Buying parts from Japan on eBay?

Need to replace front sway bar links. Dealers want $220-250 for both. Found these on eBay: https://ebay.us/m/VuH3lD

Even with the 15% tariff I will have to pay on these, they're still almost half off. Thoughts?

 

Is there anything on these trucks made in Japan? They’re not even sold in the Japanese market

 

I've always bought from Amayama.com . But yeah, finding any stocked parts in Japan for these trucks is unusual.

I just bought some inner TREs and the part numbers on Amayamas parts fiche were not the ones i was seeing on state side oem parts fiches.

 

I saw a lot of those oem branded sway bar links from Japan at half the price of the dealer when shopping around this year. I almost pulled the trigger on them but the fact that they included nuts when the sway bar links from the dealer do not had me sketched out into believing they were counterfeit as well as the price being too good to be true. It’s also interesting that the Toyota packaging for the links said “Made in USA with imported and domestic materials” and were not made in Japan. Ended up paying the full dealership price to be safe…

 

I did the same exact thing with the TREs I just bought.

Also pissed about the deminimus going away. Just ordered a clock spring for an FJ a few months ago when it was still in effect. Saved like $200 off a USA one.

 

Woah is that site legit? Super low prices https://www.amayama.com/en/part/toyota/4881004010

 

Make sure you look into import duties. Things might be a bit screwy right now with the whole "shipped from overseas" thing.

But as always, what the hell do I know?

 

I also saw this site mentioned at some point.
https://partsouq.com/

I saved it for future pricing, but haven't bought anything off of it. Is Amayama.com a similar to the partsouq?

 

i would prefer to buy non-genuine from rock auto before i special-order from overseas.

 

At what mileage did your link go?

 

My original links had to be cut out when I redid the suspension a few years back so I replaced with some moogs that gave me about 75k miles before getting clunky. The only reason I went back with the expensive oem links is cause I’m crazy and wanted to get every component back to original. I would probably recommend just getting some moog/mevotech links if you’re not ocd like me.

 

Yep, both sites are legit. I have purchased almost two dozen various parts from them over the past couple years. Order process is unique. For amayama you place an order. they do some checking and then in a day or two you get an invoice. You pay the invoice and then they gather your parts and ship them. I got a clockspring for an FJ earlier this year. I had it within 8 days of my order. That was faster then ordering from a dealer stateside.

They may not ship to the USA anymore due to the the changes in import duties. Shipments under $800 used to be duty free(de minimus), and now you end up paying the shipper import duties (currently 20%?, changes frequently) Last week I saw in the news that many countries have stopped shipping to the US. I also noticed parts I was looking at on Amayama suddenly became no longer available. I assume they are connected?

Also be aware that the 2nd gen and onward are no longer made in Japan, so they frequently dont stock or have the parts. However there are a number of japanese parts on our trucks so you just have to know what you can and should not get.