There was humor in this thread?

 

i work for a local owned federated parts store and we try to carry premium parts not cheap parts....that being said we carry spicer chassis parts which is now owned by raybestos and wix,hastings and k&n filters...and there are different grades of each manufacturers parts as well...you may be able to find a better deal somewhere else on the same brand but make sure it is the same grade...raybestos has a service grade and a premium grade as do most manufacturers...the main difference used to be a 90 day warranty versus a 1yr warranty but they recently changed both to a 1 yr warranty so now the main difference is that they are either made by raybestos or outsourced and made for raybestos to their specs,still a quality part but outsourced and possibly made with cheaper material as well...i have used the service grade myself along with most tire shops that we sell to without too many complaints(there will always be some)...as far as filters go i usually use the economy version of either the wix or hastings both are excellent filters,the main difference between wix and protec(economy wix) is wix uses paper and fiberglass media for filtration and protec just uses the paper,my guess is autozone may use the same element but not the fiberglass therefore is an economy version...just trying to help out any way i can not claiming any one brand is better than another or any one parts store is better than another just saying to do your research and be sure your comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges...like we say @ work we dont have competitors just customers,we are always trying to help the customer even if that means sending them to napa,autozone or oreillys and they also buy from us for their customers