At 09:17 AM 2/5/99 PST, Ryan Smith wrote:
>
>Craig wrote:
>For real parts people go to a NAPA or the oldest auto
>parts house in your town. Those folks Know what they are selling.
>
>Reply:
>I'm glad somebody said it, I was about to bust out my own NAPA soapbox
>(and its a BIG box). My family's NAPA store(s) is the oldest in town
>(about 60 years old) and everyone knows how to use the books. Even the
>young bucks like myself know when the computer will be useless.
Often the NAPA store is the oldest in town. It's in an ancient building
that hasn't been remodeled in 30 years, but it's a wealth of information in
those back aisles. They have really ramped up to get modernized in
appearance, but there's no replacing of experience. The average age of a
NAPA Parts person is 40. Other national chain stores... more like 22.
>The
>computer is great for looking up common stuff. Like a oil filter for
>ford 302.
Easy. Napa FIL #1515. Or SFI #21515 if you go for the old economy
Silverline brand. Still see some of those floating about.
>I can type the commands to look that up faster than the
>computer can display the menus.
Same here. 'Course our server (which when I just visited them last week
was still in use... due to be upgraded in April when TAMS won't support it
anymore) was a 486 SX20. Heh.. no wonder it was slow back then.
>But for anything Triumph related or
>anything odd you have to use the books. If you want the NAPA points,
>cap, condenser, and rotor numbers I have them somewhere. My 72 has been
>running them since July. In my experience with getting parts from NAPA.
>We can get just about anything overnight if its not on the shelf.
>Stocking level will depend on how big the store is.
Are those pierced Echlin contacts? While I spent my five years there, I
pretty much lived on the 1974-older Echlin catalog. And the illustrated
catalog next to it in my rack. Each catalog rack is customized by the
counterperson and it shows. There's a lot of pride in a NAPA
counterperson's work.
Ack! I left NAPA (and retail) over a decade ago! And still I keep
going
back again and again.
-Dan Canaan (Store #109, Auburn, WA)
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