Finding Supplies

[kballowe]

We try to buy at our local dealers, but it's getting harder.

Today I went looking for a battery tender harness for this new Trail 125 - and a quart of 10W-30 motorcycle oil.

Honda dealer #1 had neither. #2 ? Nope. Dealer #3 had the oil only. Went into St Louis to a Cycle Gear store and they had several versions of that battery tender harness.

 

[dmonkey]

That's been my experience with dealerships the past few years as well, they often won't even have a set of tires in stock for a motorcycle that they have several of on the floor. For shops with good service I'll sometimes order parts through them, the rest I just buy online, even oil.

 

[kballowe]

That's been my experience with dealerships the past few years as well, they often won't even have a set of tires in stock for a motorcycle that they have several of on the floor. For shops with good service I'll sometimes order parts through them, the rest I just buy online, even oil.

We HAD a family-run dealer from 1978 until 2018. They stocked all manner of oil and filters, inner tubes, and just stuff ya needed. They were a metric dealership but would work on most anything and even stocked some Harley stuff.

They retired and sold to a car dealer. That was the end of that. They had mechanics that had been there 20+ years.... but all the original staff is long gone now.
Anything you want, they could probably order, but I can also order stuff.

 

[eastema]

I asked the dealer I bought my trail from ( Naults, in Manchester NH) about stocking tires. Nope we will not stock them. And they sold 5 trails this year. They do have oil though.

 

[dmonkey]

I wouldn't blame them for not stocking the CT125 tires though, not enough of them sold to justify the shelf space and the size is very uncommon in the USA. A Honda Powersports dealer not stocking the GN4 oil that they recommend in so many of their different 4-stroke engines, and would use to service any of them that come in for maintenance, that bit is a weird dealer experience.

 

[SneakyDingo]

Some things I'm pretty ok with them not stocking, and tires feels like it's in that bucket. Between sizes and treads, there's so many different variations that optimizing the on-demand purchase route is the better outcome, even if it's less convenient. I'd expect the most common bikes, in the most common sizes, in some pretty well selling tires, and that's about it. I'm constantly surprised at the selection of my local Cycle Gear's tire selection, even if none of the tires I actually found fit. Just looking at that rack shows how wide varying in-stock items can be.

Not having Honda oil though, that's a red flag, especially if it happens more than once. If it was a Yamaha with Yamalube, that would be the sort of thing you'd call corporate over, but Honda has no such promises, so I guess it's more of a "if this happens frequently" sort of moment.

Inventory and supply chain across the board is terrible at the moment. Getting stuff from Thailand through Beez Deals is a breeze compared to my day job requests.