Plastic fuel retainer clips for ... here's what's wrong with Ford

What do those plastic clips look like? I always use stainless steel hose clamps.They are cheap too and last forever. cuhulin

Not just Ford. You can change the name to any car brand on the planet and it will be a true story. Dealers gouging parts prices is as old as cars themselves.

Good thing you changed it yourself.

Would Firestone have told you if they broke the clip during filter removal?

I'll have to look online for clips for my car to see what they want..

harryface

Cyberiade.it Anonymous Remailer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@remailer.cyberiade.it:

must not be real inventive. I just used a older one that is the same only wider and sanded it down. problem solved in 5 min.

There is a basic cost for the dealer to have and make available parts to you. In the case of small parts like this the actual cost of the part is virtually irrelevant. Let's leave Ford out of it for a minute. Someone at the dealership had to order the part Someone at the dealership had to check in that order when it arrived Someone at the dealership had to shelve the stock Someone at the dealership had to ring the part up for you Someone at the dealership had to go get the part from inventory

Lets just say it took ten minutes to do all that (most of the time being processing your order and fetching the part) A decent parts guy at a dealer might be making $15 Real cost of manpower is generally twice the wage when you figure in benefits.

So it cost the dealer $5 in labor to sell you a $7 part. That doesn't take in to account product cost, shipping, the cost of running the facility or anything else. Sounds like a bargain to me!

The only rational thing I can see to take issue with is that Ford sells them one at a time and Doorman sells them 6 at a time. The dealers fixed cost to sell you one is about the same as it would be to sell you 10 but you only needed one so that doesn't really matter.

I don't know... just seems a silly thing to get all bothered about to me. I would be more upset at the other parts stores that dicked you around for all those hours when the right part was readily available from Doorman and Ford. I'll gladly pay $7 to save myself 8 hours of aggravation any day of the week.

Steve B.

The dealership also has to make a profit on parts they sell, I believe. cuhulin

Exactly. I would say that "good" and "bad" dealer parts guys alike are making more than $15, and your times to complete the operation are high, but the outcome is well within the spirit of the argument. The fuel line retainer is about $0.08 before it starts getting sold :-) Not to mention that that same good or bad counter guy had just sold $1500 of body parts to a body shop just minutes ago, and they don't even stock said body parts. It's a pretty sweet gig if you can get it. A smart manager doesn't sweat the small stuff that loses them money, in fact sometimes they give crap like that away for free because it costs less to do so than to bill it out.

Yeah, buy another make because they do the same thing regarding parts pricing. Don't refuse to buy a Ford because they are made like crap. I don't understand your rant.

Toyota MDT in MO wrote in news:wD77m.15697$ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi066.nbdc.sbc.com:

I had a short talk with the parts man at my local Acura dealership today. This guy's been there since 1986 and he's great to deal with. Knows everything up, down and sideways.

I asked him about their parts dollar volumes, just to get a perspective on my own purchases.

Total wholesale for all the independent garages who buy Acura parts from them is approximately $14,000 per month. Total for the parts they use in-house is about $100,000 per month.

Consumers should consider this next time they go in to buy one $10 part.

Sure, but that's because the dealer swaps out the whole engine when the plugs get worn....

--scott

Isn't that the damn truth! I had a leaking radiator HOSE on a Chebby Cavalier and the stealership wanted $875 to REPLACE THE RADIATOR!

I said do I look like I just fell off a potato truck? (do not answer, thank you).

Fvcking robbers. Ought to be in Jail not out on the street hustling unknowing victims.

Nick

Nicholas wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I can counter with a story about a /bunch/ of independent garages with low shop rates that ended up costing a neighbor of mine almost four thousand dollars on his '86 Nissan Pulsar because they were populated by ignorant wrench-monkeys too stupid to admit they had not the foggiest clue what they were doing. My neighbor was pretty stupid too, but that's another issue. My own guy (an independent), called in as a last resort, fixed it for $350. All of that was diagnostics time, no materials needed. The problem? Two ECU wires that had gotten swapped by mistake by some idiot at one idiotic independent garage, and not spotted by the other four idiotic ones.

I also have a story about a '99 Tercel in which a Toyota dealership's provincially-licensed, Toyota-certified, ballcap-wearing, eyes-too-close-together A/C monkey misdiagnosed an air-conditioning problem and got the service manager to attempt to get my wife to agree to a $2,000 repair which ended up being fixed for $80 by an independent garage. (I posted about this last year.)

It works both ways, my friend.

I think the small stainless steel hose clamps cost about 35 cents each.Unless you over tighten one of them wayyyy too much, they will last forever.Seems to me a much better deal than anything made of plastic. cuhulin

Totally different parts you're comparing. The plastic retainers fit into an engineered groove so that the quick connect nylon fuel line can't pull off of it's metal pipe. A worm clamp goes around soft hose to clamp it to a pipe. They are not interchangeable.

When OEMs offer a hose and clamp arrangement (practically extinct these days), it is with a spring type clamp or other smooth, non perforated design. There is no need for the extra clamping power and hose destroying tendency of a standard worm clamp on quality FI hose.

Either you are 6 years old, a troll posting ridiculous questions or you are very ignorant. Any fool knows that a standard metal screw hose clamp will work. The problem is not the price of the clips or a fuel filter clip but ignorance.

Are you the same person who asks how to rotate tires, or says that cars can run on water or air?

Amazing. Even after I posted in this very thread about the different clamps used in fuel systems, you can still come in, asshole blazing, posting inaccurate info. How would you clamp a moulded nylon quick connect fitting onto a fuel filter with a screw clamp, genius?

Toyota MDT in MO

No way is a hose clamp going to work replacing a QD fitting retainer. You do know what those are don't you?

The line fits INSIDE a quick connect fitting that cannot be clamped. Older ones are steel and newer ones are molded plastic. On newer vehicles you will only find clamps on the radiator hoses and maybe the heater lines. Plus a few use them on the air intake systems. Everything else are QD fittings with snap in or on couplings.

A guy who was restoring his 2004 Mercury Marquis said he bought a circlip at a hardware store and that worked just fine. I do know what circlips are.

I didn't realize later model cars fuel systems had changed that much. cuhulin

How about brittle plastic timing chain guids on Nissan 2.4L engines? At least YOU can replace the clips you're talking about. It was $600 to replace the brittle plastic chain guides in my 240SX, but since we were in there alreqad we did the chain and the water pump, too. Only 124,000 miles.

Some Toyota 2.4L engines had this problem, but it didn't usually appear until 200,000+ miles...