Interchangeable Parts

You friendly Junk Yard guy has one.

Richard.

For occasional lookups like that, you can drill down to the part for a particular vehicle on

It will return a list of compatible ones actually existing in junk yards. I've found their interchangeability for a given part to be accurate.

If you are in the business or otherwise have a real constant need for interchagneability listings, I'm sure there are companies that sell such books, CD's, or on-line subscriptions.

www.alldata may have such a service among their professional level products. Also, I notice that the online OEM dealers all seem to use the same third party database called TradeMotion? for their drill down parts lookups. Perhaps they have some all-makes database that you can subscribe to. And of course junk yards have interchange computer and hard copy resources - find out what they use.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Same make and model of compressor, yes...mounts and pulleys? MAYBE. Back in the '70s through '80s, the Nippondenso 6P34 was a mainstay of the Japanese car industry and were all internally the same compressor. However, you cannot take a '34 off a Mazda and expect it to fit a Honda...the mounts AND the pulley are different. Such is the same with later ND 10Ps that went on innumerable Fords...they may, but may not, fit a Chrysler application that uses the same basic compressor without having to R&R the pulley/clutch and/or fiddle with the mounts and service ports.

Hollander's been doing that for decades, but watch out...just because something "fits" doesn't mean it's the right part! Long-ago example: The Hollender book says that a Chevy "corporate" rear end will replace an Oldsmobile "C" rear end on a full sized late '60s-early '70s Delta

1. Right...it'll bolt right up. However, take off down the road and then one realizes that the Chevy's probably a 3.07:1 and the Olds was a 2.56:1. Ooops!

I had a neighbor do this very thing and couldn't figure out why everyone was passing him on the freeway. On top of that, the Olds "C" rear end was superior to the Chevrolet-used "corporate" crap. The same went for GMC and Chevy light duty trucks. Until they were reined in by the beancounters on Woodward Ave. in '63, GMC Truck and Coach selected their own driveline parts from outside suppliers, regardless of what Chevy did. Thus, V6 powered GMCs had Spicer 60 rear ends, while Chevies used the inferior "corporate" one with a different ratio. Doing a swap invariably would screw up the speedo and affect power and economy. The beancounters also put the kybosh on GMC using the tried and true cast iron HydraMatic and forced them to go to "Powerslide" from Chevrolet by ordering Detroit Transmission to discontinue the HydraMatic in mid 1962. This also put struggling AMC in a bind, as they also used a lighter version of this transmission. AMC went off to Borg-Warner until getting the Torqueflite A-727 and A-904 in the '70s, which was the beginning of the Chrysler takeover of AMC.

GM's reasoning was simple...they had to quit the old cast iron HydraMatic line to change the floor space to make the new (in '64) and cheaper-to-build Turbo HydraMatic 400 that showed up in Cadillacs in mid '64. Cost savings per car by going from Dual Coupling HydraMatic to THM: $175 a copy. Loss of efficiency to the car owner: about

10%. The icing on the cake was that they could screw over a tiny but bothersome competitor to Chevrolet, AMC. Switching to obsolete B-W transmissions cost AMC dearly, as they had had a low price, long term contract to furnish HydraMatics to AMC, signed in 1956 by none other than George Romney, father of the now self-destructed Republican governor of Massachusetts.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Looks like they provide a fidner servcice similar to car-part.com, as well as interchange manuals for purchase.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Tada! An excellent resource. Hollander Interchange Manuals ahve been the junkyard standard since at least the 1940s. They were a publication of Motor for years, and are now owned by Solera. Just watch out...although parts might fit, they may not be "right!"