Saw shop owners and the like.

[JimL]

Heres a question?
I wasn't too busy today at work and I went around and collected all the carb kits the old mechanic had stashed away in every crevise i could think of. Well now I have a HUGE pile of these kits layin on the lift.

How do you guys organize these things? Theres so many different ones and I don't know what I am looking for half the time so that makes it worse.

Most the kits have the name of the carb on them, bing, tillotson, zama, walbro ect... and some of them have the actual carb models on them(i dont even know how to use those numbers) and some just have a part number from stens or rotary ect...

 

[eyolf]

I worked for a guy that seems to have done about like you are describing...stuff laying all over. This guy could usually lay his hands on what he wanted when somebody needed a part, but when he was gone things were tough.

Another shop was pretty good about keeping stuff organized according to what it fit...Homelite stuff altogether, Poulan, Briggs and Stratton, etc., and it really didn't matter who sold it...OEM or not, but it was still daunting for anyone but the owner until I talked him into keeping all of it organized according to OEM part number. I donated some of my own time getting him set up nice, but it was worth it, because then his wife got really good at helping people with parts without having to yell out back a lot (and she made sure he was grateful).

I eventually became parts and service manager for a regional distributor, and had to keep track of thou$and$ is inventory. Everything had a number, and that was that...no cheating. Meant you had to look it up if you were'nt sure, but at least we always knew what we had...no dredging around in the back for something you can't remember if you have or not.

Can be a real pain and pretty expensive to clean up your parts dept if you're not very organized, but it can pay eventually if you keep a lot of parts on hand.

 

[JimL]

Yeah, i am in the first situation you mentioned.

I have worked in the shop for 2 years on 4 cycle stuff and i kept all my parts organized. The 2 cycle man is having surgery done so i took his spot. He used to be able to find stuff like it was right in front of him. Hell I dig and dig and dig and dig some more until i finally find one. I spent 25 minutes today looking for a carb kit for a homelite 330. Finally found one along with the other 11 that got ordered with it. Said i was fed up and went and dug them all up.

 

[Methoss084]

Over the years we have found that those cabinets with all those small plastic drawrs work pretty good. And those small tackle boxes meant for fishing hooks and split shot weights work awesome for keeping jets, screws, fulcrums, welch plugs and those fuel screens that seem to disappear when you drop them!

Josh