Search Tips

These are some useful tips to help you find the specific parts that you want on our website.

Part Searches

When you start typing in the search box, our servers will start searching with the second character typed. At some point, a scrollable pulldown will appear.  Give it just a little more time.  After a couple seconds, the site should display the first full search result page with up to 50 items. More pages may be available, up to 500 items.

You can search for parts in many ways – by brand, manufacturer part number, UPC code, general description or keyword, etc. Go ahead and try anything! It’ll start searching as soon as you type the second letter!

Keep in mind that there are over 100,000 parts in our catalog!!! We’ve tried to make the search feature as fast as possible, and are always looking for ways to improve it, but it still has limits.

Too many search results?

When this happens, it isn’t really practical for you to find your part! Its as useful as no results at all.  Nobody wants to look through hundreds of parts to find the right ones.  So, if you’re seeing too many matches, try changing your approach. The Search Tips section below will give you some ideas on what to do.

One of the biggest issues is a search that finds too many matches.  The more matches there are, the slower the search and the longer it takes to display any results. So, we’ve limited the search to the first 500 results. Any higher and you’ll get tired of waiting.  Nobody wants that. If there are more than 500 results, they simply won’t be shown.  The system will display only the first 500 that it found, showing 50 to a page.

Even with this, we recognize that there’s room for improvement.  We’re currently looking to implement enhancements to the search function on our site. In the meantime, try the tips below.

Search Tips

Here are some things you can try.

• Search on the UPC code or manufacturer’s part number.
  This is probably the best option.  It will frequently generate a single result, or at worst, a manageable number.  When different manufacturers use the same part number, they’ll all show up. There’s no way to prevent that, but the number should be very small!  Another option is to search for a partial part number. There may be more results, but it should still be manageable.
• Search with fewer words.
  Right now, the system will search for any posting with word1 OR word2 OR word3. Get rid of words to reduce the number of results.  (We’re working on enhancing the search to do AND searches as well as more complex logic.)
• Use unique words, the more unique, the better.
  If you know of a unique word in the name of the part or its description, try searching on it.
• Use the categories on the left side of the page.
  You can drill down through the 3 levels of the categories (click on the arrow to the right of a category to expand or collapse it) to try and find different options. This may be the best technique when looking for something like all possible cam shafts or mufflers.  You can click on any category at any level and get every part in that category and its sub-categories. There are almost 2000 categories at the lowest level, but the categories are well thought out.  It should be easy to drill down to the most specific category for the part you need.
• Find a similar part to discover the right category.
  If you can find a similar part and display that part’s page, look at the top. It will show the category tree that it’s in (or at least the top two of three levels).  For example, if you opened the product page for “0576S-4 by ACCEL”, a spark plug, it would show this near the top of the page:

   Home > Shop > Ignitions and Electrical > Ignition Components > 0576S-4 by ACCEL

  That means that it’s in the Ignitions and Electrical catagory, Ignition Components subcategory.

• Use the manufacturer search.
  We’ve put several of the most popular manufacturers’ logos on the home page. If you click on one, the site will display all their products, using one or more pages.  Currently, there’s a limited number of manufacturer searches set up, but we’re working on adding the rest over time.  There are hundreds, so it’ll take a while!  We’ll probably create a separate page for all of them, but keep the most popular on the front page.
• Catalogs!
  Open or download one of the catalogs on our Catalogs page and look for your part there.  Once you find it, search on the part number!

We’re continuing to refine our site.  If you have any questions or suggestions, please drop us a message using the Contact Us link or the email address, both at the bottom of the page.