2013 Tundra 5.7L. I just rolled over 100k miles and my door lock actuators are starting to fail, which is a known issue. I currently need to replace Front Driver (never works), Front Passenger (works 50% of the time) and Rear Passenger (works 80% of the time). I've decided to make this a weekend project with my son.

My question: On Rockauto, the "Economy" part is $30-$40 each and the "Daily Driver" part is $120-$200 each, so I could buy 3 Economy for less than the price of 1 Daily Driver. Does that cost difference really impact the reliability of the part? The OEM part on Toyota's website is $300+ each

A couple differences I immediately see between Economy and Daily Driver is a 12 mo vs 36 mo warranty and the cheaper one comes with a warning that it "contains chemicals known by California to cause cancer".

I know I also have the option of taking apart the existing assembly and replacing just the motor, but if I can get the entire assembly for $30-$40 and it be reliable, then I'll go with that.

You get what you pay for. I would consider getting the daily driver for at least the drivers door. Seems like that one gets the most use.

cheap parts will break again. If you must save the money do it on the parts that won't annoy you when they fail.

I replaced a window regulator in my car with parts from rock auto. Elected to spend a little extra since it was really inconvenient to have the window down for a week.

When I pulled out the existing regulator, it was obvious that it had been replaced once before and the quality between the one I pulled out and the one I replaced it with was very noticeable. Someone else used the "economy" part.

I think it probably has a lot to do with mfg warranty and also just a classification based on relative price.

Buy the economy if you're Carmax or DriveTime.

A Toyota truck with only 100k on it? Buy the "daily driver" parts and put another 200k on it.