So I finally found the article about chinese parts. It was in my Smart Money magazine not autoweek.

Here's a paragraph from the article.





How bad are all these chinese parts.
Door handles, tailight lenses, windshields, and who knows whatever else has infiltrated the Porsche market. Everybody sells them, do you prefer one over the other?
Would you pay $100 for a reproduction part or $200 for the real deal.
Do you think every mechanic/retailer should tell you its a chinese part. I bet the guy that had his valve stems replaced didnt know. And might not of even known the difference if they did tell him. But now he's dead as a result of this chinese part.

What do you think?

And the complete article is online here if you wish to read.

Smart Money article

If they put toxins in milk.... fill in the blanks. An incentive to keep manufacturing here.

It's a very slippery slope you're treading on...every country in the world has people who care about quality and those who don't; people who take pride in their work and those who couldn't care less (I mean, after all, there is reason we all drive GERMAN cars from the 70s rather than a US model of the same vintage, right..?)....

If you're concerned about parts quality, make sure the vendors you deal with will answer your questions about "Country of Origin," "Maufacturing Process", and -- of course -- "Return Policy." Mike

It's sad that it has come to this, corporate greed has driven everything down to the last penny. While tail light lenses (if they fail ), may not pose a great risk, will cost you more money in the long run if they do.

In my manufacturing, all of my parts are made right here, in the USA. I have actually been aproched by manufacturers overseas to have my stuff made there, but really I value having the control of the process that I do, which you really don't get, along with the language barrier.

The really sad thing is that ,acording to a mechanic frind of mine, some of the newer Porsches have electronic componets that are of questionable quality in them. Definately not Bosh stuff anymore.

For what it's worth.

Blame it on Walmart. They have sent us down this path but saying cheaper is better and that is what people want. I say BS!!!! People want a good product at a fair price.

When I worked in the Houston area, I had an opportunity to talk to a shuttle astronaut. I asked him what was the scariest part of the space business. He said, knowing that the LOW COST bidder built the damn thing.

Just my two cents!!

It boils down to our OWN citizens thinking they deserve more money for a menial job,THAT goes directly back to the unions.
and our corporate leaders thinking they deserve MUCH more money for a mediocre job.
In short we have done this to ourselves much like all of our other problems. Until individuals can see, and correct the fact that they are their own worst enemy we wil continue down this path. Go rent the movie IDIOCRACY. Very cheaply done spoof that has a real element of truth to it

"A" real element of truth? I thought it was a documentary. Great film, I recommend it to everyone, especially to my European colleagues.

Yeah, I don't think it's corporate greed, it's customer insistence on cheaper products.

There are good Chinese parts. Cummins builds entire engines over there, even big 14 liter OTR stuff, and it's good. But if you insist on buying cheap, Chinese or U.S., you're going to get cheap. That's not a surprise, is it?

For every Chinese part that has a catastrophic failure, there are millions on the road operating correctly.

Cheap is cheap....driving costs down to the point where quality starts suffering is just asking for a problem....doesn't matter where it was made. There's plenty of cheap crap that gets made here.

Mike

I can kind of see both sides of the "made in China" thing and this may explain it.

A company like Mattel has toys manufactured in China due to low manufacturing costs and it ends up that they have lead paint on them.

Mattel recalls the items once it's discovered by the public.

Then they say that it's not really their fault and that it was due to lack of control of the manufacturer in China.

What I'm getting at is that whoever is selling the item should bare all responsability for the quality and safety. If they do quality control, before sending it out into the public, then their shouldn't be a problem.

Wes

If you haven't seen IDIOCRACY, Go rent the movie. It's more of a social commentary about breeding the intelligence out of the population. Scary thing is you can see it happening.
Ow, my balls!

I personally try to buy and source as much as possible here in Detroit, or at least the US. It makes it tough though when I can get a US made speedo sender for $49.00 and the Chineese one for $11.00

People say they care and want to buy American, but I sure see planty of cars at the Wall Mart, Target and Ikea

Mark

I bought new a made in Germany Gas Cap for a 70 914 on Ebay and it was the biggest piece of shit. I got the people to send me a second unit. At least I have the new gaskets for my old ones after I re-plate.

Now, my factory in China makes my parts for me better that I made them for my self. We live or die by our quality control but I am not making something that would make someone sick. The time they spend on QC is huge. This is a very boring job in the factory. I have been in manufacturing since 1974.

The Chinese do have the capacity to make good parts. It is best if Taiwanese businessmen run their factories as they have the most experience.

I want to give the example of a copy of a Swiss Army Knife. You have seen these super cheep copies. A piece of shit. Some one went and asked for the cheapest copy they could get not the best copy they could get and make sure that the parts do not fall apart. This is in the thinking of the people in the marketing of these factories in China and Hong Kong.

Same with the tools. They can do better than they do in the cheep Harbor Freight pack but some time that is all that we want to pay for.

I brought a cheep wire cutter, and small special pliers to my friend for wiring his office. He was dogging me that the insulation on the pliers was sliding off because they where cheep. At least I had them and he had nothing. I am not a pro and my box has a lot of cheep tools after my guys steal them or get resin on them at the factory.


Bob

Seems like only yesterday (okay, several yesterdays) that we were having the same discussion over "Made in Japan."

Hmmmmmm.

I was thinking it was made in taiwan. Maybe that was after made in japan.

My son and I have bought three sets of headers for suby motors. One set is a perrin a pretty expensive header it is good. The other two are knockoffs and they are also really good and about 1/3 the price of the perrin. I buy hf for low usage tools that I don't need often or really don't think I can afford otherwise. I have some snap on, blue point and craftsman tools also. lately the craftsman stuff looks like less quality than hf. Most of my air tools are hf. Except for a long 4 inch cut off air tool from eastwood. It cost 200.00 and was worth every penny. I buy the best tool I can afford for the job and sometimes it is chinese. I have asian spray guns and also very expensive german and italian spray guns. The german gun, a optima, is a very low pressure gun that sprays a very fine fog and lots of it.

My friend won't go in hf. He also only buys american autos all used, and he takes very good care of them and they don't break too much for him. He would rather drive american and live with a few service problems. He doesn't believe me that I have bought toyota and hondas since 1977, and have had no warranty or service problems. The 09 my wife just got went in for a warranty paint defect. It's the first warranty call for us. The paint had marks from some tape that held some protective stuff on the trunk when it was shipped. I did not have as good of luck with a 94 mazda van after it had 85k on it. It would have different lifters rattle at idle with good oil pressure and it had had mobil one it's entire like.

I've bought crummy products from everywhere and it's usually when I'm shopping price but not always.

A friend of mine -- proud union member -- recently bought a Toyota Tundra pickup after discovering through some simple internet research that it is more "American" than the Chevy he was considering (the Tundra has more US-made parts and is fully assembled in the US).

The Toyota engineering facilities in Southern Cal and a couple of their plants recently stopped operating as a result of the economic slow down...did they lay off their workers? Nope. They sent them off -- with full pay, mind you -- to go do "community service." They figured they would save enough money on utilties and the like that they didn't need to cut anyone...

Food for thought, huh? Mike

It has less to do with specific country and more to do with company manufacturing and quality standards they embrace. There are excellent manufacturing operations in China and there are very bad ones.

If you think company and location has anything to do with quality I have a Boxster motor I'd love to show you pictures of from slipped cylinder sleeves that were inserted incorrectly to IMS bearings that were toast due to poor quality standards.

If I were from out side US I could say US knowingly poisoned (9 dead and nearly 1000 ill) its own people with tainted peanut butter. Amazing thing US wasnt much faster in getting tainted peanut butter off shelves than China was getting tainted milk off shelves in China.

Anyone remember Firestone recalls of poor quality tires that blew and killed many people?

In my years supporting manufacturing I have seen absolute crap come from US and I have seen very best come from here. In some cases from very same manufacturing plant. It all comes back to who is managing operations. Do you have good people who are engaged in quality processes who are motivated to make world class products or do you have disengaged people who could care less?

where's the nationalism?

You mean the Fourth of July?

Like the "defective" Audis that suffered from "unintended acceleration", the Firestone tires WERE NOT defective. It was a clear case of the wrong tires installed on the Ford Explorers, improper inflation, and lack of care on the part of the owner/operators. You can atteribute the use of the wrong specification tires to "cheap". You drive a TRUCK, you should put TRUCK tires on it, and you should plan to do tire pressure and visual inspections on them on a regular basis. None of this "They ride too hard at the proper pressure" bullshit. The Cap'n

Growing up my dad cautioned me about buying any "jap crap".
He did buy a trail 90 for hunting though, Sold it and bought a Rokon made in Keene , New Hampsire, USA

no offense intened . statement some 40yrs old.

Buyer Beware

The first time I heard about the explorer rollover thing was my cousin said there seemed to be a lot of them in the wrecking yards and they all seemed to be rollovers. The next thing about it was crummy tires. Then the truth came out about poor specs from ford to firestone to make a cheaper tire to cut cost. I believed that because I worked at a huck plant and ford told huck what they would pay for a fastener and huck either did it their way or lost all the ford business which is what finally happened anyway I think. Huck wanted the business because alcoa wanted fords aluminum business and alcoa bought huck. It wasn't too long after that I got layed off.