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You continue to amaze me. I received my new alternator yesterday,
once again, within a week of placing my order. That wouldn't necessarily be
so astounding,
unless you knew that we live in the middle of nowhere in northern Ontario,
Canada. They call our area James Bay Frontier Country and we're considered "The
far north" in these parts.
The real clincher is that even with the exchange on the currency, the shipping
charges, and all costs included to purchase from RockAuto, our new alternator
still worked out over $50.00 less expensive than if I ordered one from the
local auto parts supply store. Furthermore, that would have only been a rebuilt
alternator and not even a brand new unit, like I got from you.
So you're darn right that I'm a happy customer!
Kindest regards,
Cliff
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Upcoming Events
If you would like your event featured here, email us with details. |
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19th Annual Buick Race Day
5/31/2010
Flint, MI
e-mail
Vettes of Coastal Maine Bar Harbor Tour 2010
6/4-/6/62010
Bath, ME
website
Weekend Warriors Annual Car Show
6/5/2010
Grimshaw, AB, Canada
e-mail
16th Annual Inland Valley Street Rods Car Show
6/5/2010
Ontario, CA
website
Twentynine Palms Street Fair & Car Show
6/5/2010
Twentynine Palms, CA
e-mail
Make A Wish-Annual Midwest Hot Rod Show
6/5-6/6/2010
St. Louis, MO
e-mail
Mopars in Motion Events - Second Annual Mopar Car & Truck Show at Roberts Chrysler Dodge Jeep
6/6/2010
Meriden, CT
website
17th Annual Corvettes & Jaguars at Linden Hall
6/6/2010
Uniontown, PA
e-mail
3rd Annual Montana Hope Car Show
6/12/2010
Missoula, MT
website
Tri-Lakes Cruisers 9th Annual Benefit Car Show
6/13/2010
Colorado Springs, CO
website
North Country Cruisers Car Club Car Show
6/18/2010
Warroad, MN
e-mail
Mopars in Motion Events- Power Festival Car Show Swap Meet & Drag Racing at New England Dragway
6/19/2010
Epping, NH
website
Mopar Muscle Club of NM 2010 - 15th Annual Mopar Fest
6/19/2010
Rio Rancho, NM
website
4th Annual Dads & Grads Car Show
6/19/2010
Lexington, KY
website
Classics in Paradise Car Show
6/19/2010
Sparks, NV
e-mail
Good Shepherd School Classic Car & Truck Show
6/19/2010
Perryville, MD
e-mail
Historic Region Vintage Chevrolet Club-Annual Car Shows
6/19/2010
Trenton, NJ
e-mail
The Cars are the Stars Car Show
6/19/2010
Ellington, CT
e-mail
8th Annual Peace Classic Car & Truck Show
6/20/2010
Des
Moines, IA
e-mail
Kent Island Cruisers-Fathers Day Car Show
6/20/2010
Stevensville,
MD
e-mail
Route 66 Car Club 21st Anniversary Fathers Day Car Show
6/20/2010
St. Clair, MO
e-mail
4th Annual Club Redline Street Show
6/20/2010
Bemidji,
MN
e-mail
Audi Northshore Relay for Life American Cancer Society Classic Car Show
6/21/2010
Port Washington, WI
e-mail
Moose Lodge 147 2nd Annual Car Truck Show
6/26/2010
Mooreland,
IN
e-mail
12th Annual East Coast Early Broncos
6/26/2010
Manassas,
VA
e-mail
Sweet Ride 2nd Annual Charity Car Show for Kids
6/26/2010
Sweet Home, OR
e-mail
Mopar Day in the Park 17 Car Show & Swap Meet
6/26/2010
Carmichael, CA
e-mail
18th Annual Freedom Festival Car Show
6/26/2010
Linton, IN
website
38th Annual Sloan Museum Auto Fair
6/26-6/27/2010
Flint,
MI
website |
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Need a Gift for your Dad or Grad?
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Father’s Day is coming up in June
and this is the graduation season!
Brake parts or weatherstripping for that Chevrolet Corvair your Dad is restoring
would definitely put a smile on his face! An Oxygen sensor, wiper blades, or
fuel filter for the Pontiac Grand Prix your new graduate will rely on for the
next few years would certainly be appreciated!
Start now and pick out the perfect parts for your Dad or Grad from the convenient
RockAuto.com online catalog. Not sure which parts they need now or down the
road? A Gift Certificate from RockAuto would be a great choice. Gift
Certificates are available for any amount, easy to purchase, and even easier to use. |
FREE Car Show Tickets
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Due to overwhelming response, we are out of free Carlisle
Car Show tickets. Thank you for your interest!
Want to attend a Carlisle car
show? RockAuto has a limited number of free tickets available for customers.
See the Carlisle
schedule in the left column of this newsletter. If you have
purchased parts in the last 12 months, email marketing@rockauto.com with
your name and the contact information (address, phone, etc.) you use
when you order parts, tell us which show you would like to attend, and
how many tickets you want (up to two). If we have tickets, we will let
you know and put them in the mail. |
Forum of the Month
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Ford
Courier Collector.com is a website
for owners and enthusiasts of the Ford Courier
pickup sold in North America from 1972 to 1982. We love these quirky little
pickups, and want to keep as many of them on the road as we can. We're working
on getting as much information as possible up on the site, and we urge you
to join the discussion forum for repairing, driving, modifying, restoring,
and hotrodding your Ford Courier pickup. If you don't own a Courier...take
a look and see what we're up to. There's not a lot of these old trucks around
still, but through our resources, you can find one if you want one -- be it
for a hotrod project or just a daily driver.
If you are the administrator or member of a forum and you would like to see your website featured in an upcoming newsletter and receive a discount code to share with your members, contact jessa@rockauto.com. |
Repair Mistakes & Blunders
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My first car was a new 1965 LeMans. I had worked on the farm
that summer after my second year in college. Dad gave me a field of red kidney
beans as payment, just enough to buy the car. Of course an engineering student
couldn’t leave a new car alone. I had to upgrade to a set of gauges as
in those days you only got “idiot lights” on your dash.
After visiting my girlfriend some distance away, I started
back to school late at night (maybe it was early in the morning). I drove
down some gravel
back roads to keep me awake. After going over some bumps, the lights
went off, the radio stopped playing and the engine died. The car would not
start. So I made the decision to walk to find some help. Getting ready to lock
the
door, I slammed it. The lights came on, the radio started and I got back
in and it started up, and I drove home.
The following day I found the primary wire I ran to the amp
gauge had come loose and lost contact from the bumpy road. I made contact again
when I slammed
the door!
Dan in Alabama
Tell us about your most infamous auto repair blunder or unconventional fix. Use your woe to help others avoid similar mistakes or share off-the-wall solutions that worked (at least for awhile!). Please email your story to flamur@rockauto.com. Include your mailing address and shirt size (large or extra large) and we will mail you a RockAuto "Do it yourself?" t-shirt if we publish your story (see the t-shirts under Extras in the catalog). The story will be credited using only your first name and your vague geographic location (state, province, country, continent, etc.) so you can remain semi-anonymous!
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Automotive Trivia
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Spicer is famous for high quality tie rod ends, ball joints,
and other chassis parts. Raybestos is most famous for brakes. Why does RockAuto
now strongly recommend that Spicer chassis parts installers switch to Raybestos
chassis parts for every application from daily driver to heavy duty?
A. Raybestos will give ten NASCAR season tickets to the auto parts retailer
that sells the most of their new Raybestos Chassis parts.
B. Spicer ball joints often have a simple black finish while Raybestos ball
joints come in a jaunty blue.
C. Several years ago, Affinia, the parent company of Raybestos acquired Spicer
Chassis from Dana. About a year ago, the Spicer Chassis name was changed to
Raybestos Chassis. The same great chassis parts, the name on the box was just
changed from Spicer Chassis to Raybestos Chassis.
Answer: C |
Just in Case the Traffic Clears
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The tread on the right front tire was wearing away faster
than the tread on the other three. The wear was most severe on the outside
edge of the tire indicating the camber might be off, but there was also premature
wear on the rest of the tread indicating the toe setting might be incorrect.
I asked my wife if she was driving her ’93 Ford Tempo fast into turns
and cranking the steering wheel too far causing unusual stress to the right
front tire. Her daily commute offers few opportunities to plow the Tempo into
corners at high speed and I deserved the icy, don’t-blame-me look my
wife gave me!
A front-end alignment on this Ford is limited to changing the toe by adjusting
the tie rods. Camber and caster are not adjustable. If they are out of whack
then a part must be bent or worn out. The ball joint, control arm, tie rod,
stabilizer bar, strut and coil spring checked out okay. I went to the tire
store to buy a new tire and asked their alignment technician to do what he
could to align the Tempo.
The technician discovered the entire rack and pinion
steering gear assembly was moving on its mountings. “Damaged or worn steering gear mounts” is
the first thing my Haynes repair manual had told me to check. However, it was
not enough to just yank on the steering gear with my hands. It took the force
of the steering wheel cranking the wheels all the way to the right or left
to make the steering gear flex away from the firewall.
The rack and pinion unit is clamped on the firewall
at two points with rubber-like bushings. Oil residue, weather, sunlight,
etc. can deteriorate the bushings,
but it looked like the Tempo’s bushings had mostly just compressed with
age. See the deep shoulders on the old bushing on the left in the photo.
This may be a case where bigger is not better. The right
rack and pinion bushing causing the problems on the Ford was nearly 2 cm
thick while the left bushing
was much thinner. Thicker might just mean there is more opportunity for the
bushing to be compressed over time. Looking through the rack and pinion bushing
photos in the RockAuto.com
catalog, it appears most car manufacturers switched
to using thinner steering gear bushings by the mid ‘90s.
I put a set of Moog advanced thermoplastic, urethane
rack and pinion bushings on the Tempo. The car went back to the alignment
technician to have the toe
adjusted. The new Moog bushings are impervious to oil and ozone and provide “NASCAR
Performance” just in case the traffic clears and my wife gets a chance
to really try out her Ford Tempo’s handling!
Tom Taylor,
RockAuto.com
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Rob's 1970 Cadillac DeVille Convertible |
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This is the second Cadillac I have restored purchasing virtually
all of the needed “hard to find” parts through RockAuto. In fact,
I am about to place my order with you for the upper and lower ball joints,
control arm bushings, and coil springs. It is a 1970 Cadillac DeVille convertible.
Numbers matching 472 cid engine and turbo 400 transmission. My plans include
a fresh paint job, new top and exhaust.
I purchased the car while living in Las
Vegas. It sat in someone’s back yard, in the desert for several years.
Due to an electrical short, the windows were stuck down, and the previous owner
just left it that way. A few gallons of Simple Green later, I got the brown
interior to be white again and it’s in surprisingly good shape. I fixed
the electrical issues, threw in a new battery, radiator and water pump, and
it runs great. Thanks
Rob in Florida
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Share Your Hard Work
Do you purchase parts from RockAuto? If so, RockAuto would like to feature you and your car or truck in our monthly newsletter. Please email flamur@rockauto.com with details.
© 1999-2010 RockAuto, LLC - Madison, Wisconsin USA. RockAuto name and logo are registered trademarks of RockAuto, LLC. Manufacturer names and logos in the RockAuto catalog are trademarks of their respective companies and are used only to identify their products. All rights reserved.
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