Scholioso

Hey guys.

The title says it all. Has anyone else noticed a decline in moog? I purchased all moog front end arts for my 96 chevy k3500 & that's good stuff. Purchased those a few years ago.

About 6 months ago or so I rebuilt the front end on my car. Inner & outer tie rods, boots, ball joints, & hubs. Week 1, the driver side steering boot had already "melted". Warrantied thru rockauto. Fast forward to present day, & the driver hub assembly is screaming. Warrantied thru rockauto again but jesus. A hub assembly shouldn't go out that quickly let alone the boot melting like it wasnt designed to be where it was.

I did notice a difference in finish. The hubs I originally put on were painted fresh blue & had a nice moog sticker on it. I dont remember if the box said made in USA when I first replaced them. The one I installed to replace the bad one did indeed have made in USA on the box & the blue paint was half-a**ed & missing moog sticker.

Anyone else having problems with Moog lately?

bravo29

I kid you not on this. When I was a parts manager some places would rebox crap in moog boxes. Forest City Auto parts in Chicago all stores would do this with Moog and TRW boxes. Put crap in them and sell them as moog and TRW parts.

Could be you got a batch of bad manufactured parts.

leadfoot4

Keep in mind, however, as the cost of manufacturing goes up, in the US, many companies are moving their operations to "Pacific rim" locations. And as long as "top quality" raw materials are being fed into the CNC operated machines, with strict machining tolerances programmed into the computer, the quality should still be "good to go". A CNC center doesn't care where it's set up and plugged in. I'm NOT saying that I like to see jobs leave the US, but that's just the economic reality of the 21st century.

Having said that, I worked part-time, for several years, for one of the "big box" auto parts stores, and I saw first hand, that there are at least 2, sometimes 3 levels of quality, depending on how much money you're willing to spend on your parts. I totally agree that Rock Auto Parts is the most cost effective place to get your parts, however, you don't get to examine what you're buying, before you shell out your money.

Robrote

Any moog part number that has an 'R' in it is their budget line. Try to stay away from those if the budget allows

Scholioso

I didn't know about the "R" in the part number. Thank you for letting me know!

1blkc4

I just did my gmc typhoon recently with moog (problem solver ) these are the better parts which were purchased from rockauto .

Bill Curlee

Good info!!

Thanks

crf450x

leadfoot4

And where do you buy YOUR parts??

crf450x

digitaloutsider

As stated previously in this thread, the R-Series is MOOG's budget line and it is absolute ****.

The most truth in this thread. It didn't used to be like this. I used to be able to go to the parts store and buy TRW control arms, Spicer u-joints, etc. Now you get a private-label grab bag box. Might get something good, might get something ****. You have no idea who makes it because it's just branded as "Pro Steer" or "Duralast" or "Master Pro". Sure, you can sometimes figure out the part number nomenclature and figure out who the OEM actually is, but 9 times out of 10 it's going to come back to junk like Mevotech. This is getting to be an industry-wide problem, though. It's getting hard to find any parts that aren't made in China and are of dubious quality. I've gotten to the point where I see "hecho en Mexico" and shrug and go "eh, good enough".

​​​​Personally I buy the vast majority of my parts from RockAuto because at least I can tell who the manufacturer actually is and generally I can pay more from them and get a good brand or OEM.

leadfoot4

I won't disagree with what you're saying, but as I said in post #3, I worked in the auto parts business for a few years, and saw "up close" how it operates, There are the cheap, crappy parts, that the used car "flippers" would buy, to patch up a heap they're trying to unload, and the "good parts", that people like us want to install on our cars. You just have to be careful what you get. Also, something I've observed, over the 50 years I've been working on my cars, is that there aren't necessarily DOZENS of companies making suspension parts. I would say that at most, there are 3-4.

Think about it, realistically, how many ball joints for instance, for Corvettes, are needed in the market place? GM, as the manufacturer of the car, is the prime, #1 customer for them, but in the aftermarket, how many are needed as replacement parts? Therefore you most likely have two manufacturers, one that makes the "good" ones, and one that makes the "not so good" ones. You just have to shop carefully, and understand that in many cases, in a competitive market, price DOES matter.