What incentive does DMC or its franchises have for making super-reliable parts?

[Kenny_Z]

I can tell you one thing, we are extremely lucky to have these vendors. There are millions of classic Mustangs on the road so there a ton of vendors churning out stuff for them. You have to be very careful and pay extra for good parts. Even then there's no guarantee you're going to get decent parts. I struggled to stop the leaks in my windshield because NO ONE can reproduce a good seal. When I took the seal off my Nova I was less concerned about my already broken windshield than I was about getting my seal out intact because of the poorly done repops.

[djdogbone]

I'd second that...even the grumpy ones!

[David T]

I can tell you one thing, we are extremely lucky to have these vendors. There are millions of classic Mustangs on the road so there a ton of vendors churning out stuff for them. You have to be very careful and pay extra for good parts. Even then there's no guarantee you're going to get decent parts. I struggled to stop the leaks in my windshield because NO ONE can reproduce a good seal. When I took the seal off my Nova I was less concerned about my already broken windshield than I was about getting my seal out intact because of the poorly done repops.

It can be difficult to get parts made that will last. Even with testing you can't catch all of the problems you will see once you start selling to the whole market from hot Florida to cold Maine. Some States sell E-10 and some are even up to E-15. Some owners will install the parts themselves and others will have shops of varying competence do it. Some will take the effort to make sure the tank is clean and others will just "throw" the parts in. Some will put the parts in thinking it will solve ALL of their problems when maybe the accumulator is bad. I have a lot of empathy for the venders who have to put up with all kinds of customers, some of who are not as courteous and understanding as you seem to be. In general ALL of the venders want satisfied customers, especially in such a small niche market where reputation and repeat sales is very important. If you are cooperative with the venders they will try to "do right" by you and even bend their own rules if it is reasonable. We have seen this before with the headlight switch by DMCH. One more point to be said, just putting new parts on a car is not always going to fix it. Maybe what you are replacing is not bad, something else is making you think so or your car is modified and that is the problem. That happens a LOT with alternators! Also even if you buy from a company in the US they may be using parts from overseas manufacturers of dubious quality.
David Teitelbaum

[Tillsy]

And most importantly the support we get - never ceases to amaze me the detailed responses to forum posts and emails we get from all our vendors, even at insane hours of any/all timezones and throughout weekends.

It's not just a job to them - they personally and passionately care about us.

I sometimes order some odd parts for a project I may be working on and I'll get a query back asking what I'm doing with it because they want to be sure I realise it will only work in a particular circumstance or that I should be ordering it with something else to function correctly. In my case it's all good - I've ordered what I did for a specific reason, but each time it does make it clear to me that if it were a customer simply ordering part x without realising they also need part y or that you must have setup z that our vendors are going the extra mile and catching that out, they aren't simply taking our money and just sending out whatever it is we've ordered.

Even Hervey, who is a nightmare to deal with, means well.

Probably why the lack of communication about the pump flaw frustrated me so much (regardless if it impacts me personally or not, but I very strongly suspect it does) as it is incredibly out of character and felt like the problem was being buried. Thankfully James' post explains they've been doing the exact opposite which is fantastic, perhaps such a situation could be better communicated in future so customers are impressed instead of frustrated?

Guess I better put my other projects on hold and get that accumulator replacement done so I know once and for all.

[Ron]

[Exolis]

So hopefully I can provide some type of useful feedback as Electronics Reliability Test Engineer... The quality of a part is all on the supplier, it is up to the OEM to insure that quality is up to par. At larger companies such as Nissan, we have standards for everything basically and once we test the part, if it doesn't meet requirements, we tell Supplier to fix it. However there will always be some rate of failure, this rate of failure is essentially decided between Supplier and OEM; it's usually very low and it's there because parts will break (especially moving parts).

So what would be the driving motivation to improve quality? Pretty much whatever can be done in a reasonable cost amount. If people don't like the product and has bad quality, customer goes to another place or someone else comes into the market to provide higher quality. Essentially all OEMs biggest factor for improvements (besides warranty reduction) is stuff like JD Powers and Consumers Report. Higher Ups freak out if rating is low on products. Granted smaller scale stuff isn't big enough to be on JD Powers and such, but essentially the sales will speak at that point.

Some big problems for something like the DeLorean is obviously the dating of things. In order for a higher reliability part, the part essentially needs to be designed specifically for that vehicle. A lot of these improvement parts are compatible parts that fit. This doesn't take other factors into account such as the Harness, EMC Regulations, load amounts, etc. So this all adds on to costs and with these companies being smaller, it's probably not cost efficient. This is a general model of making higher reliable parts, does not imply anyone is Cheap or doesn't care or anything. It's just really expensive and hard to get Super Reliable parts, even for a Large OEM.

Hope that help and makes sense!

[ccurzio]

The difference is that Nissan isn't a niche market with a limited customer base. Nissan parts go into millions upon millions of cars and there are hundreds of different vendors that sell quality parts to compete with one another. That's tremendously different than a car where only around 8000 were ever made to begin with and in many cases, specialty parts are only available from a single vendor out of only a handful of TOTAL vendors.

I understand how the business works on a scale such as the case with Nissan. I'm specifically asking about how to sustain being a parts vendor in a tiny market.

[Exolis]

It's basically no practical for a tiny market to insure high quality parts. For a small market, it's places like DMCH and what not that have to essentially pick and buy parts from supplier. Tiny market does not have the buying power to change product quality on a "generic" or "Universal" type part. Something like the Fuel Pump/Sender combo is probably not unique to just DeLorean.

I think the best thing that can really be done for tiny market type business is to address any problems and/or concerns to the vendor. The vendor then can report it back to the supplier then the supplier can fix it.

It's not to say all components from Tiny Markets are not reliable, its just the market is not big enough where it can guarantee a high reliability, especially if these components are used in different applications where the requirements vary quite a bit between different vehicles.

So say part X comes from a large supplier and several different companies buy Part X, each company has a different application(let's say 5 different vehicles). Since something like the harness and power supply is different, the supplier cannot guarantee Part X will work on all variations and things like EMC, Load amount, Harness sizes, connectors, etc can play different factors that could cause wear and other issues on the component.

[Delorean Industries]

The difference is that Nissan isn't a niche market with a limited customer base. Nissan parts go into millions upon millions of cars and there are hundreds of different vendors that sell quality parts to compete with one another. That's tremendously different than a car where only around 8000 were ever made to begin with and in many cases, specialty parts are only available from a single vendor out of only a handful of TOTAL vendors.

I understand how the business works on a scale such as the case with Nissan. I'm specifically asking about how to sustain being a parts vendor in a tiny market.

Simply put diversify. You can't have all of your eggs in one basket.

[David T]

Simply put diversify. You can't have all of your eggs in one basket.

What a small vender hopes for is that he can find a supplier who has parts he sells to a "big guy" which can be modified and made to work for the small quantity he needs. There is also price point. You do not want to get parts that are overengineered and too expensive. They may be better and last longer but they are too expensive to buy, inventory and then try to sell at a profit. The vendor has to buy a production run and put them on a shelf till he can sell them one by one. That ties up a LOT of capitol! All suppliers and venders have to accept a certain amount of failure and a certain lifetime for their parts. We could build a car that never breaks but only NASA would be able to afford it! As an example think about the rover they used on the Moon. No roadside assistance there! And the astronauts would not be able to walk back to the lander before their air ran out. "Failure is not an option". In such a case money is no object! Here on Earth money is always a consideration. And the fuel pump is not the only part the vender has to buy in quantity. Think about all of the other parts for the car they have to have designed, made, and inventoried. They can have millions invested in slow moving inventory. Selling parts and servicing Deloreans is not going to get anyone rich quick so they MUST be doing this for other reasons.
David Teitelbaum