Come on China. Get it together already!

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Chris142

Joined
Jun 5, 2003
Messages
32,250
Location
Apple Valley, California
After 140K I finally had to replace the Water Pump in my Jeep. It was not leaking but It developed a strange ear piercing whistle that I have never heard before.

So I grabbed a cheapie on my way home. I got the old WP off and the new one bolted on. The new one came with new bolts for the pully since the threads were different.

It also included 4 lock washers to go with the 4 new bolts. The new bolts are an 8mm thread and the new lock washers are for a 6mm thread!


How could the person that put 4 bolts and 4 washers in a bag then sealed it up with a Seal-A-Meal didn't notice that the washers wont fit the bolts?
 
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
What do you expect from $2/hour workers ? They just grab whatever in the bin and put in the bag.


It is actually more than $2/hr these days, and just because you are hiring $2/hr worker doesn't means you can avoid sending the $40/hr engineers there to make things happen.

Seems like they forgot to send the engineers there...
 
This isn't a China thing. It's a cheap parts thing.

As the saying goes: if you pay peanuts, expect monkeys.
 
Well the Chinese "accidentally" sent parts that were of a superseded design to the London Taxi Company, not once but twice.

First time was the radiator that was problematic in 2007/8 and was superseded as it would start to leak after 20/30k miles, this meant a very old problem resurfaced and cost LTC a fortune in recalls.

Second time was with steering boxes, UK firm had supplied them without problems for many, many years.

Geely then started to make them in China as they were cheaper, after a while they had a problems with the steering splines wearing away!

Result several hundred new cabs couldn't be sold and around 400 ones on the road had to be recalled just before Christmas!

End result LtC didn't have the money to pay for the recall and they went belly up.

Who is in the frame to buy the rest of LTC for next to nothing and to from 30% to full ownership and avoid paying lots of Unsecured debt?

That's right Geely are at the head of the que to buy the company for nothing.

Now they are free to close down the UK Factory and make London Taxis for London completely in China, they already make them for the rest of the world in China.

You couldn't make it up.

One reason why I now try everything I can to avoid Chinese made goods.

Not an easy task but from baby steps come big things.
 
Hmmmm, strange, based on some of the other threads about Chinese manufacturing I've read on here, those mismatched bolts and nuts and bad splines must've been specified that way by the company whose name was on the box...
 
GMB pump for my volvo 940 should have had studs for the pulley/ fan but actually had 6mm threaded holes. Had to hit the hardware store. Pump mounts to engine with 6mm bolts and came with new ones for that, so I had spare old ones to at least put the pulley on and run around without the fan.
 
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
This isn't a China thing. It's a cheap parts thing.

As the saying goes: if you pay peanuts, expect monkeys.

Oh my, you added reasoning and reasonableness to this discussion. That's a no no on this topic.
31.gif
 
While I try to avoid Chinese parts like the plague, some of our good American names are not much better. About a year ago, I replaced the fuel filter on my Aerostar. I bought a Wix-branded filter and installed it. On this model, there are two horse shoe shaped clips that hold the fuel lines in place. When the old clips are removed from the working fuel filter, they break, so they should be replaced. The new Wix clips were too wide to fit and I had to take both of them to the grinder to narrow them down so that they would work. I didn't think too much about it. A YEAR LATER, I replaced the fuel filter again with a Wix. I bought it at the store right before I replaced it and, again, I had to grind down the clips. I guess they couldn't fix the problem during the year.
If you buy the fuel filter from Ford, you have to buy the clips separate. Ford pinches money so hard that they can't throw in two small $.02 clips with each fuel filter.
 
Originally Posted By: bigjl
Well the Chinese "accidentally" sent parts that were of a superseded design to the London Taxi Company, not once but twice.

First time was the radiator that was problematic in 2007/8 and was superseded as it would start to leak after 20/30k miles, this meant a very old problem resurfaced and cost LTC a fortune in recalls.

Second time was with steering boxes, UK firm had supplied them without problems for many, many years.

Geely then started to make them in China as they were cheaper, after a while they had a problems with the steering splines wearing away!

Result several hundred new cabs couldn't be sold and around 400 ones on the road had to be recalled just before Christmas!

End result LtC didn't have the money to pay for the recall and they went belly up.

Who is in the frame to buy the rest of LTC for next to nothing and to from 30% to full ownership and avoid paying lots of Unsecured debt?

That's right Geely are at the head of the que to buy the company for nothing.

Now they are free to close down the UK Factory and make London Taxis for London completely in China, they already make them for the rest of the world in China.

You couldn't make it up.

One reason why I now try everything I can to avoid Chinese made goods.

Not an easy task but from baby steps come big things.
Are there not "Chambers" in the UK which handle that kind of lawsuit? We'd call it "consenquential damages".
 
That depends on how the contract was written. Sometimes consequential damages are in the contract, other times they are left out.

If our company is selling a $1.50 part, and failure of the part results in a $3500 repair bill, we will not sign a supply contract agreeing to consequential damages, nor will the buyer find our competitor to agree to such terms, unless they pay much more for the part.
 
Originally Posted By: Kestas
That depends on how the contract was written. Sometimes consequential damages are in the contract, other times they are left out.

If our company is selling a $1.50 part, and failure of the part results in a $3500 repair bill, we will not sign a supply contract agreeing to consequential damages, nor will the buyer find our competitor to agree to such terms, unless they pay much more for the part.


Agree. Also just because you source from China doesn't means you can skip the QA or installing your own staff there. This is what makes or breaks the quality. A lot of American companies are just badges and the mismatch of screws and o rings are indications that they didn't even test the minimum, let along the more critical requirements that can't be seen so easily.
 
I just heard in the news this last week that China now has the longest high speed rail system in the world. I immediately thought about the wheels rolling on junk Chinese bearings and how long it will be before we see a tradgedy in the news due to some part failure. I don't know if they built their own equipment. They are also capable of building quality parts (unfortunately for us), lets hope that is the case.
 
Originally Posted By: JetStar
I just heard in the news this last week that China now has the longest high speed rail system in the world. I immediately thought about the wheels rolling on junk Chinese bearings and how long it will be before we see a tradgedy in the news due to some part failure. I don't know if they built their own equipment. They are also capable of building quality parts (unfortunately for us), lets hope that is the case.


I think the reason that most of what comes to the U.S. from China is such garbage is because those corporations contracting Chinese manufacturers spec out the products to be made *as* *cheaply* *as* *possible*. The whole reason that an American marketing company would contract a Chinese factory to make widgets or whatever would be to have that product made as cheaply as humanly possible. (Possibly so that the U.S. workers who used to have jobs before everything was sourced to China can afford the products?)
 
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: JetStar
I just heard in the news this last week that China now has the longest high speed rail system in the world. I immediately thought about the wheels rolling on junk Chinese bearings and how long it will be before we see a tradgedy in the news due to some part failure. I don't know if they built their own equipment. They are also capable of building quality parts (unfortunately for us), lets hope that is the case.


I think the reason that most of what comes to the U.S. from China is such garbage is because those corporations contracting Chinese manufacturers spec out the products to be made *as* *cheaply* *as* *possible*. The whole reason that an American marketing company would contract a Chinese factory to make widgets or whatever would be to have that product made as cheaply as humanly possible. (Possibly so that the U.S. workers who used to have jobs before everything was sourced to China can afford the products?)


High speed rail: they are just European / Japanese design sold to Chinese companies as IP sales. Probably not garbage, but integration in any big project is always the hard part, so who knows. They may have another collision like last time not because of cost cutting, but rushing through the schedule / design too fast. They do need high speed rail because their millions of migrant workers all try to go home the same time every year (Chinese New Year) and all trains would be full, and if any place on earth ever need high speed rail, it would be China and India.

Chinese contract manufacturing: yes, their factories always try to get contracts with low cost, to a point that they may not even make money on the production or factor in the uncertainty. And when uncertainty hits (i.e. couldn't get a loan or raw material cost increase), they would try to cut corner in quality (otherwise they would go out of business anyways). It is therefore the responsibility of the US companies who outsource to send a lot of people to follow the quality every single step or the way, and therefore it may not always save any money outsourcing there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

E
Thread lubrication for Service Manual Torque Values
Replies
5
Views
3K
explorer2030
A
  • Locked
Installed 12.6" 6th gen front brakes on 96 Maxima
Replies
10
Views
6K
asand1
G
  • Locked
Wonders of valve-stem oil seal replacement
2
Replies
29
Views
67K
Gokhan
S
  • Locked
Fixed an oil leak on my wife's Saab!
Replies
7
Views
5K
BrianWC
S
  • Locked
Body Shop Nightmare
2
Replies
28
Views
17K
sleddriver
Back
Top Bottom