Hey guys, we better stop hijacking this guys thread before someone yells about it. Oh wait, that would be me.......still, as we were.

 

Ah makes no difference to me. Might as well talk about something in this thread while nothings getting done on the car. On the positive side, im down in AZ and the weather is fantastic!

 

Cool when will you be back home?

 

The reason Summit sells a product that's the exact same thing for less money is they cut deals with the manufacturers to buy in quantity. The mfg. sells X number a year and Summit contracts to have X+ made with their logo, and guarantees the mfg. will have that extra to sell, even if it's at a lower markup. There's so much markup in car parts that they can sell volumes to Summit, and Summit can still make money selling at less than the mfg. did. It's good for the mfg. because it keeps people working steady. I asked on a couple occasions if a particular product was made by a well known mfg., and the sales person told me they have agreements with their suppliers to not reveal their names, as the makers don't want you to know the Summit is the same at a lower price.
If all of Summit's items were blems, they'd never get enough to fill their shelves and fill orders. Do you really think all the mfg. have that many blems they could keep up with the quantities Summit sells? I don't think they could stay in business with that kind of poor QC.

 

I kind of agree with both of you. But as a manufacturing supervisor (among other titles) I have to keep my internal scrap below 3% of total production. The lower the better. external scrap is another ball game. 1 PPM is high in some cases. I would imagine Edelbrock and a few of the larger companies work in the same way. On top of that we strive to find our scrap in the first operation instead of adding more value to a scrap part. It is way more cost effective for me to toss a component of an assembly than the entire assembly that is universal.

But I would bet that the quality standard is lowered for the off brand product in some cases. In others I don't think so. For instance JE machines pistons for SRP. I belive this is so SRP can use the quality standards in place a JE.

 

I have no real knowledge of how the summit branded items work but it makes sense to me. Its no different then me buying Hotchkis parts from Jegs. The parts are significantly cheaper buying through Jegs then they are buying straight from Hotchkis.

 

As far as that go's Jegs uses Hotchkis MSRP. Most parts cost more from the manufacturer. AFR is the same way. JL Audio, a speaker manufacturer is outragous if bought from them. A quick google search is all it takes to find 50% off.

 

Auto manufacturers have their own "seconds" stockpile as well.
As a car is coming down the assembly line, any part that doesn't fit quite right, or has a defect, or just looks at the worker funny, is put aside.
What happens to those parts? They become what we restorers refer to as NOS (new old stock) parts.
Yep that's right, NOS parts are factory seconds (rejects), in addition to any end of production run "leftovers" (if there are any).

 

Actually I can tell you. I'm from Michigan ya know. It's not uncommon to see a brand new "parts car" sitting out in the back lots. I can't tell you how many people I know at Tier I-III suppiers and also family and friends that work on the line. I have an uncle that retired from the Romeo engine plant. I remember my dad bragging to his friends about the deals he could get on a brand new 350.

As far as NOS I am not familiar with the way they used to make psrts. But now I now there won't be NOS stuff like door handles and grills. My last job was at a supplier to the Detroit three and Honda. Ford had an awesome way of ordering door handles. We molded, painted and assembled the handles for their cars and the F series trucks. Logic makes people think we would ship X amout of a particular color. But really we had a data link directly to the assembly line. They don't make 10,000 red cars in a row so we had to assemble the door handles in sync with the line 300 miles away.We ship every night for the next days production. So there are no left overs. We would remelt/regrind the scrap so when they're gone they're gone.

 

So are you saying that Jegs sells at Hotchkis MSRP but Hotchkis doesnt? Doesnt really make sense, im sure the reason that jegs gets stuff for cheaper is the simple fact that they have such great buying power. I would imagine that the price posted on Hotchkis is MSRP and Jegs is a bit lower.