Did online Toyota dealer parts stores all recently change? No longer able to select vehicles prior to 1991 (2 Viewers)

[CruiserTrash]

On the other hand there's a certain part that shows "Discontinued" on Toyota North America's parts site (not a dealer-specific page), but my local dealership parts counter guy, whom I've worked with a lot, says no issues with stock across the US. Plenty of that part out there. I find that situation confusing.

 

[misterclean]

So I was actually trying to search for a part for my 4Runner and came across new sites with plenty of missing schematics and choices from the parts dropdown. I thought a few of my go-to dealers were coincidentally going through ownership changes when I realized that all USA Toyota Parts sites are in this new "standardized" format. Googled the problem and saw this as a search result! Ironically, this hasn't yet affected parts hunting for my LJ71, but this sure changes the way parts work for my daily driver 4Runner. Not sure where to go from here.

Can anyone with more knowledge explain the reasoning behind this move away from the old system and how that affects ordering parts? I truly loathe my local dealers, one of which is just normally not helpful, while the other likes to sell things like crush washers for $4.99 each. Ordering from Boch and McGeorge used to be a breeze, but is the new process to order parts showing OOS/NLA online at the counter of the local dealer? I think I recall going through something similar with ordering Honda parts, but I never needed to visit the parts counter to order older items for the 1990s project cars I had at the time.