the way I understand it is that parts places don't carry in stock for cars over 5 years old... due to the massive inventory that would be needed.. motorcycle parts are much worse , more like 2 years... off brand bikes probably no inventory of parts at all. simply because that is a very substancial investment
just to be able to do that. and usually those businesses are small and can't afford to do that.
but one thing every bike shop can do is Order the parts....at least for the bikes they work on....some bike shops carry the books for every bike on the market.... the Honda shop in Redding is really good about that now they can get parts for just about every bike out there.... but it takes time.
that's the bad part.... it's one of the drawbacks of owning a motorcycle
it's common to have to wait a month for your parts....
I remember waiting 3 weeks for an oil pump on my honda 90 back in the early 1970's I had to pre pay for it and when it got there it was the wrong part.
they sent it back and got another one and when that one arrived it was the right one.... just getting that oil pump took 3 months and I had no transportation in all that time..... it killed me ! LOL
.... many years later when I started my motorcycle repair shop I first got the parts books for honda, Kawasaki,yamaha, suzuki and Bultaco. each of the parts books are for a certain model so you had to have alot of parts books on hand just to order parts....at the time they were free to dealers their not now.
so I ordered a bunch of them.....and sure enough, the first bike that comes in was a bike I didn't have a parts book on... but a quick call to the local big bike shop got the parts. special order in 3 days.... I did not tack on extra cost to the customer, I just charged him what they charged me.... and everything was great, the customer was happy and so was I.
Parts take time..... that's the bad part about working on your own bikes !
you have to be patient !
once UPS got in the game things sped up alot. USPS was very slow, (a week from L.A, or Seattle) UPS was just 2~3 days usually but the cost was more.... so the price of Small parts went way up and no one understood that..... unless you ordered alot of big parts at the same time you had to order the small parts seperately... and that was costly.
....
the guy at the parts counter can either make or brake your business !
for my business it was ME so I couldn't complain LOL i only ordered the wrong part once, in the 3 years I had the business going
but it turned out I was only making enough money to keep the doors open and feed the family.... no big profit margin like it was supposed to be
because I wasn't charging the $22.00 an hour shop time the big bike shops were.... I was charging $10.00 hr. and making it up in volume. every day I would put out about 3 bikes and things were looking up I had the work
but then Yamaha came out with Shims for the valves and all the bikes followed suit.... I saw the hand wrighting on the wall and decided to move and get into another line of work Yamaha's valve shim inventory so I could just set valves would cost $25,000 dollars, there was no buy a small shim kit
back then you had to have the entire valve shim set . so I closed the doors
only to open up another shop in another location !
it's like I never learn ! but working on bikes is what I liked to do !
.....
the parts supply line has improved a bit over the years.... but when its on a slow boat from china your just screwed and have to wait...
in many cases now you can request it be sent by air that speeds up shipping alot. cost more too !
so hang in there, waiting for parts is no fun !
Bob......