If you own a car, you know that at some point, you will need to replace a part or two. When this happens, how do you go about it?

So you are a new car buyer with your car fresh from the bond. Car rides perfectly. We all know that phase of car ownership where even the slightest of scratches gets you all worked up. The car simply works as it should. You are still in this perfect car world.

And indeed in a perfect world, your car would never break, and if it did, magic fairies would fly into your car with a box of fresh parts and fix it for you.
But that world does not exist. You will soon realise that once in a while you need to fix things which of course implies buying parts.

But for many new car owners, they always want the best for their car so they rush to the authorised dealer who politely mentions that they don’t stock that part but shall gladly import it just for you, at a price of course. Mention of this price more often than not makes you realise that you definitely need to explore other alternatives.

Enter the used car market This industry is colossally huge. Specific markets spanning huge land masses have been born.  See most of the cars we import are used cars and are bound to have parts that are on the verge of failing or have failed because of our car service cultures, driving techniques or simply our environment specifically the roads but the owner simply has not gotten around to fixing them.

ALSO READ  What Is Cruise Control And How Does It Work?

Because of this huge market, the authorised dealers for most brands do stock service parts for the popular cars. Service parts include oil filters, spark plugs, air filters, brake pads and wiper blades.

This also is driven by the fact that car manufacturers share parts among their range of brands. The non-service parts? That’s where all the action is in the used car market.

First question is, are used car parts good? This is a bit of a grey area and really depends on the part you are buying or replacing. Most parts are got from working cars and ought to be good however the operating word, “used” sometimes makes them unreliable.

Some parts are either on which means they work or they are off which means they don’t work. Things such as car electronics and some mechanical parts fall into this category.

The other category is parts that work better than the failed part but you have no way of differentiating the two unless of course the part is outrightly broken.
Most of these are parts that wear with mileage and are probably well on their way to uselessness as you are putting them in.

These are usually mechanical parts such as shock absorbers, brake master cylinders and steering racks among others. Additionally you can never know how long they will last.

Make sure the part is returnable.

Source: Daily Monitor