First, the best place I can see is a feature on this board about finding shops. Just go down the page a bit and open that forum and then scroll down to your state.

The reason Stuttgart (I think you are talking about those guys on Stemmons, just south of Royal. Right?) will not stand behind customer supplied parts is that they do not know where you got them.

All indy shops build up a network of suppliers they can trust to deliver on time and with the quality you want. If you just show up with a part they cannot stand behind it because they do not know where it came from.

It is also common for the shop to make a bit off the parts as well, but not as much as you might think. It works like this....

Say you need a steering damper for a 123. A shop in Dallas might get it from a Mercedes dealer or they might get it from an independent importer. Both suppliers will sell to a shop at a discount of maybe 30% of suggested retail and they will also deliver the part to the shop. The shop then charges you 100% or retail on the part so they do make something off of it.

But the shop knows they are getting real Mercedes parts delivered to their door so they can spend their time repairing and not running all over town to pick up parts.

If there is a problem with the repair the shop will make it right and the supplier might pick up part of the cost as it was their faulty part that caused the problem.

If they install your part, and it is no good for any reason, you are not going to pay for part of the do-over. Hence: No customer installed parts.

Sometimes, on older cars, this is not really an issue. The only part available might be one the customer supplies. The shop guys understand this, but they can only stand behind their work and not the part. If it is no good then you have to eat it. But this gets into another area...

What if the part you have supplied is not the right one? The shop may not know the starter you supplied for your 450 SEL 6.9 was from a 450 SEL 4.5 until the old starter is out and the slight differences are noticed. If the shop buys the starter from a supplier they can send it back and request the right one.

However, in your case you seem to know what you are doing when it comes to the parts thing and you know where to get them at the price you want to pay. I think if you take it to Stutgartt, and both of you agree that they cannot stand behind their work since you supplied the part, that in a weird kind of way it would be OK. From what I know of them they will not deliver any less quality on their work just because you supplied the part.

As long as you understand their point of view going in, and if they agree to do it, I would have no problem (with this shop, anyway) of letting them do the repairs.

Pooka