Dale Davies said

Where do you find rebuilders anymore? You purchase an alternator or starter and get charged a core charge, so someone is rebuilding. Ask the parts store about an alternator kit. Not available is the story. Used to be able to get them anywhere, and the rebuilders have them. Used to be able to get wiper refills with just the rubber and the stainless supports, slide them in. Cost $5 for a pair. Now you have to buy the blade. Cheap in $CDN is 15, each. Then you get into the fancy crap that does not last and costs $40 each.
Nor hard to figure out, profit margins. A reman alternator cost me $275CDN for my '99 Chev. A rebuild kit would probably be $50. At 20% markup, their bank account balance looks a lot better with the reman. Mine looks like **** though!

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pishta said

Guess where the popular OEM mini style RAM starters are built? Those are super easy to rebuild BTW. Alternators have 3 moving parts minus the brushes. Rotor and 2 bearings. Replace the 2 bearings and 2-3 brushes and you got a new performing alternator if your no wear diodes are good.

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j par said

It's our business model we can't get anybody here to build it cheap so we can make a profit so we send an alternator to China and say how cheap can you make one of these? I say man we could make one of those for $3.. You're like cool we'll take a thousand of them for six bucks each... Then we put them on Amazon for $46 each.. ca-ching....$$$$...
When we're making the money we call it the American way when somebody else is making it well that's cheap China junk and it's all the Chinese fault...

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