1985 745t

Ordered a new front right bendix from FCP last week to replace a binding one on my brick. Took it in without looking at the part too closely (just an eyeball to be sure it "matched" and was the bendix) and get a call from my mechanic (I don't do brakes myself) where he tells me the caliper I got was one hose, and my system uses a two hose.

Anyone familiar with this? FCP told me their parts suppliers only list 10-3302A, and that that was the one I was sent. However, I haven't modified my brick and it shipped with these calipers, so obviously there is a two hose version as well. Even internet parts places I order from like Importec only list one caliper, although that could just as easily be because the other isn't available. Anyone familiar with this? Do I have the only Brick accidentally released with two hose Bendix calipers?

FCP said they would refund my money, but that doesn't really help me since now I have to spend twice as much buying the part from my mechanic, thus defeating the whole reason I ordered the part early online. Also I feel like a heel for wasting his time with my mismatched part (I think buying my own parts is fine, but buying the WRONG part and wasting his time is not). So much for the "FCP knows it all" theory of certain brickboarders... I'm back to ordering my own parts from the actual listings.


Thanks,
rt

Its a rare thing, that your mechanic let you bring the parts.
Most mechanics say, they only install their own parts.
So you are lucky with that.

When the car is ready or just sitting idle waiting for you and
taking the mechanics space for what he has to pay a monthly rent,
its very common the mech ask about 5 $ or 10 $ a day as 'parking fee'.


Have fun !

Exactly, which is why I get pissed if I happen to supply the wrong part and cause a delay or problem in both his schedule and his business.

My mechanic generally charges a little extra if you bring your own parts since he doesn't warranty them and doesn't make anything for that side of the sale (he doesn't charge me the extra since we are friends).

As for a mechanic not taking parts in general, if my mechanic didn't I would find someone else. A good mechanic realizes that to maintain an older car an owner must be able to manage the costs involved. If you eliminate my ability to lower my costs with lower priced parts I will simply trash the car, buy a new one, and stop using his services. Ergo it makes sense to keep your customers in teh car you service if you plan on keeping them as customers.

-rt

Getting the wrong part can be irritating... but we all have bad days... back a few years ago ...when we still had a Western auto here... I called and asked for a price on a distributor cap for an '85 El Dorado... first thing he asked??? "Is that gas or Diesel?"...
Personally I'd have to give FCP at least a second chance....I've ordered a lot of stuff from them and have always been happy. Of course I'm looking at 3 hours one way to a dealer as well... and an area where justlast week someone asked..."Volvo huh? Who makes those anyway?"...
Bret
--
rust free in west Texas

Seems the B revision is the ABS version, and the A revision is the non-ABS version. My mechanic already got the part, and while it would be cheaper to order from someone else I can't afford to have the car sitting at the mechanic's shop for days while I wait, and it isn't riught to ask him to hold the car in limbo so I can buy a cheaper part somewhere else.

The funny part is that the guy at FCP specifically asked which kind I needed when I ordered it and I specifically told him "non-ABS." I mean the fact that ABS didn't even %$*@^ exist in 1985 should make it pretty obvious, but whatever. Then they go and send me an ABS caliper, after I told them I don't have ABS and told them I have a car built before ABS was even available?!?

Summary: don't buy parts from FCP Groton unless you absolutely positively know there is no way they can screw it up, because obviously they, their parts database, and their parts suppliers cannot be trusted.

Thanks for the posts Mcduck and Alex, 'preciate it.

-rt

I agree with mudduck. Give them a second chance. He's willing to take the part back, and refund your money... it's not like he's out to steal from you. Part of the premium you pay to the other suppliers (such as IPD, or Rusty) is for that Volvo knowledge. Even then, nobody's perfect.

I ordered a pre-pump for my sedan from IPD a while back. Initially they were going to send me the wrong one, and I had to call back to get what they called the proper one sent. Turns out that the original one was probably the proper pump. They also sent my friend a head gasket instead of a valve cover gasket at one point (and they refunded her money promptly). My only disappointment is in the price premium (for the money IPD is asking, I tend to expect perfection).

When I moved a while back, Nick at FCP Groton shipped my order to my old address (despite me filling out the proper address on the form on the web site). Never heard from the people at my old address, but he overnighted a duplicate order to the proper address.

With the vast majority of the (Volvo) parts places out there, there's a human on the other end. People will screw up, it's human nature. The real test is in how they handle the screw ups.

If saving money were really critical, you had a few other choices. Those included doing the work yourself (brake work on Volvos is pretty easy if you're handy with a large hammer).. or asking your mechanic to order through one of the discount places (and allow him to charge a markup on that price.. which will likely be less than what he's paying).

Note: I've never done any mail order business with RPR.. I've always been at the counter to examine the part before I plunk down the cash. But I'm sure they've had their bad days like everyone else.

Note: I'm pretty down on places like MVP and IPD which use glitzy shit on their web site (rendering it hard to impossible to use with a text based browser), power it with (misconfigured in some cases) Microsoft software and then expect the consumers to pay for it with higher parts costs. I believe this is a large part of why MVP is no longer in the parts business.

- alex

'85 244 Turbo

I have no experience with brakes and am not qualified to R and R my own caliper, and the LABOR cost is not the spot where I feel I can save money (if I have to spend 9 hours doing something I can pay $60 for I have lost money, not saved it, especially if I screw it up and kill the rotor). I try to save money on the parts because when I can get a part for 50% off that is a BIG savings in the long run.

Anyway, the fact that I don't do all the work myself in no way justifies the argument that I "really don't care about saving money." Do you refine your own gas? No? Well you must light your cigarettes with $100 bills... cmon man, you save money where you it is feasible.

Yes, FCP is willing to take the part back, but I still don't know if I'll see the shipping I pay to return it, and am still out like $70 extra for no reason. On that level its just the principle of it. Will he compensate me for that? I doubt it. And I don't think it is feasible to think I could ask my mechanic, who has to stop his tight (independant volvo only one guy) schedule to deal with the wrong part, to order another part from MY supplier and deal with any further delays. That's just ridiculous, I might as well just go and slap him over the head while I'm at it.

Basically the point here is that I ordered a part from someone who puts themselves forward as "Volvo experts." This isn't just some shop who has parts to sell, its a shop that lists ALL THE PARTS FOR VOLVOS ACROSS MODEL YEARS specifically along with only two other makes or so. I called them SPECIFICALLY because I wanted to be SURE I got the right part; I could easily have gotten it for $15 less from Importec instead if I wanted to just wing it.

Anyway I told him the exact information needed, including the fact that it is a 1985 745 turbo with Bendix non-ABS, and he sent me the wrong part. When I called to complain and correct him afterwards his response was two-part:

1) "I don't show any other part for your car, so that's the only one." If his suppliers' databases are wrong he should give them crap for it. However, listing an ABS caliper for a model year before ABS was even on the market is pretty stupid, and I would expect him to catch it since he sells these parts (there are two calipers, model A and B).

2) "How can you expect us to know everything about Volvos?" I don't, I replied, I expect you to know about the parts you sell, period. I work in computers as an IA and Web Dev. My customers should be able to rely on the fact that I know about the code, principles, and practices involved.

Just a difference of opinion I guess. Do I think this is the end of the world? No. However, the "attitude" I received when I called to inform them of the problem left a bad taste in my mouth, and that coupled with the part kinda pissed me off.

-rt

You tell 'em Alex; If it doesn't work with Opera #$%@ 'em.
--
Jim McDonald

Actually, (speaking of MVP) it didn't work with: Navigator, Opera, Konqueror, w3m, links.. I don't use Opera, don't like it that much either.

The trick is I don't have flash installed, and there's no real great way to get flash running on FreeBSD (short of downloading an outdated version of Netscape for Linux and using the Linux flash plugin). None of the content on MVP's web site actually required required flash (it was all simply text and images, nothing that needed to be interactive). However, instead of using some trivial javascript to handle the images, and exposing some sort of purely HTML based navigation as a backup, MVP hid all the links behind some flash monstrosity. The flash stuff didn't even look nice, and the site was completely useless without it. Not only is that a great example of bad site design, they probably paid a large amount of money for someone to create a site like that. So how do they make it back? By charging more money for their products.

Not running flash is not an indication that I'm not interested in buying MVP products, nor is it an indication that I'm too cheap (I've got various legal copies of Win95, 98 and 98SE floating around).

IPD was operating their shopping cart stuff with an unsigned SSL certificate. This would cause most browsers (unless configured otherwise) to send up a warning. What happens when the someone hijacks the site (given that they're running IIS, I wonder how unlikely this really is) and end-user is used to seeing warnings about a bogus certificate and just clicks his/her way through and hands his/her credit card number to whomever hijacked the site?

Basically they were too lazy (or cheap) to take the proper steps. I also got the impression that whomever they hired to do web design didn't know how to create (rather.. buy) the proper certificate. If I'm going to fork over a credit card number, I want them to do it right. If they can't see the importance in having a properly signed certificate, which should be blatantly obvious to anyone running an 'e-commerce' site, I wonder what other obvious stuff they just don't get. Also, that previous design for their site was, IMO, difficult to use even with a 'supported' browser.. and more difficult to use than the layout that came before it. Their latest design is quite a step in the right direction.

- alex

'85 244 Turbo

The web is a visual medium, and that should really be the end of the argument. Yes, it should "work" in a text based browser, but expecting flawless rendering on something like Mosaic is just asinine.

It costs a lot of money to develop interactive properties, and it costs a hell of a lot more to develop good ones. Developing a site that supports every conceivable browser/os combination just isn't very practical, and while I test my stuff across environments because I'm anal you don't really have a right to give someone crap because their site doesn't work with Konq on Linux.

I mean do you see phone booths designed with brail readouts so the deaf can have conversations? No because it isn't practical to design a system to include such a small group. Of course maybe the open source community could go around and offer to upgrade sites to support all that for free? I'm sure they wouldn't turn away the offer of help...

(and yes, the number of personal computer users and shoppers running open source with something like conq is well below 0.01%.)

-rt

The point is, using flash in that manner is really not even trying. It's lame, pointless, needless, and an expensive waste. Flash is fine, but give me a way around it.

The point is, if you're going to setup an 'e-commerce' server, you might as well set it up properly. Self-signed SSL certificates have no place on a publically accessable production server.

I'm giving them crap because in IPD's case they left a really large security hole in their web site. No amount of excuses makes that a good idea.

I'm giving MVP crap, because instead of spending some money on a reasonable site that's viewable (or at least useable) across many browsers, they probably paid *more* money to have someone hack up some tacky looking flash driven site that's explicitly unuseable elsewhere. You don't honestly expect me to believe that flash development is cheap, do you?

The number of people outright using Konqi is probably pretty small. But now you've got all the OSX people using Safari (which uses a slightly tweaked khtml to render eveything). Not only that, khtml is quite standards compliant. Look at wired's web site. They used CSS and (I believe) XHTML to ensure that their web site was consistant across as many platforms as possible. No nasty browser detection, no nasty flash, nada. It just works, it's not freakin rocket science.

You missed the point here. I don't expect perfection when I use w3m or links. I expect it to work. Two out of the three financial institutions I do business with have web sites that are completely functional with w3m and links. I can pay my cc, transfer money between accounts, view checks, etc with w3m and links. It doesn't look pretty, but it works.

I also don't expect perfection with Konqy (and Safari), but I expect that I shouldn't have to configure one to pretend to be MSIE in order to view a web site. Bank of America is a great example of this. Their web site looks reasonable in Konqy, renders okay in a text-based browser, and is useable in all of the above but they use some browser detection code to prevent anyone not using anything other than Navigator or MSIE 4.x or newer from even trying to use their site. This is even crazier because the 4.x browsers have absolutely HORRIBLE html and css support.

I occasionally do web design for money. I can tell you that both the professional and personal sites I've done may not be the glitziest.. but they're all readable (and look as they were intended to look) and completely useable on most all platforms.

- alex

'85 244 Turbo

I've architected, designed, and developed ecommerce engines AND interfaces for fortune 500 companies, so I think I'm fairly qualified on this topic.

First off it is NOT as easy as just implementing a "css xhtml" website. Full specs are ONLY fully supported within the most recent browsers like Moz. If you refer to the various statistics across agencies most people run either IE 5 or IE 6, and most here is a number over 90%. I can name multiple failure points in just about every one of teh browsers you mention... why don't you try running Opera 7 on a system with type manager installed and watch what happens.

I get so sick of hearing people who whack a couple sites together for limited consumption lecture about how to develop and implement systems that need to support hundreds of thousands of users. CSS/XHTML using pixel positioning falls apart on any browser that doesn't have spec support, and to any business that is unacceptable. Until ALL browsers but say less than 1% support the specs fully it is neither acceptable nor feasible for a multi-million dollar company to risk alienating users with a site that doesn't work properly on ALL systems. At this point that is still a site that uses html 4 transitional.

Whether anyone likes to admit it or not most people are still using computers they bought two years or more ago, and most of those machines are running IE 5 or 6 and nothing else. The general public neither cares nor wants browser options, they just want it to work. MS puts it in front of them, and until computer manufacturers CHOOSE to install non-MS browsers in their machines pre-delivery you won't see many changes.

As for Flash it really has no place as a page element outside of illustration or product zoom/review capacities. Using any linear scripted interface for navigation and core page elements is a mistake, and general is only done by folks who either don't have large user groups or don't know any better. Of course Flash MX is a little better in its support for database access, etc., but I still stay away from it.

-rt

As for Flash it really has no place as a page element outside of illustration or product zoom/review capacities. Using any linear scripted interface for navigation and core page elements is a mistake, and general is only done by folks who either don't have large user groups or don't know any better. Of course Flash MX is a little better in its support for database access, etc., but I still stay away from it.

This was my point the entire time. MVP's use of Flash was probably a costly choice (given how glitzy the whole thing looked), and the whole time it was (IMO) a completely wrong choice. I don't know if it's still up, but it was up at www.mvpvolvo.com.

But if you want to discuss HTML compliance here goes.

Yes, I know the vast majority of the people out there are using some version of MSIE. Usually 5.5 or 6.

No browser, Mozilla included, implements everything perfectly. Indeed, one of the reasons I dislike Opera is for its horrible table rendering. I'm using MSIE 5.x on MacOS 8.6 as my main graphical browser. Yes, I'm fully aware of the really odd things that some of these browsers do. However, I'll still point at wired as a site that is standards compliant, and still completely useable on both my mac and whatever ssh console I've got open. It's not rocket science, and it is possible

You talk about spec compliance, but what 'specs' are you talking about? There are many many standards from the w3c floating around. No browser has fully implemented CSS 2, and already CSS 2.1 and 3 have been released or are being worked on. With XHTML, the w3c is taking a rather, IMO, foolish approach to tables and frames. But XHTML 1.0 Transitional was a huge step in the right direction. There are a lot of specs to choose from, and yes, it can indeed be confusing (and maddening when they decide to drop support for something in favor of a completely unuseable and unimplemented replacement).

Most of what chaps my ass has nothing to do with how the HTML has been coded, but rather the browser detection that's been implemented. In 9 out of 10 sites, the browser detection is completely unneeded. Bank of America is a fantastic example of this. Their site renders fine and would be useable with Konqy, but they will not let any browser who is not emulating MSIE or Nav (even as old as 4 x is okay with them) use their site.

The rest of my irritation is indeed comprised from poorly hacked together HTML. However, a lot of it is dead simple to fix, and hardly rocket science.

Take a link that opens into another window. Instead of putting the link in its usual href attribute, and then calling whatever js function from the onmouseclickevent attribute.. many sites will fill the href attribute with something like 'javascript:void(0)'. There's no real reason to hide the target that way, and all that's accomplished is that it's more difficult to use the site without a js interpreter (while links does JS, it doesn't seem to do cookies.. w3m seems to do the reverse).

But your arguing that it's just too difficult smacks of lazy web designers. Of course doing the job right costs money.. but usually even the lazy incompetent people who churn stuff out with frontpage will charge a pretty penny.

- alex

What McDuck said.

ABS calipers have one hose (and one bleeder), non-ABS calipers have two hoses (and three bleeder screws on the 240).

IPD lists both ABS and non ABS Bendix calipers.

If you can't order the proper caliper through Nick, both Rusty and IPD would probably be cheaper than your mechanic. Or you could always buy a matching set of Girling calipers and be done with it.

- alex

'85 244 Turbo

The 1-hole caliper is for ABS equipped cars; there are definitely 2 possibilities.
See http://www.rprusa.com/rprstore/rprstore.htm
under brakes.
--
Jim McDonald