Do you think OEM parts are always better, or is aftermarket catching up?

I was talking with a guy named Mike at a shop in Nashville last week, and he swore the aftermarket injectors he put in a 6.7 Cummins ran just as good as factory ones for half the price. But I’ve always stuck with OEM because I’ve seen cheap parts fail after 20,000 miles. What’s your take on this, especially for high hour engines like in fleet trucks?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifer_west521mo ago

Have you ever had a bad experience with aftermarket parts that made you second guess them? I used to be all OEM, no question about it, especially on fleet stuff where downtime kills your budget. But a few years back a buddy of mine put cheap aftermarket radiators in three of his trucks and they all started leaking at the welds within six months. That pretty much sealed it for me - I saw the failure firsthand and it changed my mind. Now I only go OEM for cooling systems and anything with tight tolerances like injectors or pumps. Aftermarket is okay for things like belts or filters where the specs are simple, but for the high hour engines you're talking about, I'd stick with factory parts. The money you save isn't worth the headache of a breakdown at mile 100,000 when you're trying to keep a fleet rolling.

jana5841mo ago

Nah, I gotta push back on this one. Seen plenty of aftermarket cooling parts hold up just fine in dirty conditions if you buy from a known brand, not the cheapest random one. Half the time OEM rads are just rebranded aftermarket anyway with a huge markup. If you do your homework on who actually makes the parts, you can save a ton and still get 100k plus miles easy. The trick is avoiding the no-name junk on Amazon, not writing off all aftermarket stuff.