• Welcome to For Trucks Only !

    We are a community of American Brand Pickup Truck and SUV owners. Join now! Its Free!

where to find good electrical parts

V

volaredon

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2020
Messages
520
Reaction score
197
Location
Illinois
I am tired of re do's. especially when it is due to crap parts. today it was the headlite switch on my 96 Dakota. they worked fine yesterday morning on way to work (at least the dims did) and I usually get home w/o needing them.
For about a week or so when I had my lights on high I'd get about halfway to work (I take alot of back roads, so I run my brights alot) and my lights would die. but if I went to dims for a few miles (and I assume, let that apart of the switch cool) I could switch back to brights and get the rest of the way there with brights, if I want to. and this truck's lights have not been all that great in the 4 years/60+K miles it has been mine, anyway. (brightness, etc-- topic for later) I have replaced that switch once previously.
I dont remember the brand I used the 1st time. but this time I went to NAPA and asked for their "best" brand option. I got an "echlin" and even so the box was marked "made in Taiwan" Not happy about that. and it had a plastic ring on it about half the diameter of the original ceramic rheostat ring. I partly blame that, for its not lasting as long as the original did. I've looked at "STANDARD" brand online and they look just like my new Echlin switch. Identical. Cheap plastic ring.
Id like to know which company is making electrical parts and selling to everyone else to rebox as their own.

What I am wanting is knowledge of an "new but old" parts warehouse where someone has brand new parts made 30+ years ago collecting dust. From a brand of the day, a Sorensen (before they became "GP" Sorensen) or Niehoff or original Blue Streak, Filko, something like that. Even "old" Wells, from back when even Kmart had a decent assortment of auto parts (I'm talking back in the 80s and before. Over the summer I went on an Ebay "buying spree" and bought up a bunch of such "old but new" Mopar regulators, 4 pin ECUs and such just to have. It aint just today's new version of the "orange box" ignition that aren't what they used to be. Wells used to be considered a "cheap" brand but "cheap" parts of the 80s and prior is still better than todays (so called) "best".

I do not want to have to replace that headlite switch on my Dakota, "again". But it will be with me til it rots out bad enough for the frame to fold up, overall it has been that good to me. I aint gettin rid of it. been a much better truck than my 99 has been.... as were the rest of my square body Dakotas. but with teh way things are in teh 2020s I am sure that I have not replaced that switch on this truck, for the last time. My son had a 92 W250 (3/4 ton 4wd) Cummins truck. I wish he still did. but on that truck too, he went thru IDK how many headlite switches. ("Too many") and he finally pirated one from a truck in the junkyard, never had issue with a headlite switch again.
Im finding that more + more I have no worse service life from junkyard sourced parts than from parts bought in today's auto parts stores. Something aint right about that. Do all the bean counters think that we dont keep vehicles very long? Do they think we like changing the same part multiple times over the years? (besides filters and tune up parts which is expected, but required more often these days because of the quality not being what it once was...... I have an 80 Volare, an 85 D150, and a 78 Fury 2 door. I drive the truck and the Fury when weather allows, and fully plan to drive the wheels off the volare too, once bodywork is done and it is back on the road.
 
Echlin used to be good, but they were bought out by Standard. Standard has 2 lines, regular red box and the T-series green box. Like you said the Standard looks the same as the Echlin and that's because they are both the red box Standard. Have you checked the dealer or have they discontinued it?
 
no, havent checked there. by Ebay application listings they used that same switch for years and years. looks like from 76 on. same switch as my Volare. I have a few extras of those (albeit used, OEM from back in the day) should outlast this newest Echlin switch I just put in yesterday....
I didnt know that theyd been bought out by Standard. I liked them better 20+ years ago, their Blue Streak line from then really was much better than their main line. back then Echlin was really good too.
 
May not be the problem but have you checked the steering column ground. Dimmer switch is in the column and feeds the headlights. Just saying if you have low beams and not bights it is not the light switches fault as it only feeds the dimmer switch. The light switch could care less which set are on.
 
the issue was teh brights worked for a while then would blink then go off until I flipped to dims, I would only need to be on dims for a couple minutes then I could switch brights back on for a bout 10-15 minutes again before it would repeat.
Nothing never "not worked" until the morning that I changed the switch. then I had NO headlights, brights or dims. With a new switch all is well for now.
In looking up teh switch at Rockauto, I see it fits alot of vehicles back to 1976 according to buyers guide. Including my 80 Volare. I do have a couple of extra "used but original" headlite switches from parts cars I have gutted. Im thinking now taht I know that, one of those used switches will probably be my next replacement. here lately I have had better luck with used but original parts vs parts store stuff..... especially on electrical parts.
 
I have most NOS/NORS old ignition stuff if needed and all My ECU's are tested also. PM me if interested

I hear you on the new parts they suck. at least the ignition parts I can speak of. I do not use anything past 1980 if I can.
 
I dunno if the cutoff has to that far back, I was still able to get decent parts at least as new as mid 90s, but certainly the last 15 years or so for sure available parts have been horrible.

It's not just electrical parts. About 8-10 years ago I had a 97 XJ cherokee. My 2nd such jeep previously I'd had an 01 just like it. I also had a 97 wrangler at the same time. (The wrangler just went away about a year ago) anyway all of these used exactly the same brake parts. On my wrangler I hadn't replaced the rotors in over 10 years, when I had to do so on the 97 XJ. That thing was backwards. I went thru 3 sets of rotors to 1 set of pads. About every 8-9 months it would pulsate so bad as to knock my fillings out. I had used some old stock raybestos super stop pads. Those were great, always were. Probably why they are no longer made the PG series that they sold were also really good. Also NLA.
I had gone to the parts store and got what rotors they had. Total crap. 2nd time I did the same.
3rd time I went to the dealer and bought a set. I got those home and noticed they had a Mopar sticker over the same sticker as the$20 parts store ones. I was pissed. The only thing that Mopar sticker did was to turn $20 rotors into $50 rotors. Same results.

I sold that jeep (for other reasons) shortly before the 8-9 months was up for the 3rd time. I didn't even drive this one much, the XJ's were my wife's daily drivers. And they still went to$#it. And I drive harder than she does. If they can't hold up to her usage then there is definitely something wrong.
They did say something about china dumping their rejects here some years ago, I'm sure there was some truth to that and probably still is.
When it came time to replace the rotors on the wrangler I bought EBC ones, for about the same price as I'd paid the dealer for those cheap Chinese parts store ones. And didn't have a problem.
I now have a 99 dakota, and I'm on the 2nd set of rotors for it too. I bought the EBC's for it the 2nd time and so far so good.

My wife bitches at me when I go on eBay and buy a stockpile of new but old parts for our vehicles, and for my tractors. But then not when I don't have to go any farther than the shelf in my garage when something does go wrong. I pay less for new but old parts than current parts store ones and I'm getting better quality stuff. She don't understand quality.
It does help that I buy similar enough vehicles that those parts I buy fit more than 1 of the vehicles that we own, at any given time. But until such time as parts manufacturers get their heads out of their collective azzes I will continue to buy and stockpile parts for my vehicles whenever the gettin' is good,
It also helps that I tend to keep them til I run them into the ground and I have yet to own one newer than 2001. I'm on my 2nd one from that year, 1st was the 1st of my XJ'S and the 2nd is durango,
and we're going on 8 years with that.
And it shares some parts with both my 96 and 99 Dakotas. And thanks halifax for gettin' this thing back to the original thoughts of when I started the post.
 
Last edited:
I used to sling parts up to 12 years ago, and the electronics at that time were hit or miss. I worked for CarQuest, and we supposedly has better electric parts, and brake pads. About 20 years ago, most brake rotors came from China. All the businesses wanted to save a dime. They were almost always warped out of the box, and one brief stint at Napa, they'd turn every rotor for their commercial accounts, didn't have a defective return for the time I was there.

As for the electronics, we'd just give them a new one. We did have one line that was still about 80% US made product we'd try to sell, but most cheap bastards couldn't understand cost equaled reliability.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top