Ordering Motorola® Parts or Manuals

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Back to Home How to order manuals or parts from Motorola®
By Mike Morris WA6ILQ

Comments and additional material are welcome
(even "Hey - you've got a typo at..." messages)

The first thing to do is call Motorola at 800‑422‑4210, and follow the auto-attendant menu to the price and availibility, parts ID or the order people. They're open from 7am to 7pm Central time. Their system keys on the caller ID of the phone number you are calling from so try and use the same phone line for each order. I'd add instructions here on how to get past the auto-attendant (i.e. something like "then press 1, then 3, then 1") but they change the system too often.

Or you can look in your Yellow Pages under "Radio" for your local Motorola shop. Parts and manual service from Motorola dealers is very uneven, it depends on your local dealer or dealers. Some dealers are professional and very helpful. Some others appear to just want to get rid of anyone that is not interested in buying new radios. You can order the parts yourself. Sometimes the dealers get it completely wrong, claim the parts are no longer available (maybe just to get rid of you? maybe to try and sell a new radio?) and turn people away even when the parts are available from Motorola. At the very least you can call and double check after a dealer tells you a part is no longer available.

Manuals:

Note that all Moto service and operators manuals part numbers start with 68. Every printed manual has that part number on lower right corner of the front cover or on the inside title page or the back cover. Wherever it is, it ends with an additional (dash)(letter) that is the "issue letter" - think of it as a manual version identifier.

For years the 68 was followed by the letter "P" (for "Publication")... Then they dropped the "P" and replaced it with a "-". Recently they dropped the "-". Today if you call up the parts group and order a, for example, 68P81092E05 or a 68‑81092E05 it may not be found. The correct number in their computer is 6881092E05. Most of the order-takers know that and type it in correctly, but I'm mentioning it here in case you get one that is new on the job.

For example, a UHF Mitrek manual has on the cover the number "68P81045E75‑A" but the Moto order desk knows that version as a "6881045E75A" and the generic manual as a "6881045E75". Despite that, you will find many people still put the "P", dash or hyphen separator behind the 68.

At the end of the manual part number there is a trailing "‑O" (that's a dash or hyphen then the letter O) to signify the "Original" issue - the first release - of any manual. They increment that issue letter to a trailing "‑A" for the first revision (second release), like the Mitrek example above, then a "‑B" for the second revision (third release), and they work their way up the alphabet, skipping over the letter "O" when they get to it. After ‑Z they continue with "‑AA", "‑AB", "‑AC", up to "‑AZ", then "‑BA" and on up. I've heard that there is a "‑AX" revision of some user's manual, however the highest I've personally seen is a "‑AM".

From a Spectra mobile
From a Mocom-70 mobile

If you need a radio manual give them the radio ID number (if there is one, like in the left photo) or the model number if there isn't (like in the right photo), and they will tell you the manual part number. When it's there the "ID" number takes priority over the model number. If anybody has a breakdown of the new format model number (like on the Spectra tag above) please let the repeater‑builder staff know as we'd like to have an article showing the breakdown of it.

While you have the Moto order‑taker on the phone be sure to ask them if the manual you want is still available and in stock. Lots of manuals can be temporarily out of stock (i.e. out being updated or reprinted), and if it's not on the shelf you may not get it for a month or two. Many older manuals are NLA (No Longer Available), i.e out of stock, and there is not enough demand to do another printing. At that point all you can do is say "Thank You", then post a request on any one (or all) of the following:

And there are alternate sources including eBay. For example, here's a click search for "Mitrek" on ebay: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=mitrek. You can also set up an ANDed search, perhaps for Mitrek AND Manual. eBays search uses multiple words on a line to imply an AND function, so typing "Mitrek manual" (less the quotes) will find all the auctions that contain the words "Mitrek" and "manuals", but not the ones contining "Mitrek" and "book"... but we can fix that later. Just make sure you check the box for "search description".

I suggest that you do not include the trailing revision letter when you do an eBay search or when you order a manual from Moto unless you know exactly what you are doing. If you do specify a specific revision on your Moto order they will usually try to fulfill your request, to the point of digging down through the stack in the warehouse to try and find one of that specific older revision. This can result in an occasional situation where if they are out of that specific older revision you will get an NLA notice even if newer revisions are in stock six inches further down the shelf. If you leave off the revision letter you will always get the newest revision that is in stock.

If you include the manual number and revision letter on an ebay search you are counting on the seller (a) including the manual part number at all, (b) including the revision letter, (c) including the exact revision that you set up in your search, and (d) using the exact text string you did - if you are looking for a 81107E75-A and he advertised it as a 81107E75A then it wouldn't match. Best to just look for (something like) the following (the parentheses and commas are eBays method of doing an "OR" function... and here's how we find the auctions that say "book" instead of "manual"):
(Moto, Motorola) (manual, book) Mitrek

The search syntax on eBay uses a "-" to mean "except", for example searching for
suit black -wool
will find all black suits except the wool suits.
This means that you will never get a match on a 68‑81045E75. The workaround is to put anything containing a "-" in quotes, like "68‑81045E75".

If you do decide to do a specific manual search, like
Mitrek (68P81045E75, "68‑81045E75", 6881045E75)
make sure you put an asterisk at the end of the number, for example (68P81045E75*, "68‑81045E75*", 6881045E75*)
The asterisk is eBays way of saying "followed by anything". So the 68P81045E75* will match the plain number or ANY version of that manual number. And by putting all three forms in the parentheses and commas it will find any variant on that manual.

And you can set up an "every night" search on eBay that will email you when someone posts the manual you want for sale.

Parts:

When you locate a Motorola part number on an actual part, for example 15E80137D05 on a microphone front housing, the "E" in the number indicates the size of the drafting paper the original part drawing was originally made on. This factory documentation page size is only used internally by Motorola, so you will not see it used for ordering parts. This is why part number 15E80137D05 becomes 1580137D05 or 15‑80137D05 in the parts database.

All PC boards have a part number that starts with "84" etched into one of the outer copper layers. That part number identifies the blank (i.e. unstuffed) PC board, and you, as an end-user will NEVER be able to order one, so don't even try. Even Motos own service shops get serious static when they try and order a blank board.

Assemblies and modules (i.e. stuffed PC boards) staart with 1-something or 01-something (like 01V80702E22), or a number in the format of three letters followed with 3 to 4 numbers, and possibly ending with a letter, a number, or both, for example TLN6804A1. The "A1" suffix is a version identifier. With them you want to leave off the trailing letter - i.e. RLN4008 is the Radio Interface Box (i.e "the RIB") that is used to program radios. If you were pricing one out you would NOT ask for a RLN4008A as the part lady would say "Discontinued", you would ask for an RLN4008 and she would say "Replaced by RLN4008E at (price)". So always leave off the version letter and ask/check what is the latest revision of whatever you want looked up.

If you need a part, give them the part number and see if the part number has changed (many have), and see if the part is still available. Like manuals, many of the older parts are not available any more. If you are calling just to order parts, and the part number comes up as NLA (No Longer Available), don't just hang up the phone and cry, ask them to transfer you to Parts ID and ask if there is a substitute or a new part number (after all, if you never ask, they can't say "Yes", and besides it's an 800 number and they are paying the phone bill). In many cases you will find that there is an alternate part number on file. Unfortunately only Parts ID will have that information, not Parts Ordering. So either you end up running your entire shopping list past Parts ID item by item and then transferring over to Ordering, or you end up bouncing back and forth between the two groups. Occasionally when I've had a bunch of parts to order (like 30 or so) I've asked Parts ID to establish a 3‑way call with Ordering, and if it's a slow day they've done so. We worked our way down the shopping list, and I'd read a part number and a quantity, the Parts ID lady would say "Good" or "Replaced by...." and the Ordering lady would type it in. On one call the actual order as entered had over 50% alternate part numbers (but then I was ordering parts for Micors, MaxTracs and Mitreks - all 10 to 20 year old radios).

Ordering:
Once you have the valid part number(s) for the part or manual, have them transfer you to the Parts Ordering department and place the order. Moto has two prices for each item, the list price and the NSO price (NSO=National Service Organization, i.e. the price they charge the service shops). If you are going to order a LOT of stuff, you might want to make friends with someone who can get NSO pricing.

Don't take any price quoted in any article on this web site as gospel, the prices were current at the time the article was written, and were what the author was charged, but that can change overnight. Also some authors don't get NSO pricing, some do and may not mention it in their article.

You can charge the order on your credit / debit card (or if you do enough business with them you can open an account). There are several options for shipping from UPS ground to next day.

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