1971 Seat Belt Warning light

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I looked for two years to find one for my J Code vert restoration... Finally located a nice one with slightly faded but all intact chrome for $40 at the Ohio Fairgrounds All Ford swap meet I use to attend every Fall. Typical Perkin's pricing on this piece. lol
 
I'll start by acknowledging that this particular seller has been a hot topic of discussion among us and on other forums for years. As someone who has been in the parts business and managed a Ford parts department for many years, I understand the concept of supply and demand. I've also been involved in several Concourse restorations (no more for me), so I know the struggle of finding parts for low-production vehicles or options offered for a single or partial model year. The dealer owner and his son, who later took over, had a storage building where they kept quite a collection of Ford toys. That's when I first encountered the issue of extravagant pricing. But none of that compares to what I've seen with this seller, which is why my lengthy discussion here.

He is also known as the home of the infamous $8,500.00 Boss 351 carburetor, a part that most people love to hate and throw away. The D1ZZ-9510-Z (D1ZF-ZA) used to retail in the $165.00 range before being discontinued in the mid-'70s, so $8,500 is a whopping markup. If I were restoring a Boss 351 and wanted to stay as close to original as possible, I would take the hit at an MCA show and cough up the bucks for an over-the-counter D1ZX-9424-DA square bore intake or at least an equivalent. You could at least run a readily available and more street-friendly Holly carburetor unless you want a trailer queen you push off and on the car trailer at car shows (which I have seen a few of).

Now, the belt light bezel and lens. The correct part number is D1ZZ-10C876-A. This part was reclassified to a class C (slow/inactive) part in '77. Class C is the Ford National PDC (Parts Distribution Center) in Livonia, MI. This is where newly released model parts with no sales history start life, and C-class parts that are slow/inactive go to die. When discontinued, this belt lamp and bezel retailed for $3.15 and had a dealer cost of 1.83! Based on the $1.83 price, I believe this is close to a 20,400% markup! Or a Boss 351 dipstick for $650.00 that retailed for $2.45 before being discontinued on 7/79. Those are very handsome profit margins!

Unless he has pockets as deep as Ford, this stash of parts he has was not purchased at retail or even wholesale prices. In the '70s, these parts were no more collectible than the equivalent parts on Dad's LTD. Idle inventory is the bane of most parts departments. You're losing money when you pay to do a year-end inventory, then pay taxes on said inventory, then lather, rinse, and repeat the following year. These idle inventory parts also pull down your inventory turn. Back then, companies and other larger Ford dealers would purchase idle inventory for at least 50 cents or more on the dollar. When the Blue Oval Certified program started, of the dozens of parameters each department had to meet, Ford was now monitoring, among many things, idle inventory in the parts dept. With 5,000+ dealers now trying to rid themselves of mountains of those non-selling parts, you would now be lucky to get 10-20 cents on the dollar, 30 if lucky. Those prices were paid on the cost side of the part. I get incensed when I see some of the prices and know what they actually cost. $650.00 for a Boss 351 dipstick that retailed for $2.45! Again, my opinion.

These are his parts and can be sold for whatever stratospheric price he deems appropriate. I dealt with him once on some Boss 429 parts (MEGA $$$$) that a fellow MCA friend of mine needed and paid for. I still swallowed hard when looking at the invoice!

It's disheartening to feel like the people who share our passion for this hobby are being taken advantage of. It's not just the extremely high prices but also the deceitful practices of another group who intentionally mark stock dipsticks, carburetors, distributors, etc., to appear like actual Boss or CJ parts. It's a slap in the face to our shared love for these vehicles.

OK, I'm through and stepping down from my soap box!
 
I'll start by acknowledging that this particular seller has been a hot topic of discussion among us and on other forums for years. As someone who has been in the parts business and managed a Ford parts department for many years, I understand the concept of supply and demand. I've also been involved in several Concourse restorations (no more for me), so I know the struggle of finding parts for low-production vehicles or options offered for a single or partial model year. The dealer owner and his son, who later took over, had a storage building where they kept quite a collection of Ford toys. That's when I first encountered the issue of extravagant pricing. But none of that compares to what I've seen with this seller, which is why my lengthy discussion here.

He is also known as the home of the infamous $8,500.00 Boss 351 carburetor, a part that most people love to hate and throw away. The D1ZZ-9510-Z (D1ZF-ZA) used to retail in the $165.00 range before being discontinued in the mid-'70s, so $8,500 is a whopping markup. If I were restoring a Boss 351 and wanted to stay as close to original as possible, I would take the hit at an MCA show and cough up the bucks for an over-the-counter D1ZX-9424-DA square bore intake or at least an equivalent. You could at least run a readily available and more street-friendly Holly carburetor unless you want a trailer queen you push off and on the car trailer at car shows (which I have seen a few of).

Now, the belt light bezel and lens. The correct part number is D1ZZ-10C876-A. This part was reclassified to a class C (slow/inactive) part in '77. Class C is the Ford National PDC (Parts Distribution Center) in Livonia, MI. This is where newly released model parts with no sales history start life, and C-class parts that are slow/inactive go to die. When discontinued, this belt lamp and bezel retailed for $3.15 and had a dealer cost of 1.83! Based on the $1.83 price, I believe this is close to a 20,400% markup! Or a Boss 351 dipstick for $650.00 that retailed for $2.45 before being discontinued on 7/79. Those are very handsome profit margins!

Unless he has pockets as deep as Ford, this stash of parts he has was not purchased at retail or even wholesale prices. In the '70s, these parts were no more collectible than the equivalent parts on Dad's LTD. Idle inventory is the bane of most parts departments. You're losing money when you pay to do a year-end inventory, then pay taxes on said inventory, then lather, rinse, and repeat the following year. These idle inventory parts also pull down your inventory turn. Back then, companies and other larger Ford dealers would purchase idle inventory for at least 50 cents or more on the dollar. When the Blue Oval Certified program started, of the dozens of parameters each department had to meet, Ford was now monitoring, among many things, idle inventory in the parts dept. With 5,000+ dealers now trying to rid themselves of mountains of those non-selling parts, you would now be lucky to get 10-20 cents on the dollar, 30 if lucky. Those prices were paid on the cost side of the part. I get incensed when I see some of the prices and know what they actually cost. $650.00 for a Boss 351 dipstick that retailed for $2.45! Again, my opinion.

These are his parts and can be sold for whatever stratospheric price he deems appropriate. I dealt with him once on some Boss 429 parts (MEGA $$$$) that a fellow MCA friend of mine needed and paid for. I still swallowed hard when looking at the invoice!

It's disheartening to feel like the people who share our passion for this hobby are being taken advantage of. It's not just the extremely high prices but also the deceitful practices of another group who intentionally mark stock dipsticks, carburetors, distributors, etc., to appear like actual Boss or CJ parts. It's a slap in the face to our shared love for these vehicles.

OK, I'm through and stepping down from my soap box!
I grew up in Dearborn and got to know two guys who worked in the Ford parts building.
One guy his house and garage were filled to the ceiling with Ford boxes. He had Torinos and Mustangs also. The other guy around the corner from me had a yellow 70 Cobra he was restoring. I got to know him because I had a 70 GT 429 car. I bought a set of NOS boss 302 rods from him for a 302 I was building for my 88 GT that was only a year old. He showed me boxes with new shakers in them and some other goodies. Said he would send out messages to the dealers calling back certain part numbers.
 
I grew up in Dearborn and got to know two guys who worked in the Ford parts building.
One guy his house and garage were filled to the ceiling with Ford boxes. He had Torinos and Mustangs also. The other guy around the corner from me had a yellow 70 Cobra he was restoring. I got to know him because I had a 70 GT 429 car. I bought a set of NOS boss 302 rods from him for a 302 I was building for my 88 GT that was only a year old. He showed me boxes with new shakers in them and some other goodies. Said he would send out messages to the dealers calling back certain part numbers.
If you had contacts at any PDCs, you were in good shape with any of your projects. The two PDCs in the area you grew up in were National and Detroit. You are probably more than familiar with the addresses. National PDC is at 11871 Middlebelt Rd, and National (later renamed Ford Livonia II PDC) is at 28301 Schoolcraft Rd. After years of receiving and sending parts back to these depots, I know these by heart.

Ford had several different programs for dealers to help keep their inventories clean. The main program was PIPP (Parts Inventory Protection Program), based on the dealer's purchases, stock order discounts, and return percentage selected. It could be confusing since you could flex the stock order discount and the return percentage over time. This was before it was all computerized, and it could be intimidating and labor-intensive and cause some Parts managers not to participate. There were four different categories, and that determined which depot depot they went to. Parts could be returned monthly, quarterly, once every six months, or once annually. Since we were always swamped, and back then, it took so long, I did every six months.

Some parts Ford scrapped, and others in the discontinued stage might be sold off to companies like Carpenters, Green Sales, or someone like the one discussed above. Ford usually scrapped all code 3 parts (obsolete parts) and sent them to a salvage yard to be destroyed. Of course, that usually didn't happen, and people like our friend mentioned above swooped in and bought these pieces for pennies on the dollar since the yard had absolutely no money in the parts. I know this from helping a friend responsible for some great commission checks for me. He needed two sets of primary and secondary four-barrels for a high riser and a tunnel port 427. He needed C5AF-9510-BT primary @ $170.74 and C5AF-9510-BU secondary @ $152.50. Although they were still listed in the price catalog and the depot showed them in stock, the order packing slip indicated "not available." I called them and found out they had just obsoleted them, pulled them from the shelves, and sent them to the magical scrapyard where our "friends" go to harvest deals of the century. My 427 friend eventually put out an ad looking for these carburetors, as his high-riser and tunnel port projects were at a standstill. Someone who was one of the "Harvesters" recognized him as a 427 aficionado who had helped him with some 427 help and decided to contact him. He sold all four carburetors my friend needed for around $50.00 a piece and made plenty of money, so you can imagine how little he paid for them at the magical scrap yard. So, once again, you can see how our previously discussed person in the thread can enjoy those 20,000 + % profits! After finally realizing what was happening, Ford started self-scrapping these class parts.

After Ford started moving all the processes online, things became more streamlined, and I spent half the time on PIPP returns. That was also when, as your friend mentioned, we received the last time to return notices based on our inventory. We would then know what parts were being discontinued, and it was our last chance to get rid of them. I also received another notice that part numbers on Ford's list were to be discontinued and purged from the PDCs. I looked for Mustang, Torino, and the old '60s F series numbers, as they were always in demand and good-selling parts for us. The one that hurt my feelings the most was the letter informing me that Ford was, as of the date of the letter, discontinuing all '55-57 T-Bird, '65-78 Mustang, and the few remaining old F series parts. I imagine our "Friend' who evidently has some inside contacts, probably knew about the Mustang parts before I even got the letter!

I hope you got a good deal on the Boss 302 rods. Those were originally C3OZ-C 271/289 rods, renumbered C9ZZ-B for use in the Boss 302. They were good rods. We sold a lot to the engine builders who ran 289s and 302s at the local dirt track! Good times! :)
 
People who misrepresent what they have or perpetrate fraud deserve their bad reputations. People who have preserved parts for 40+ years and are representing them fairly deserve every penny they can get. They placed their bets and are now getting a payoff.
 
100% agreed with Mike!!! I have purchased from them many times and they were exactly what i wanted and was willing to pay. To top that i did not have to spend the weekend at 100 degree weather walking through some swap meet hoping to find something. Of course if you want you can always go to flee bay and get something that could be possibly misrepresented. Please make the choice that makes you happy.
 
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