Looking for a replacement for 88 brake Master cylinder by Rickady88GT (Aug. 5, 2022)
I posted:
quote
I ordered the Centric Brake Master Cylinders 130.62030 from Summit @ $140
Today is Mar. 14, 2023 and I hope they won't cancel it.......
Unfortunately:
quote
by cam-a-lot Summit and others don't carry this anymore. Nor sure why they still have it listed. In a week or two you will get notification that it is on "back order"/ Then you will wait months and get nothing.. Then eventually you can get a refund
88 master cylinder is no longer available. Once in a while , a rebuild kit becomes available. Grab it while you can
But today, Mar. 17th, 2023, I got "Your Order has Shipped" for the Centric Brake Master Cylinder 130.62030 from Summit......Yippee!
My tracking number says the estimated delivery is Wednesday, Mar 22nd.
I followed your lead and ordered a master cylinder from Summit. Ordered on Monday, 3/20 and finally received a tracking number today , 3/24. Original estimate of ship date was 3/22, so started to worry a little since I had heard nothing. Looking forward to receipt of the order. More parts inventory for when the need arises. Thanks for the thread on this, I had not realised that 88 parts were a shrinking supply. One year only stuff can be an issue!
What's the deal with this... is the 88 Master Cyl apparently really hard to come by? How about the ones in the 84-87 Fiero?
Not sure HOW this is still an issue, but I'm having that same problem with my 1973 Volkswagen Bus. They apparently don't make replacement kits for the brake boosters... despite the fact that there were millions of them made, and they continued to make them in Brazil up until just 7-8 years ago.
Not sure HOW this is still an issue, but I'm having that same problem with my 1973 Volkswagen Bus. They apparently don't make replacement kits for the brake boosters... despite the fact that there were millions of them made, and they continued to make them in Brazil up until just 7-8 years ago.
It all comes down to shelf space and inventory turns...
Every year new models come out with unique parts. Within a few years the aftermarket sales for these parts significantly increases and parts stores and regional and national warehouses need to make room for them so they can sell them and make $$$.
When is the last time you saw any of your local parts store expand storage space? I have seen new ones built, but never expanded once built. This means to offer these new parts, they must make room on their shelves for them. They look at inventory turns on all parts and the slowest movers are removed from the store and are special order only from the regional warehouse.
When the regional warehouse is faced with the same space constraints, then again the slow movers are removed and stored at the national warehouses. When they run out of space the slow movers are placed on order status from the MFG. The next time an order is needed to be placed with the MFG, the only place to store them is in the national warehouse, so the order is much smaller than they have historically been. This means the changeover costs to produce the smaller run increases the overall costs of the parts, it also reduces the profitability for the product line for the MFG. The tooling and packaging materials for this product line is also taking up valuable space in the MFG facility. So at some point, the MFG will decide supporting that slow moving, small batch size product line is no longer financially favorable (compared to supporting other higher volume and more profitable product lines) and they will abandoning product line and scrap the tooling for them, and eventually the parts will no longer be available.
I worked in mfg for 21 years and saw the reluctance to expand to support for new products countless times. When covid hit, I was at a disposable cup mfg and saw nearly all specialty products be put on hold so we could crank out more the common versions of the cups, lids and containers to meet demand, with the fewest change overs, as well as fewer people. After Covid, most these this product lines didn't come back.
A Fiero specific example... back in 2012 I was offering the service of cutting down the rotors on the 84-87 front hubs. I started out buying from several places until I started seeing lots of variations in the casting quality of the supplied hubs to the point the supplied hubs were not even using the same bolt hole size for the wheel studs. Then I switched to only buying from Napa. It cost more, but I could count on the quality and consistency of the parts. I purchased them from my local parts store. At the time, they did not stock them, but after the first 20 sets, the manager of the store noticed the spike in sales and asked me if it was going to continue. I told him what I was doing and that I expected it to continue, so he said we would start stocking 2 sets locally... which was great. When orders came in, I stopped by after work to pick then up (1/2 mile from my day job at the time). Over the next 2 years, I purchased well over 100 sets of 84-87 front hub/rotors. What I saw during that time was that the boxes they came in over time kept getting older and older. When I asked the manager, he said his store was selling the most of that part and the company was moving all inventory for that product to him from other local stores and warehouses. Everything was great, the consistency and quality of the hubs was great... until all old inventory nationwide was depleted and new batches of hubs were ordered.... then it wasn't.
When the brand new boxes started showing up they were from another MFG and I started to see the same large shifts in casting quality and wheels stud hole sizes and the same parts in the same boxes would have different castings and be machined differently. It got to the point I had no idea what was coming, I had several orphan hubs that were different than the others, that I wasn't going to pass them on to my customers. In late 2014 I decided that since I could no long easily get consistent quality hubs, I decided to stop providing the service.
It all comes down to shelf space and inventory turns...
Every year new models come out with unique parts. Within a few years the aftermarket sales for these parts significantly increases and parts stores and regional and national warehouses need to make room for them so they can sell them and make $$$.
When is the last time you saw any of your local parts store expand storage space? I have seen new ones built, but never expanded once built. This means to offer these new parts, they must make room on their shelves for them. They look at inventory turns on all parts and the slowest movers are removed from the store and are special order only from the regional warehouse.
When the regional warehouse is faced with the same space constraints, then again the slow movers are removed and stored at the national warehouses. When they run out of space the slow movers are placed on order status from the MFG. The next time an order is needed to be placed with the MFG, the only place to store them is in the national warehouse, so the order is much smaller than they have historically been. This means the changeover costs to produce the smaller run increases the overall costs of the parts, it also reduces the profitability for the product line for the MFG. The tooling and packaging materials for this product line is also taking up valuable space in the MFG facility. So at some point, the MFG will decide supporting that slow moving, small batch size product line is no longer financially favorable (compared to supporting other higher volume and more profitable product lines) and they will abandoning product line and scrap the tooling for them, and eventually the parts will no longer be available.
I worked in mfg for 21 years and saw the reluctance to expand to support for new products countless times. When covid hit, I was at a disposable cup mfg and saw nearly all specialty products be put on hold so we could crank out more the common versions of the cups, lids and containers to meet demand, with the fewest change overs, as well as fewer people. After Covid, most these this product lines didn't come back.
A Fiero specific example... back in 2012 I was offering the service of cutting down the rotors on the 84-87 front hubs. I started out buying from several places until I started seeing lots of variations in the casting quality of the supplied hubs to the point the supplied hubs were not even using the same bolt hole size for the wheel studs. Then I switched to only buying from Napa. It cost more, but I could count on the quality and consistency of the parts. I purchased them from my local parts store. At the time, they did not stock them, but after the first 20 sets, the manager of the store noticed the spike in sales and asked me if it was going to continue. I told him what I was doing and that I expected it to continue, so he said we would start stocking 2 sets locally... which was great. When orders came in, I stopped by after work to pick then up (1/2 mile from my day job at the time). Over the next 2 years, I purchased well over 100 sets of 84-87 front hub/rotors. What I saw during that time was that the boxes they came in over time kept getting older and older. When I asked the manager, he said his store was selling the most of that part and the company was moving all inventory for that product to him from other local stores and warehouses. Everything was great, the consistency and quality of the hubs was great... until all old inventory nationwide was depleted and new batches of hubs were ordered.... then it wasn't.
When the brand new boxes started showing up they were from another MFG and I started to see the same large shifts in casting quality and wheels stud hole sizes and the same parts in the same boxes would have different castings and be machined differently. It got to the point I had no idea what was coming, I had several orphan hubs that were different than the others, that I wasn't going to pass them on to my customers. In late 2014 I decided that since I could no long easily get consistent quality hubs, I decided to stop providing the service.
This definitely makes a lot of sense... but I don't really understand how in today's online economy, there isn't someone reproducing these. Especially... the ones for the Volkswagens. I'd have to look it up, but I know the VW Bus was made from 1968 to 1979 in that specific design (the kind I have). I'd have to assume that, from South America, North America, Europe, and Africa... they'd have to have made close to 1 million of them. Why is no one making replacement brake boosters? Like... why can't I go on Rock Auto and / or Summit, or even Amazon... and buy one. I mean, the craziest stuff, I can buy from Amazon and it shows up to my door later that day.
(by the way, if someone proves me wrong here, I will be really thankful and buy it ASAP)
That does really suck though about the hubs. I thought I remember you were doing that work. I converted my front hubs to Grand Am hubs since I did the Grand Am brake upgrade.
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: This definitely makes a lot of sense... but I don't really understand how in today's online economy, there isn't someone reproducing these. Especially... the ones for the Volkswagens. I'd have to look it up, but I know the VW Bus was made from 1968 to 1979 in that specific design (the kind I have). I'd have to assume that, from South America, North America, Europe, and Africa... they'd have to have made close to 1 million of them. Why is no one making replacement brake boosters? Like... why can't I go on Rock Auto and / or Summit, or even Amazon... and buy one. I mean, the craziest stuff, I can buy from Amazon and it shows up to my door later that day.
So there were 1,000,000 VW buses made back in 1979. Typical estimates are that cars are totaled/scrapped at a 5% rate per year. With this example, in 1999, these buses should have ceased to exist. We know some remain, but were are 24 years past their zero date. If there were 5,000 left in total existence world wide, I would be shocked. Specific parts for them will be hard to come by and it will be part by part dependent. Body panels rust and are commonly damaged, so these will typically be the last to dry up and be non-supported. Brake boosters rarely fail so when these vans were 10-20-30 years old there likely wasn't a huge need for that part simply because a large number of people didn't need to replace them.
I spent a fair amount of time my last 7-8 years in mfg finding solutions or retrofits to parts that were obsoleted/cancelled for large production equipment and processes. Seemed like every week, another name brand, top tier supplier was obsoleting a part for one of our lines. The electric parts suppliers were the worst...
[This message has been edited by fieroguru (edited 03-25-2023).]
I received my Centric master cylinder Monday the 27th. It was shipped from a parts fulfilment warehouse in California. Summits price was $127 and change. Compared to the original, looks like a good copy . Aluminum casting with a clearly labeled tag on the shipping container with the all so familiar"made in China" labeling. Just had my 79th birthday this last Sunday, so whoever buys this car when I'm gone, be sure to ask for the new master cylinder that comes with it!
