This post is more dissapointment than anything. With a hurricane/tropical strom looming over our heads I thought my wife and Son and I would take a drive to Titusville as I have a store there that had some damage.
Then I remembered that Ecklers was just a few miles away. So in the terrential down pour we drove to their massive warehouse and went inside to their small show room area and looked around.
Low and behold I see an R-59 battery on display. Perfect, I've been wanting one for some time and though I'll take one. Mind you this warehouse is MASSIVE. $329.99 ok I'll take one. Nope, "sorry, we don't stock them, it will only take 2-3 weeks to come in". No thanks, I can order one myself if I wanted to wait 2-3 weeks and save about $75.00
Decided to leave and my wife points to a red line radial by Coker on display. Thinking to myself, why surely they stock them as every Camaro and Vette had them back in the day.
My wife says to me, you have wanted these things since the day we bought the Bird, let's just get a set. With a ton of arm twisting I say OK! Walk up to the counter and said I would like a set of 5 14" red lines. Yeap, you guessed it. Not only do they not stock any red lines, they only sell the Coker bias ply not the steel belted radials as the one on display.
Is it just me or are these places just really sucking big time? I was willing and prepared to walk out of this place with an R-59 battery and a set of 5 red line tires. This would have been a $1300 sale. Instead I walked out with a worthless Camaro catalog.
Man this stuff just smokes my onions!!!!!!!!!
PS I also wanted to purchase a set of KYB rear shocks, however, by this time I wasn't even going to waste my time asking....
By the way. I did go to NPD up in Ocala, FL this past Monday. Experience was much better. Went there to purchase several items to install my rebuilt/blue printed M21. There were several things on my list and they did actually have them all in stock!
In addition, the salesperson took us in the back and showed us the owner's collection of cars. There are no words to being to describe what we saw. 150-200 of the most rear and collectable cars. Most of which had VERY LOW to NO miles on them. Absolutely unreal! Not one first gen "f" body if you can imagine that!
The owner of NPD offered a guy that I know over a buck and a quarter for a Hardtop 400 4 speed 1969, that has everything perfect on the car. All the numbers, are matching, I mean every number on the car, and all NOS parts. There's a longer story here, but the guy turned it down. He loves this car.
Well, if so, they went through an aweful lot of trouble. The zero mile cars still had plastic on the seats, stickers in the windows etc. In addition, there were SEVERAL late model cars as well. I did see an GNX with ZERO miles, plastic on everything and supposedly the car was NEVER started (EVER)! You would have to see this first hand to appreciate this collection...
The collection of Pontiacs was absolutely incredible. I was with a guy from FL here who is very well known in the classic car hobby as he is an appraiser, even he was blown away by this collection. Very cool to see, if you are ever in the Ocala, FL area, this is one stop you want to make. They are open 7 days a week...
Concerning Rick´s/Eckler´s: also their service sucks... I ordered a complete OER latex weatherstrip kit + OER molded door jamb edgings one year ago from Ames (although OER is property of Classic Industries) and re-ordered from Rick´s (Ames was out of stock) the door jamb edging and the door weatherstrip because one of each pair was torn within 300 miles (could be because of these bad fitting repro PUI door panels...).
One of the two door jamb edgings arrived damaged in the package; I took some pics and emailed them to Rick´s, asking them if I should send them back or what to do (Rick´s charged me $211.00 s&h costs to Germany for very light parts worth USD 268.00!!). That was 2 months ago... After one month they sent an email telling me "OER took a great part and made it cheaper to make. This part is by no means the greatest in the world. However, it is the only thing unless you can find a set of good, used originals" -- but no single word concerning any refund or where to return the part and who will pay for shipping. I once again emailed my inquiery two weeeks ago (again including the pics) and so far no reply...
So, after being bought by Eckler´s Rick´s is losing repution very fast. Unfortunately... Next to Ames they have been the best part supplier for a long time...
BTW - I own a 66 El Camino, too. There has been one fine part supplier called "The El Camino Store". Guess what? Bought by Eckler´s, too. Same as with Rick´s: very fast decline in service and quality...
Problem is: the smaller, high quality part supplieres obviously can´t compete against the big ones like Classic Industries and Eckler´s so they will fold down over time or will have to sell their name. It´s a pity!
I have bought from ricks in athens ga, never a problem with my purchases they even made me a box for a front winsheild.I didn't tell them I was working on a firebird.
