We had a thread running recently about parts ordering screw-ups. I commented that at our shop each of us looks up our own parts or makes the calls ourselves to minimize the wrong parts sitiations. All of our aftermarket suppliers have on-line ordering and we probably order 70+% of our stuff on line. I've been using Honda's and Toyota's on-line look up for a while now to avoid the "exploded-view diagram fax dance".

On the referenced thread I made this post regarding Fordparts.com:

http://members.iatn.net/forums/read/msg.aspx?f=forum15&m=315418&fv=4&ar=2633

I've been using it for a few days now and find it helpful as long as you get hooked up with a Certified Parts Wholesaling Dealer and get their parts manager to set you up with "sponsorship". Once you're sponsored and given an invitation code, you can open up Ford Catalog Advantage (FCA) for free. These same dealers can also provide free log-ins to Fordinstallersupport.com which gets you OASIS and TRC (the actual dealer service info site). Many parts managers have no clue about this free offering

I found that getting familiar with FCA wasn't a big deal. So far, I'm not thrilled with the VIN filtering but you can find the correct part # easily. You'll need a cooperative parts manager if you're his first sponsor as it is a tad complicated on both ends. Once set up, you can look up either on Fordparts.com or jump to FCA and get better info and select the part from that site. Once you move the item into your "cart" it gets plunked into your Fordparts.com cart where you can check availability and finalize the order. That part needs some tweaking IMO.

Hope this helps some of you that wanna explore it.

Happy trails,

Rusty from Massachusetts