Everyone,
Yeah, I've also noticed Cardon has gone down hill here lately. Many years ago when my wife had her '77 Buick century Special 231 V6, that car was a copy of nearly every part on my '74 C10. The only difference was the distributor was on the front of the engine, but it was still like a 350 with the two back cylinders cut off. It took the exact same brakes as my truck, i.e. 10 1/2" disc's in the front, 11" drums in the rear, TH350 trans., same oil filter, same plugs, and a bunch of other stuff. Wonderful car built for speed, fastback, two door, HEI ignition, mine had regular points though. Dead simple to work on, nothing ever went out. The absolute best car we ever owned and I'd love to have that car back. There is so much speed parts for those 231's these days it's not funny. You can pump 400 horses out of that V6 with no machine work, just bolt on's.
ANYWAY, I was using everybody back in those days, Auto Zone, Pep Boys, and a boat load of local parts places. So I go to Auto Zone to get a water pump for it, the first part to go bad in ten years. Go home and put it on, and we were having a particularly cold winter for Louisiana and the temp was 15 degrees. I manage to get the pump on while running in and out of the house to warm up. The next day my wife comes home from work and I'll be damn the pump is leaking from the weep hole like the seal had failed. I take it back, get another one, come home, put it on and that day it was 12 degrees!!
So I ask around about Auto Zone's parts and a guy gives me a copy of a newspaper article about Auto Zone was under indictment for selling counterfeit car parts. The FBI, and Custom's Dept. had busted two warehouses in China that were full of thousands of Ford, Chrysler, Chevy factory parts in factory boxes that looked just like the real thing headed for Auto Zone, but all of them were cheap pieces of junk.
So from that time on I have never bought another part from Auto Zone. I'll buy fluids and stuff like that from them but no parts. These days I buy mostly from O'Reily's, Advance Auto Parts, and a lot off the internet. I have got some of the best parts off the internet, Ebay. You look up in the upper right corner for the seller's i.d. and it shows how many sales they've had and if it's in the thousands they're good. And it'll show the satisfaction in percent, i.e., 98%. They can't afford to sell bad parts. They make tons of dollars off of Ebay if they are a good seller.
