Land of Oz

Car Parts

As you probably know, I like to rant about poor service in stores. A couple of weekends ago, I finally got my truck mechanically running, but with serious electrical problems. I replaced a battery with one dead cell, but it wouldn't run very long before dying in a fading blaze of dimming headlights. I suspected the alternator had gone bad. After a full night on a battery charger, I noticed the alternator was quite warm. My guess was that something had shorted out in there.

I called a local Advance Autoparts store and asked if they checked alternators. They said they did, so I pulled the suspected unit out and took it to the store. The poor old guy was clueless. He hemmed and hawed and fiddled and looked up diagrams and tried changing adapters and finally asked somebody else if he had it correct before telling me the alternator was bad. The other guy didn't even look, just yelled "yeah, you got it right." Needless to say, I was less than impressed with his advice.

I went down the street to AutoZone and basically went through the whole process again. This guy at least seemed to know how to hook it up to the machine but was really at a loss to explain the test result, except to say the alternator was bad. By this time I was pretty convinced the alternator was in fact bad, but wanted to find someone who at least seemed to have an idea of what was going on.

Next stop up was a NAPA dealer. This place had the least fancy test machine, but seemed to have the most intelligent guy operating it. He hooked it up and said, it's bad, it's only putting out 9 volts. I said OK, and bought a remanufactured alternator for around $80. The terminals were in a bit different locations, but I thought it would work.

Back to the truck and after putting it in, it was just about 1/4" off. I took it out and back to NAPA and the clerk rotated the assembly in a couple minutes and I was back on my way to my garage. I got it in and hooked up and it seems to be working and charging fine.

Which store do you think I'll be going back to next time? I don't care how fancy your test equipment is and how pretty the diagrams and stuff are, the employee still has to have some idea of what's going on. Even though Advance Autopart is close by and looks nice, the employees have consistently been way less than helpful. AutoZone is kind of in the middle. The employees seem a little more knowledgeable, but the service just isn't there. It's OK for the occasional wiper blade or such, but I don't get a good feeling from them for more serious parts. NAPA is probably the least appealing in appearance, but they sure do seem to know what they are talking about.

When I went to buy the battery, I looked up Advance Autoparts online and got a price of around $60. I called them and the guy who answered said they had some on hand, no problem. I went there and asked and the clerk said they only had the $120 battery in stock. I had to go to three different employees before I could buy my $60 battery.

2fers: NAPA and Ford Truck Forum