[Pollard]

Unless it's something I absolutely need now, I buy all my parts from rockauto. I can get a brand name for less than or the same price as the chain store's house brand.

I was looking for a bearing hub assembly for the truck and noticed O'Reilly, our local chain, and a no-name China brand on rockauto used the exact same pic which tells me they're both made in the same factory in China. Rock Auto was 1/3 the price of O'Reilly. I bought Timken and it was still cheaper than O'Reilly including shipping.

Gates - belts and hoses
Timken - bearings
National - seals
Raybestos/Wagner/Bendix - brakes
Standard - ignition/electrical
Moog - suspension
TRW - steering

All the above have been around since we were kids or before we were born in some cases. May not be made in the USA anymore but they have the experience and still keep high standards and have USA headquarters and distribution/warehouses.

VW/Porsche - Bosch for most things as it is OEM
Japanese - NGK/Denso/Hitachi

Beck-Arnley is also good for both German and Japanese as they source directly from manufacturers in each country and have for decades.

Spark plugs
NGK for Japanese
Bosch for German
OEM brand for American - AC Delco, Motorcraft and once upon a time, Autolite for Chrysler but they went out of business.

Small American cars often have Japanese engines so NGK for those. Mitsubishi=Chrysler. Toyota=GM, Mazda=Ford

The headlight assemblies that are CAPA certified are both the same brand and product line but two different prices and shipping from two locations durnit.

$15.99 shipping for one and $14.99 for the other, $170 with tax.

Oh well. It is what it is. The other brand is Dorman, non-CAPA, and they suck. Straight up cheapest China factory they can find is how they roll. They do make some stuff no one else does and you see it in the parts store under the HELP! brand. Dorman prices aren't much better in this case, $59 and $65. TYC non-CAPA is $62 ea.

Aaannd, I'm looking at other parts.

The grill is held on with bailing twine and zip ties and the chrome strip is about to fall off. Looks like $55 for that and ship from yet another location. CAPA certified grill is $110 so I'll pass on that since it's not functional like a headlamp.

The back hatch/liftgate wants to come down on my head on cool mornings which means it won't stay up at all once it really gets cold. Those lift cylinders are cheap enough at around $10 ea.

Added grill and some of the lift cylinders ship from same location so that helps. Really have to play around with parts and where they ship from on rockauto. It's nice that they have the little truck icon to show parts that ship from same location as something already in the cart.

Grand total for headlights, grill and lift cylinders $281.62. Remove grill which reduces shipping locations from three to two and it's $195 so I'll do that since the grill actually looks fine. I'll find a way to attach the chrome strip better.

Happy October!

[Paul R.]

I bought new headlight assemblies for our ‘09 Outback off Amazon, maybe 3(?) years back, but I don’t recall the brand. OEM Subaru headlamp assemblies have the reflective surface inside eventually go bad. The plastic “lenses” yellow too, as well as oxidize - one can refinish them but never to new functionality. F’ing weight reduction — glass would last practically forever. (The deterioration accelerates, as once said surface begins to deteriorate, it absorbs more heat from the bulb, which speeds up the deterioration, which causes more heat buildup, which causes...)

I ended up taking a chance on a sort of no-name company (would have to look it up) that had good reviews, including some for other assy’s for other vehicles, going back a few years, except the bulbs burning out early. Not a problem — I had / have spare bulbs including the bulbs out of the old headlight assemblies.

These ended up being good. Everything fit ok. Disassembly and especially reassembly was a pain, as can often be the case with Subies (and most “modern” cars too), but “doable” for most any “backyard mechanic”. Low beam performance is better and tighter than OEM. High beam has a pretty wanky pattern well off axis, but is very good (again, better than OEM) down the road. It looks to me as if somebody re-engineered the reflective “angles” and compromised big time on the high beam @ 60 deg. or more off axis. Fine by me. So far, there seems to be little or no deterioration of the reflective surfaces or the lense(s). (Cross my fingers!!)