Prices

[KE4AVB]

Boy do I need to call Power Distributors Monday morning and speak to my sales rep. Today I was looking a 798878 fuel bowl while doing inventory. I so hope the cost and retail price file I uploaded to me system are just wrong. They were 30 usd my cost and now today it pop as 110 usd retail and 99 usd cost. If this correct WOW what price jump since Aug 2019 when I brought 3 of them. I wouldn't be surprised since a Stihl trimmer drv shaft that was 16 usd last Spring is now 36.49 usd as Wednesday when I pick one up at the dealer.

Just wondering if this all tariff related or just plain greed kicking.

[bgsengine]

Bit of both I think. Briggs has not been doing all that well, a couple mistakes (factory expansion at a bad time, etc) and losing consumer market sales (no longer worth fixing when you can buy a new one for often less than cost of repairs) they gotta make up their money somewhere, they cant raise prices too much on their core commercial market, or they lose business to Kohler, Kawasaki and etc... Ive seen that on any number of popular or fast moving parts each year, seems like they pick a grouping of a few common pieces per engine that you can't easily get anywhere else in the market and jack their prices up for a while.. that or they want to obsolete the parts and raise prices so they don't have to make them any longer as demand falls off.. one thing I learned long ago was to look at raw price files and look for changes to discount code or popularity codes, (like a shift from fast moving code to another code) in the price files and stock a few extras before their next price file updates.. every so often you ended up sitting on a part that you got real cheap that you could sell at "current" dealer cost and still make a fat profit. Though it does take a lot of time (winter months downtime is handy for that sort of analysis) and usually isn't worth the time spent on it, it can be done. Some manufacturers actually had a code that told you the part was eventually to be obsoleted (TBO) after manufacturer's stockpiles and final production runs finished, parts then started going "NLA" as distributors sold off the last of their stock..

I'll actually be rather surprised if Briggs consumer engines are still in production (other than re-labeled china built engines) in another 10 years... I think they're eventually gonna evolve into Battery power or alternative power engine "modules" that rather than fix, you just swap it out for warranty, or discard/recycle (plastics, Metal, and Li-Ion batteries)

[KE4AVB]

All I know is that I going to reduce my in house inventory as much as I can over the next 4 years; I done cut it by 15K the last year. Planning on partial retirement when I hit 65. This fighting to get parts is wearing a little thin lately as a lot things are now just too expensive to repair when compared to just a few years ago as OEM are switching to assemblies only items. Spindle parts are one of them.

I am currently repairing a Stihl FS90 that the clutch drum bearing is outrageous at $26 for a 6201ZZ from Stihl which I refused to buy at that price. I just got them in for 1.25 ea with shipping.

[RoyM]

As long as that cheap offshore bearing doesn't fail after 3 hours of use. I do agree that 26 bucks is outrageous though. I retired from Power Source Canada, the Briggs distributor, five years ago. I cringed at some of the prices, you should have heard some of the phone calls, but there was nothing we could do.

[KE4AVB]

Well the NTN (Japan) bearing that was used is also off shore but can be had for around 6 usd plus shc but I have been using the SpinCo (Chinese) bearings for several years (3+) now without any failures. The SpinCo seem to be of a better quality than most of those Chinese bearings on RipBay, Amazon, and several distributors have sold me in the past.

I have gotten one set of bearings when I was looking for lower cost bearing off Amazon that didn't even have grease in them. I only found out because I repack nearly all my bearings with EP2 or water resistance grease depending on the application. I learned to do this as the grease used is of very poor quality as it dries out in about a year use in spindles.

I know being on near the end of supply chain we have very little control on costs from an OEM supplier. I got burned very heavily from Briggs last year what supposedly a pair of heads for a v-twin for 145 usd when I finally got the order it was only one head at 145 usd as Briggs changed their mind a couple times. First it was one head for 85 usd then superseded it to the pair @ 145 usd then when the order finally showed a month and half later it was just one head. It least it was still a complete head with the valves hardware not like Kawasaki head where you don't the valves hardware.

The only advantage we have is our knowledge of what is available out there. It is like those Cub Cadet spindle I had rebuild a couple years ago because none of after market spindles were right. Cub was wanting 20 for taper bearing, 20 for the cup, and 20 for seal. Each spindle had two of each. Totaled more than the 75 spindle assembly. Even using the bearing from Advance Auto Parts, O'reillys, and Autozone; yes I had to go to all three to get the 6 bearing sets. Even then the bearings were only 6 per set (bearing and cup). The seals came from Rotary. I rebuilt the spindle for around 20 in parts. Of course now those bearing in the shop at a much less cost, but at the time I was in a rush after 3 weeks of fooling with my vendor and an Amazon vendor that claimed the Rotary spindle they sent was an OEM spindle.

BTW I not going to raise my voice at the distributor just make sure the price is right as I don't think I will be able to sell those fuel bowls at 110.

[bgsengine]

and this is some of what I was referring to: https://www.murrayledger.com/news/local ... DKXEJILyGc

[KE4AVB]

Definitely not good news to hear especially with the Briggs engine out there currently. It also now makes sense what they are trying to us that buys parts. Well I definitely will watch out from now on about Briggs.

Tnx, for the heads up as it looks to be another Tecumseh deal in the brewing.

[bgsengine]

Yeah I suspect that soon enough most of the cheap box-store consumer grade stuff is gonna be china imports, so these manufacturers are focusing more onto the high end professional and pro-sumer markets (Just like AYP Husqvarna has phased out building consumer market stuff , leaving pretty much just MTD as the last remaining player.... and a visit to wal-mart's home center may be worth while for every tech to do each spring, to examine the product that is being stocked. I noticed some china built stuff like a $74 strong trimmer, cheap mowers are not far behind either.. and it's not even worth the trouble to sign on as a dealership any more with engine manufacturers unless you're in the pro/commercial market.. probably getting to where it isn't even worth stocking much more than an assortment of spark plugs, fuel filters, etc., and just buy cheap china carbs on amazon what with their 1-day prime delivery, you can buy 3 for the price of one OEM, and the few Ive bought myself, actually seem to have improved in quality.. only real problem is finding correct cross references..)

[bobodu]

Invisible hand of the market. You can buy cheap disposable items all day long. Like a $238 55 inch flat screen TV.
Too bad it hasn't happened to pick up trucks...

[KE4AVB]

That the very reason I had to taking on repairing lawn care equipment ten years ago. In '79 as electronics customer engineer working for an office supply store. I was repairing calculators to start with for US Army and NASA as the main client. Then few years later went to repairing electronic typewriters and copiers. At that time I was a Senior Customer Engineer working on everything the Standard Register Company sold. I got caught in the corporate downsizing in 1996. So I spent several years trying to find a job in the electronics field and I considered over qualify for every job tried to land. I finally ended up picking scrape metal to support my family. Then 2009 I started working on lawn care equipment and been at it every since.

Well the industry first started selling these calculators for several hundred dollars to several thousand then with 5 yrs they were selling desktop for a little as $100. Now they are even cheaper. No way it is now reasonable to even try to repair them other than for myself. My first personal computer CPU unit cost over $2000 without a monitor which was nearly $500 more. Now i can buy a CPU unit for as little $150 and a led wide screen monitor for $99.

The OEM don't really what us repairing anything if they had their way. Matter of Fact we can get rebuilt items but can't the same parts that they used in the repairs. This is especially frustrating to me and probably other master techs as well.