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Jesus

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You already have beef with me that you are unwilling to clear up

Timo, you've lost me. I was very busy traveling last week when you said call you. When I'm running 18 hour days on the road the only calls I have time for are my kids and my customers.

I don't have an issue with you nor do I feel a need to chew over something that is in the past. If you really feel you need me to call you to sort this out I will make the call over the weekend. We can set up the festivus pole and air all grievances.

And Greg, stating the price I thought it was worth was part of the point here. Lots of guys are seriously cheap on this forum. When a pristine 98 S70 T5M with 100k miles on it suddenly might be coming on the market the owner decided it was probably only worth $3000 because he was having problems passing the air care test. I called him up and said you need to reconsider your price and not make an emotional decision which is what he was doing. He changed his mind and put the car into storage. While some guys might be pissed because I kept a really nice car out of their hands for cheap I'm not disappointed because I know the owner would have regretted it.

I try to be the voice of value on these questions, especially when the car is the result of hard work and not just an average brick.

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I messaged a guy on facebook that has a canadian spec manual t-5r that I wanted to buy about a year ago. I could have gotten the car for $2,000. It was this car, specifically:

http://forums.swedespeed.com/showthread.php?199318-1995-850-T5R-MANUAL-transmission-Yellow-with-original-rims-Toronto-Ontario-Canada


The guy lives in Brooklyn, and was trying to register it in the US. Due to stupid import laws, its incredibly difficult. So I was gonna buy it and VIN swap

In the end I ended up not buying it. But tonight I messaged the guy to see how hes doing and if he managed to do anything with the car. He spent 6 grand to ship the car to cali, have the cluster changed, and the cats changed, and have it shipped back. Hes still has hoops to jump through to legally register the car in the US. Looking back, Im thankful I didn't buy it (but its a bloody nice yellow.)

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I bought a blue box radiator for the S90. It arrived with a Valeo/Volvo sticker on it, and was slightly different than the OEM one I pulled out.

I googled all the numbers on the sticker, and not much comes back. I looked on Valeo's site, where they list applications. They claim they don't have an S90/V90/960 radiator. Is this just an oversight? Do companies often negotiate that there be no direct sales? I'm surprised, since it seems like this part was designed well in to the car's life. Why would anyone sign up for not doing direct sales in that situation?

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Because OEM contract.

Depends on the country sometimes, but Volvo has long used this practice to sell expensive spares. To give you an example: Sachs, which build the niveaumats for Volvo, aren't allowed to sell directly to customers. That's why the part is so expensive. Same situation with a lot of other parts where you can clearly see branding on the part itself, but the manufacturer will not sell to you.

Oh and it's not the company that negotiates this part of the contract, it's the customer that demands they do this. Differences in design are nothing unexpected, Volvo tends to redesign stuff all the time or change details. Best example are the handbrake pads which were riveted at first and now are glued.

Edited by Blockpartie
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Because OEM contract.

Depends on the country sometimes, but Volvo has long used this practice to sell expensive spares. To give you an example: Sachs, which build the niveaumats for Volvo, aren't allowed to sell directly to customers. That's why the part is so expensive. Same situation with a lot of other parts where you can clearly see branding on the part itself, but the manufacturer will not sell to you.

Oh and it's not the company that negotiates this part of the contract, it's the customer that demands they do this. Differences in design are nothing unexpected, Volvo tends to redesign stuff all the time or change details. Best example are the handbrake pads which were riveted at first and now are glued.

Interesting. I'm really surprised this is the more profitable method. But I guess that explains the drastic jump in price on most blue box parts.

But what do you mean by customers demanding it? Do you mean the end user, or do you mean the part manufacture?

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Let's pretend you make a really good Anti-Hippie™ product. You as a company always try to get customers to stay in business and naturally one big order is better for you than say 4000 individual orders that net you the same profit.

I am a big, bad company that wants to sell some kind of tool. My engineers have designed the product, decided on the specs and which parts are to be fabricated in house and which are to be outsourced. Now I either invite you to make me an offer for X amount of product Y or ask you to make me X amount of product Y. For reasons difficult to explain (MONEY!) I want to benefit from my product after it has been sold. So I ask you to make ever so slight changes to your product so that only this special version works with my tool. And because I know you are going to sell it cheaper than I will on the open market I give you a choice: Do things MY way, to MY conditions, for MY price... or I'll take my business elsewhere.

So the customer in your example is Volvo. It might be hard to believe, but sometimes selling a low volume product to a small manufacturer can be more profitable than selling large quantities to someone like GM/Chrysler/Toyota/VW and so on.

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Ha, thanks but I understood all of that. The part I'm saying I'm surprised about is your X and Y. I'm saying I'm surprised X and Y works out that it is clearly beneficial. As compared to making a competing product based on self-derived specs using a model car, and selling it to anyone, given that the car is no longer in production so I'm not winning some new car manufacturing deal.

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Contracts are a very difficult thing. I imagine you own somekind of mobile phone - have you ever read the terms and conditions you agree to for being allowed to use your phone?

Volvo isn't dumb, only on occasion, and will have made a contract with their suppliers that is according to the industry standard. What I'm trying to say is that in all likelyhood such a contract is not beneficial for the supplier. Depending on the product some things are either "one run and done" (interior parts fall into this category) and are understood to be an exclusive item. Some other products may have timelock that prevents the supplier from selling it before a certain date - I think P80 jewels, made by Hella, are such an item. And yet other parts are simply forbidden from being ever sold on the free market - M5X and M6X transmission parts come to mind.

Most expensive parts are made by very few companies world wide and maybe they don't want to deal with other manufacturers not giving them contracts. Logic is only part of this game.

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I was helping my friend and his '95 850 diagnose why his idle was being rough 2 weeks ago, no code. unplugged the ECT while running, engine ran beautiful. We started the car with the ECT unplugged, had to crank it for a bit, but it started after 4 seconds or so then idled smoothly. plugged in the (faulty) ECT, started in less than a second, but the idle was shit

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