Just to poke a little more fun at my old nemesis Volvo. I had a simple starter solenoid start to stick. They are the kind that mount to the starter. Volvo wanted just over $400 bucks for a new solenoid. But, they had a new starter with solenoid in stock and I could buy that for 375. I called boatfix after that and George immediately knew who's solenoid would be a direct fit and shipped me one out in the mail for $15.
When I had a drive plate go out, they started to inquire about a first born child. My transmission guy took the drive plate apart until we figured out it was made by torflex, and after a few emails to Germany, we figured out how to put one together from oem parts for about 25% of Volvo price. If you own one of these things, this is what you end up doing.
Of course then there was the time that we put a transmission back on, and had to order new bolts as the originals had gone missing. Got the Volvo bolts, put everything back together and launched. Within ten seconds of first start, the whole thing makes a hideous noise and after shutting down, we have oil seeping out the bell housing. Volvo is constantly superseding parts numbers! Trying to save money, but it's done by parts buyers, not engineers. This time they had substituted longer bolts which carved right through the housing and breaching the oil gallery of the transmission. Volvo actually made good on that one after some negotiation by the dealer. I actually fear what would have been the outcome had I been the one doing he install that time.
The original engineering on many of the engines is good. Sometimes very good. But dealing with their parts, constantly superceded by worse parts, and having to deal with their poorly supported dealer network is just not worth it.
