Establish which part manufacturers supply the Mazda factories and use those brands.
Thanks for that. Although it's not so clear cut sometimes! Many years ago, I had a mate who worked for QH, in their quality control department. This was back in the days when they actually made stuff here. Sometimes, they would be supplying original equipment to the car manufacturer for production vehicles. The manufacturer would have a very tightly specified set of sign-off criteria. So (for example, in the case of a balljoint), surface roughness of the ground surface of the ball, angular tolerances on the taper, material specifications, obviously, surface hardness, specifications for the nylon socket, etc. Parts coming off the production line that were within those tolerances would be assembled and sent to the car manufacturer (who, of course, had his own goods inwards QC checks).
However, parts that were JUST out of tolerance, could be acceptable as "genuine spares" to the manufacturer, and would be boxed accordingly.
Further down the out-of-spec tree, parts could still be assembled and put in QH branded boxes.
Even further out-of-spec, could be sold to the "no-name" aftermarket parts manufacturers.
So you were quite a long way from the OE specification by the time they were bad enough to actually make it to the scrap bin!
That's the trouble with using someone who supplies the OE components. There's no guarantee you'll get OE quality. The other problem, is when you use a reputable brand but for something that they're not reputable for. As an example, I bought a couple of anti roll bar droplinks, branded SKF. Now SKF seem to make fantastic bearings, but these droplinks were pants! The rubber bushes pulled straight out of their housings within about 10 miles!
