OEM, aftermarket or reconditioned: which parts to fit

there are three kinds of replacement part, all of them legitimate in the right place, and the differences are worth understanding before you agree to a repair.

OEM

the part the manufacturer fits at the factory, in their box, at their price.

guaranteed to fit and to behave exactly as the original. you pay for that certainty, sometimes a great deal.

worth it for anything safety critical where the design is specific, for electronics and sensors where the calibration matters, and for body panels where fit and finish is visible.

aftermarket

made by an independent manufacturer. the range here is enormous, and this is where judgement matters.

at the top end, aftermarket is the same part in a different box: plenty of OEM parts are made by companies who also sell under their own name, and buying theirs directly is often the same component for less money. brake, filtration and suspension companies are the obvious examples.

at the bottom end, an aftermarket part is a shape that resembles the original made from cheaper material, and it will not last.

the reason a shop's parts supplier matters is that they are the ones deciding which end of that range you get. we use NAPA, which sits at the upper end and carries a warranty that means something.

reconditioned or remanufactured

a used part rebuilt to a standard, with the wearing components replaced.

genuinely good value on some things, alternators, starters, some transmissions and steering racks, where the expensive part is a housing that does not wear and the cheap parts are the ones that do.

the word to look for is remanufactured rather than used. remanufactured means it was dismantled and rebuilt to a specification. used means somebody took it off another car.

where the cheap part costs more

the labour. if a water pump takes four hours to reach, the difference between a good pump and a poor one is trivial against doing the job twice.

that is the calculation worth making: not the price of the part, but the price of the part plus the chance of paying the labour again.

what we do

we tell you which you are getting, and if a cheaper option is genuinely fine for your vehicle and how long you plan to keep it, we will say so. not every car needs the best part available, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of dishonesty.