I almost go mental when confronted with an expert who ditched high school so he could get a job to buy a car and stop wasting time in school. I was trying to find a Stihl 4 stroke a few months back and it is really apparent how replace and dispose have eliminated any knowledge base from "dealers". I couldn't get anything but sales drones and they just ship back defective units to Stihl so there was no luck. About two years ago I went to a Subaru dealership to pick up an alternator for my truck, an 82 BRAT with an ER27 engine from a 1991 model XT6. I know what is in the truck because I built it myself. I go to the parts counter and tell them that I need an alternator for any year XT6, they are all the same. He asks for my VIN. I tell him that the BRAT's VIN won't do him any good. He gets the gotcha look and goes into the whole "Well, I thought you said you had an XT6, this is why we need the VIN so we can tell what you have." I explain to him that I have an 82 BRAT with the XT6 engine in it and that it also has 12 inches lift and 33x16 swampers. His tone gets even more snide as he informs me that the engine is too big to ever fit in that truck and that it would be; "Nice if it existed". The air was starting to get real thick and ugly, you could feel the tension and it seemed that we could have come to blows over this. I had no idea why it had to go this way, all I wanted was an alternator. So I told him that he was entitled to believe what he wanted and that I would take it under consideration as I drove home in the truck, but for now I just wanted him to go get the alternator off the shelf and ring it up. He gave a sneer and asked me if I could just drive the truck in so he could look at the VIN. OK, so I walked outside and drove it into the shop bay area right outside the parts window.



The look on his face was priceless and then he was trying to act like he was my best friend or something. I asked him if I could use this phone while he went to get the alternator. I had bought my last 3 Imprezas from this dealership and the sales guy is a club member. I called the general manager and asked him if he could walk across the lot and come meet me in parts, he had been wanting to see the BRAT since he had sold them in the 80's. I explained the whole episode over the alternator to him and there was a very uncomfortable (for the parts guy) discussion about his atitude and prospects for staying employed.