Chinese brakes ........

I bought some cheap chinese ball joints and the rubber cracked on them 2 weeks after installing them.

Makes me wonder which country the chinese buy from when they want to buy cheap stuff

 

Sad! Makes me wonder how safe some of these products actually are.

 

Actually I lived in china for 2 years before. Everything over there is about how cheap it can be made and about making fake products. I was walking down a part of town and saw all these black trash bags full. At first I thought it was trash but all the stores had them sitting in front of their store windows. At this point I was curious what was in them so I walked into one of the stores and looked inside the bags. Each bag was full of shirt tags. One bag had POLO tags, another bag had Fendi shirt tags another had Calvin Klein tags. I guess people would go down and buy these bags and sow them on their shirts to make fake products. Im not sure how many tags were in a bag but they were around 45 gallon bags

 

They arent safe. We've seen chinese cheapie brake pads melt off the backings within weeks of replacement. Shoes as well. Shouldnt be allowed for sale in this country. We are over run with useless laws and regs. Cant buy a car seat in the US and use it in Canade. I guess all your American babies are unsafe in those US car seats. Oh boy!! Yet we can buy and install garbage brake pads and go blasting down the highway with a car load of kids and thats OK.

 

After our experiance restoring the last Mustang we did I can understand why Mustang owners will spend monsterous amount of money to buy NOS parts. We had to replace about 75% of the car and not one of those replacement parts were made in this country. Ninty percent of them came from Tiwain and the other 10% came from China. One hundred percent of those replacement parts were cheap junk that either did not fit or was made so badly they should have been thrown in the closest dumpster. I wish this country would pull it's head out of it's ass and stop importing crap from Tiwain and China and start manufacturing products here in this country again. Not only does all that cheap, poorly made crap make us look cheap, it does nothing for our economy. We need to start making our own products again which will help put people back to work and help our ecomomy. Wouldn't you rather pay a little more for a good, quailty product that will last for many years instead of saving a few bucks on a hunk of junk that you'll have to replace twice as often?

 

"I wish this country would pull it's head out of it's ass"

Not likely. And with the current administration driving to spend, spend, spend and put us into even more debt, the "good ole days" aren't likely to come back around real soon. Sad fact - we as a country are no longer really the United States that most of us grew up with. The interests of this country are driven by political and individual forces now, with the "common man" left in the dust. Superpower? Barely, anymore. A lot of people asked for "change". Here it is!!!!!

Yeah, I realize for some that may be a "politically charged" statement, but let's be real.

Chris

 

if its a new car just buy OE pads they squeak less anyways. for our maverick we are sol.




lots of things are made there now and i don't think it is going to change.

there are many things that are made there good! but a very small % of it is good however it is about the quality control. SCAT, Probe, K1, Eagle, Autometer, Edelbrock get chome done over seas and just to name a few. is there stuff crap? you tell me. lots of places do this now because unions want to much or labor in general! companies don't want to give if they do they layoff people. so the company out sources parts! or things like the EPA make it hard for these companies to make things so we can have better air quality. either way everyone loses out both parties have to give. then people get mad cuz some work they could be doing gets done over seas so then they do half arse work here.

you could almost say that some US parts are crap to compared to some japanese parts as well. its all relavant. hell my 2006gto tranny let lose at 10k a clip broke off! my water pump at 17k and a recallf or struts! my 91 sentra is still going! same tranny same waterpump no recalls. lol! my subaru same deal 70k one o-ring AC issue and thats becuase i never use the AC. not to meantion i deal with body parts as some of you know and some of the US made parts are crap they don't fit they don't work etc! so go figure it is all relavant.

the only way is not to buy it! but i doubt anyone can prevent it. the computer your on has overseas parts on it. so no more computer for you! lol! i look in my magic ball and i say GM will be bought by chinese! lol!

btw its spelled Taiwan

 

I honestly could care less where it is made as long as it works as intended and holds up.

Having said that I do try and buy American.

I consider myself a great Patriot of America but i just do not see America making it with out a world economy. Trade and commerce is and always will be a corner stone of any great nation. I feel we have back ourselves in to a corner though. We make it so it is cheaper to have goods and easier from a regulation point of view to get them else where.

Since my wife is Korean we do buy Korean made items along with American when possible and I have been really happy.

I have found very few Chinese parts to be up to snuff.

 

I work as a component/manufacturing engineer in a company where all of the development engineering is done by Korean folks. I gotta tell you, they have very strict discipline, and a wealth of knowledge. Indeed, it's a shame that more stuff isn't Korean based than Chinese based. China has >not< even come close to the mark on technical expertise as comapred to the other major players (Korea and Japan). As a previous poster put it, all of China's manufacturing is based on a "copycat" premise - and Americans as a rule flock to the Walmarts and other stores that make a buck off of it.

Different world indeed. Most folks would trade quality over cost, any day.

Chris

 

Car parts are one thing but when walmart sells US MARINE hats that say on the inside made in china that kills me.

 

As far as I am concerned its the Walmart mentality that has ruined North America. Cheaper products at a cheaper price made off shore. Thing is eventually it comes around to bite the big stores in the ass. The blue collar worker and middle to lower class that Walmart targets are now losing the ability to earn a living thanks to the power of stores like Walmart. Who will buy the product? Walmart has forced the companies to build over seas to meet there price demands. In the process of doing so they have eliminated the jobs of the people who buy there product. DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The company I work for builds and repairs hydraulic flight control systems, one of the major components is the hydraulic pistons. We looked into going into the repair overhaul buisness for existing units to expand our customer base outside of the OEM a few years ago and looked into a chrome plating facility. With the price involved and the EPA licensing and fees it was cheaper to develop using Tungsten carbide coatings and to pay the money to have them tested and approved by the EPA, the FAA and Boeing. It is not the manpower or the training it is the EPA in this case they have so regulated it that it is for the most part limited to a few companies in the US or it is sent overseas where they can build new facilities to do it without any reprocussion.
It is sad that when we have something that needs to be chrome plated we overnight ship from utah to california to Embee and then pay to have it overnited back (even though there is a facility 40 miles to the south of us, but it is due to the poor quality that we dont use them that much) then it is for us to attempt to do it ourselves.

 

Sorry didnt mean too??
Just an example of the mentality that includes the cheap Auto parts made off shore. The auto parts use the same idea of cheaper parts at a cheaper price and move volume. The parts are junk and the jobs are lost. Who will be left to buy the cheap auto parts?
We have a jobber in the city I work that tried to come into town with rock bottom prices and under cut the other auto parts suppliers. They did undercut them and the others lost a ton of business and some closed up shop. They bought up a few of the other parts stores and now we are stuck with them. Guys are now starting to realize that alot of their parts are coming back failed but its too late now. Only a few parts shops remain and they are big names like Carquest and Napa. They ran the private stores out of business with cheap crappy parts. I notice a turn around in the trade lately. When the cheap parts got really popular a few years ago shops were installing them and making big money on parts. There seems to be a change in attitude now. Avoid the white box parts because they come back failed and it costs customers and shops money. Creates a headache for the customer and even a loss of customers. Hopefully this lowest price attitude changes for all business and we get some quality back at slightly higher prices and some jobs back in North America.