Remarked parts. How common?

[Mark R]

Just curious really.

I ordered a new water pump from a well known generic brand, as it was half the price of a genuine Toyota one.

Anyway, when the pump arrived it came in a plastic bag labelled Aisin (who happens to be the Toyota OEM anyway).

What was more interesting was that the water pump, itself, was stamped with Toyota, and the part number - more precisely, someone had tried to grind it off with a grinder, but hadn't quite finished the job.

So, it looks like my generic supplier had just bought some stock from the real OEM, who just re-used the same casting as they used for Toyota, but had gone to the effort to grind the Toyota name off.

Just seemed a curious state of affairs, but I suppose it is understandable, as it saves the OEM retooling.

 

[jlee]

lol yup, I saw the thread title and was about to post the exact same thing. The Aisin water pump in my MR2 has a grind mark over where "Toyota" would be.

 

[MiataNC]

Probably very common.

If you are an OEM supplier, it would be cheaper to extend the production run and grind off identifiers. Then ship the OEM parts to the car maker, and the remarked parts to the aftermarket.

 

[Pulsar]

You'll see this all the time. When I worked for AC Delco / Delphi / GM / AC Rochester, any components we had that didn't meet the quality standards got sold at little better than scrap prices to a little place down in Mexico. They had also bought a lot of our old manufacturing equipment. They'd remove identifying marks, attempt to correct whatever was wrong, then assemble the component and sell them as aftermarket. That's why they're dirt cheap.

Sometimes the issue was simple. Too much varnish, or a bad diode. Sometimes it wasn't. Unbalanced at high speed rotation, etc. There actually is a reason that OEM is OEM, and aftermarket is aftermarket.

When the OEM builds to-spec service parts during their normal production run, they're sold as an OEM part. They'd never over-make a part to sell it for a lower price after production is done. At the end of a particular run, they DO run off a number of parts to support the product in the future, but they don't dump them on the market cheap.