Duralast VS Valucraft

Neither are my first choice but then again I have used parts from both over the years and I have not really had a problem with them either. Valucraft has a bad rep from what I have heard but duralast I know for batteries and they have been very good and at a reasonable price. I was looking up water pumps for my car and these were the ones that came up at Autozone at almost $60 for either of them.

What is the difference between the two?

I surfed over to RockAuto and they have them starting at half that price. Kind of a no brain-er considering even with shipping I will save $20. The only problem is that I think I have a 97 motor in the car and they take a different part from the 94-95 model's I guess I will be going and looking for a ford part number on the old pump. I guess I could go to Autozone and ast to see both pumps and compare them with mine. We will see.

Seems to me the valucraft is typical 90 day junk, it may or may not be any good. The duralast, coming with a lifetime warranty, is at least intended to be decent. With anything like this, at least some of it has got to be the same parts in a different box. I once bought a set of valucraft wires for my beater and got duralast, rang up as valucraft. My dad had a full set of valucraft ball joints on his work truck and they were still good when he sold the truck 50000 miles later. For something as critical as a water pump, I would buy something with a lifetime warranty on it at a real store where it can be warrantied quickly if there is a problem.

What I have heard with some parts is the quality is not that much different. The extra cost you pay for the "better" quality is to cover the returns they expect to get due to the "lifetime" warrenty. Think of sort of like "insurance" on your part.

for the most part, like brakes, they're the same thing, but the valucraft brake set doesn't come with shims and only has a 1 year warranty. with things like waterpumps, it depends, some cars they're the same only the warranty is different, others the duralast are rebuilt from better cores or they replace more parts. i know that the duralast gold starters are all new parts, supposedly improved over oem in some ways.

i put a set of duralast gold pads on my f150 after a set of oem glazed over and couldn't even lock up the tires in the rain, with a fresh cut on the rotors and good wearing in, they completely transformed the brake feel on that truck. not sure what the material was in the pads, but you could actually feel them heat up and grab harder and harder on the first stop from cold. when i do the brakes on my xterra sometime soon, it will be getting duralast gold pads.

both duralast and valucraft are autozone house brand parts, If rock auto has them, it is because they bought a closeout that has them (pretty likely)