The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay I learned something today by accident

I went to 3 different auto part stores today to buy a part of my old 39 vehicle ..I dont know how much this has to do with it ,but beings this is Sunday ,,just maybe I got all the new hires and the ones that are better at looking things up get the week ends off. I try to pick the old guys thinkng they might of seen the part when younger,, I am not mad at them cause I don't expect them to know as much as you do here on the forum..

So , I came home ,got on the computer and went searching for the part by name ,,and found for sale a reproduction of the original .. AND the company I googled gave the OEM number of the original ,,Hey ,,,I wouldn't mind having a origianl factory one

So ,,I typed in the OEM number and came up with OEM factory part also telling me that it did in fact fit my motor .year and make .It will be here in about 5 days..

Yep, very similar to what I do these days. I discovered a Bumper to Bumper parts store 4 or 5 years ago a town away with 3 white hair guys behind the counter. They usually just headed to the back for my parts. Don’t need no stinking computer. Well, sadly last winter the store closed.

I still remember & miss parts stores with cigar chomping grumpy countermen that had part numbers memorized. My favorites had a machine shop in the back. Ah for the old days.

Both Parts Stores I worked for back in the early ‘70s had guys, myself included, who didn’t need catalogs for the common stuff. Just go back in the shelves and get whatever the customer asked for. One place had a major distribution warehouse along with the retail store. Full service Machine Shop in the back, turning crankshafts, camshafts blueprinting and balancing engines. Rebuilding heads for cars, trucks and heavy equipment. Built a lot of race engines for the round track boys and the drag racers. The second one also had a Machine Shop and was a NAPA dealer. Places like those 2 just don’t exist anymore. National chains with kids running the computers at the counter are the norm. If your lucky there is 1 old guy that has hoarded the old catalogs and is still willing to look something up. Our local NAPA is such a place but the 2 owners are scaling back on their hours.

My store too. I’m scared what will happen when old Doug retires. He barks at the computer kids. “It’s a bloody 50’s GMC! It’s not going to be in that stupid computer. Go get (...part number...) from the shelf!”

The other day I went into the auto parts to get a speedo cable for my rig and beings the motor is not stock or the tranny ..I gave the parts gal a length and it needed square ends on it .. ask her to just start looking for one of any make of car that fit that discription .. she looked and looked and the kid next to her was just standing there ,,so I ask him to start looking and so they both looked and she beat him and came up with a 1980 Corvette 75 inch ,square ends , ,bought it came home installed and it works just fine.. need to help them out when you can .