the 30+ yrs working on them, I have parts bomb a few cars, usually doing a tune up, but never returned parts after installing them!
That just lame.
Usually when I get it wrong I’ll just keep the new part in place.
It sounds like the moral of the tale is: If you’re not already an expert mechanic, don’t bother trying to figure it out or to learn anything, just take it to a shop.
Guilty as well… although I never returned the carb along with 95% of the parts I bought. Its all going to end up on there at some point anyways. In the end… it was the condenser. Which was actually bought with the new dizzy. Kept the dizzy handed them the faulty condenser and parted ways. Ford load-o-matic is a real joy to diagnose.
I work in a bike shop in Aus
We had one of them a few weeks ago
This part, that part…..
Finally got him to bring it in.
After a conversation with him about the bike, it turned out it had been stored for about six months in an outside shed
Yep. I know this one. Screwdriver up the exhaust pipe to to get rid of the European wasps that had made their home there. blocking the muffler
No charge
G
I did the same thing with an 05 Jeep 3.7. Misfire on cylinder 1. Ran like a champion but with PA’s emmission Bs, I needed to often the Mileage. So I bought plugs, avoid, fuel pump, battery and cameltoe sensor before taking it to a dealer. Turns out Chrysler put defective valve rotators in the head another caused the misfire
Ive been a parts counterman/manager for Napa for 32 years…..I can tell you this is an every day accurance…….once you’ve installed it…ITS YOURS……the stories I have …some are just unbelievable…
I have a friend who owns a salvage yard. He sells quite a few ECMs, because, you know, everybody that walks in the door knows what their doing when it comes to working on a car.
ecms are by far the best thing to buy at a junkyard, i think. it’s pretty random for one to go bad, and they’re comparatively dirt cheap at a junkyard. cheap enough to be worth buying for a spare/shotgun part attempt.
I’ve heard a lot of parts stores adapted a “no returning carburetors” policy over this.