China is taking the fun out of my hobby.

kevinatfms said:

I think its a game of research. For some cars/trucks the original manufacturer of said part isnt the OE but a company the OE will contract to build the parts. There was a great video from FCP Euro on this a few months ago showing i think it was a wiper transmission for a BMW. They had two that were made by the same manufacturer, one in an OE BMW box while the other was in a the part manufacturer box. Only difference between the two was the BMW stamp on one of them and the price being $200 cheaper for the non-stamped version.

If you can find out who made the OE starter for GM then buy that part through said parts store/online retailer from that manufacturer. 

That's BMW.  I can't speak for the cars but on motorcycles the filters are stamped BMW and significantly more expensive than the Mahle ones...but the BMW ones ARE Mahle.  They just aren't labeled as such.

I wish we had Chinese GRM guys on here so we could get info from them on how well Chinese cars last.

It would be interesting to see if the cheap quality parts are in the new built cars or are only exported.

at one time there was "Export" quality  on stuff made in Europe that was said to be better than what the locals could buy .

As for brand names , I was at the VW spare parts factory in Germany years ago , and they were taking parts out of Bosch boxes and putting them in VW boxes !  Same part at double the price !

You guys have hit the nail on the head on the cultural aspects of the consumer.  You've missed the cultural and ethical issues on the supplier side though.  There is more at play than people demanding less expensive parts.  
 

I too take alternators and starters to small electric shops to be rebuilt.  My son and his stepdad really messed up his old car using crimp connectors to install an alternator once.  The voltage regulation was way off due to the resistance of the crimps.  

The only part that could be uniquely chinese is if the part is fake.  We know that happens, but given that it's also very illegal, this can be picked up during importation.  

The part about cheap parts isn't just Chinese- it's any part where costs are cut so that the quality suffers.  And that can really happen anywhere in the world.

For reman'd parts, if costs were cut at the factory on the other side of your home town- so that the process is rushed, or poor quality bearings are used, or whatever- it can happen to those parts, too.  Just like there are reman shops in China that make great parts.

Keith Tanner said:

Opti said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

People talk about quality but in the end they buy on price.

A problem is that it's hard to judge the quality on something like a rebuilt starter, especially when you're standing at the parts counter. And it's even harder when you're buying from the cheapest supplier Google can dredge up (or Rock Auto, which is often the same thing) and you don't have a counter person standing there to tell you that they see 10x the return rate on this part vs that part.

I agree, it isn't the easiest thing to do.

However, there are tons of stories on this forum and others of people dealing with problems cheap parts present instead of taking them back and demanding their money back.  See the first post in this thread.  Additionally, how many people on this forum order parts knowing its a gamble instead of just buying the quality part from the dealer?

Understanding whether or not it will last 200k like the OEM part... that's borderline impossible to figure out when purchasing.

STM317 said:

This doesn't sound like China's fault to me. This is corporations sacrificing quality to maintain or increase profit at a given price point.

Having worked directly with parts manufactured in China, and done plenty of First Article inspections on them, it isnt directly China's fault.

They will make what you send them, and no more.  They won't fix drawings, they won't send feedback, they make what you send them and thats it.  I seem to remember that was part of the problem Ford recently had with their manual transmissions.  Something wasn't heat treated properly and most anyone that knew what they were looking at knew it should have been, it just wasn't called out.

Now, you wanna talk indirect causes, and China basically using slave labor in order to get stuff done cheaply while polluting the hell out of their country, thats a different story

Yes, china will make whatever you want, it's just that we mostly only ask them to make garbage parts, and they're happy to do it. Basically you can get any quality part from anywhere. At work our local suppliers have basically just as many quality issues as the foreign ones, it's just a bit easier to get them to fix the problem...usually.

This is super anecdotal, but back when I had my boxster, the original maf died. I didn't want to pay $120 for the bosch part but also knew that the $20 ebay special would be a mistake. I found a $60 made in US part from what seemed like a real company that looked like the most faithful recreation of the real part and it....lasted two weeks, just like all the $20 ebay specials do.

Recognize nomenclature as well. Rebuilt is not remanufactured. Rebuilt is simply disassembly and replacement of worn parts. Remanufactured includes fixing any issues with the housing, etc. Two very different states.

vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) said:

Recognize nomenclature as well. Rebuilt is not remanufactured. Rebuilt is simply disassembly and replacement of worn parts. Remanufactured includes fixing any issues with the housing, etc. Two very different states.

or clean the outside , check that it works AsIs , spray paint and put in the box !

remember "rebuilt" spark plugs ?

Interesting comments. I want to add that I don't ever go looking for the cheap solution. I like to buy quality and I am happy to pay more for that.  But dang it, I am no longer presented with a choice: "this one is cheaper and made in China, or this one is more money but a quality part made in Japan or the USA." Given that choice I am going with the quality part every time. But the choice now is "this one is poorly made and cheap, and (if a choice is given) "this one is slightly less cheap and slightly less poorly made"

Part of the problem is quality control. I expect the tooling to make that cast aluminum starter housing was worn out and past acceptable tolerances several years ago, but until the return rate exceeds the cost of retooling, the off shore factory is not going to make the investment. 

 Something like a starter is not an item one shops for usually. My son needed to get to work this morning so we needed one yesterday ASAP, and perhaps I am to blame for not looking more closely at the one we purchased last summer, but they said "Bosch or AC Delco?" and I said give me the good one (thinking both sounded domestic) and was handed the way more expensive AC Delco. I now know that Bosch is owned by a Chinese coal mining company, for the record.

The American consumer is interesting.  People will pay a $25k market adjustment on a $85k MSRP  King Longhorn Rhodium Edition Truck, then immediately go to SnuffLip Joe's Discount Offroad Shop and Bait Emporium to install a set of Linglong Mud tires with knock off MadMax wheels.

logdog (Forum Supporter) said:

The American consumer is interesting.  People will pay a $25k market adjustment on a $85k MSRP  King Longhorn Rhodium Edition Truck, then immediately go to SnuffLip Joe's Discount Offroad Shop and Bait Emporium to install a set of Linglong Mud tires with knock off MadMax wheels.

The truck is easier to finance, so when they break that down to, say, $900 / month, it doesn't sound so expensive anymore in their mind.  But if you tell them the good set of wheels and tires will cost $5000, they're horrified at the idea of spending that much money.  Especially if they understand why they like the $$$$$ truck better than the $ version, but they have no comprehension of why the $400 / each tires are better than the $150 ones from Walmart that look just as good to them. 

rslifkin said:

logdog (Forum Supporter) said:

The American consumer is interesting.  People will pay a $25k market adjustment on a $85k MSRP  King Longhorn Rhodium Edition Truck, then immediately go to SnuffLip Joe's Discount Offroad Shop and Bait Emporium to install a set of Linglong Mud tires with knock off MadMax wheels.

The truck is easier to finance, so when they break that down to, say, $900 / month, it doesn't sound so expensive anymore in their mind.  But if you tell them the good set of wheels and tires will cost $5000, they're horrified at the idea of spending that much money.  Especially if they understand why they like the $$$$$ truck better than the $ version, but they have no comprehension of why the $400 / each tires are better than the $150 ones from Walmart that look just as good to them. 

And now i question the Accelera 200tw tires i plan to put on our Chump Car.....they arent China made but somewhere close(Indonesia?).

Ive run Federals in the past and they did quite well for the price compared to the $400 more expensive BFG or Bridgestone. They are made in Taiwan with the "Made for America" sticker on them which caused so much controversy. 
 

alfadriver said:

The only part that could be uniquely chinese is if the part is fake.  We know that happens, but given that it's also very illegal, this can be picked up during importation.  

The part about cheap parts isn't just Chinese- it's any part where costs are cut so that the quality suffers.  And that can really happen anywhere in the world.

Illegal is a non-issue, unless it is enforced.  In case you haven't noticed , enforcement of laws is declining daily.  Selective enforcement is the rule.  The market is flooded with counterfeit parts and bad parts, and no one is doing anything about it.  The courts love to go after the OEMs though; I wonder why.....

You may feel quality suffers.  I'd argue quality is a distant concern far below profit.  And if the law comes after you, transfer the profits, file bankruptcy, start a new company and repeat.  
 

The lack of ethics in society and business is the real issue, but that's much harder to solve.  As a result, people just ignore the obvious and take the easy road out by blaming consumers, part specs, culture.....  anything but moral decay and profit above all.  

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

I have to agree with every point; but they do not really address the point of the O. P. post. Facts are, despite social abstracts, getting replacement parts that are not junk (always a problem) is harder to do than ever before. 
"Buy OEM" rarely means you are buying a part like came on the car, so that's not the solution. 
Quality does cost more to make, but has little to do with asking price, so "ya get what ya pay for" don't work either. 

In reply to A 401 CJ :

People that have cut the Beemer filter, (made by Mahle) and the filter sold as a Mahle report that the filters are slightly different inside! So BMW does have them made to their specs. 
In the filter case, the difference is minor enough to not matter, but many OEM replacement parts are sourced from the lowest bid, and change often. Any guesses where to go looking for the lowest bidder?

Replacing starters is almost never fun in any vehicle. 

03Panther said:

In reply to A 401 CJ :

People that have cut the Beemer filter, (made by Mahle) and the filter sold as a Mahle report that the filters are slightly different inside! So BMW does have them made to their specs. 
In the filter case, the difference is minor enough to not matter, but many OEM replacement parts are sourced from the lowest bid, and change often. Any guesses where to go looking for the lowest bidder?

Sometimes the aftermarket part isn't quite the same, even if it's made by the same company.  Other times, it is.  Can't remember the brand, but one manufacturer of radiators for my BMW sells the exact same part OE and aftermarket.  The aftermarket ones have the BMW logo ground off, as the end tanks are made in the same mold and come out with the logo on them. 

So as a so called supply chain professional I will chime in:

Chinese companies, as stated earlier will make you exactly what you spec and I mean exactly. 

To use an analogy: if you say you want something family friendly and don't specify what family, Manson or Partridge, you may get either. 

once upon a time I ordered from China. In addition to specifying what factories were used we also had the right to reject an entire batch if the failure rate was above X amount. We also had a partner in Taiwan to oversee the factories in China. The reason for this is if you don't specify Chinese companies will sub contract part of the work and those sub contractors will sub contract. With each level the quality control get's worse.

I only did business with China for about a 5-6 years and my experience is that they will initially send you a quality product but then after several months they will back slide if you let them. This is a business culture; many of these companies are hyper focused on landing new customers, once landed they don't put near the effort into keeping them.

As for the issue with parts quality I remember alternators and starters being garbage from the big retail parts stores back in the early 80s. Can't remember where those were made though.

This is 100% a home grown issue (For home grown read any first wold consumer country).  We as consumers want to pay bottom $$ so we go for the cheap version.  Corporations are looking to source things for bottom $$ so go to the lowest bidder,  who many times over the last few decades are in China or other Asian countries.  We now have the option of a cheap part or an even cheaper part and are upset with what we get.  China can make anything to any quality that is required.  As has been pointed out they make many very high quality parts including military, aerospace etc.  It's not China's fault that so much of what they are asked to make is the cheapest possible E36 M3 imagined.

"once upon a time I ordered from China. In addition to specifying what factories were used we also had the right to reject an entire batch if the failure rate was above X amount."

And they will sell the rejects to someone else , they are not going to scrap them and eat the cost !

a friends  company makes consumer electronics in China 100s of millions a year , they pay for all the design work , tooling etc , 

But he can go to the local Electronic market in any large Chinese city  and 'His" product is for sale , some with blank boxes and some with his boxes !

Just look at aliexpress , you can  buy  all kinds of products, some are knockoffs,  some out of the same tooling as the original.

BEWARE !    

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

Once the soci0-political aspects are removed, most (notice I did not say all) of the stuff being made in china is not top shelf quality. As said, they CAN make good stuff, they they just (mostly) don't. It is correct to say that they do not bear 100% of the blame. But it would also be incorrect to say they share NONE of the blame. 
beyond that, it gets too political for this forum, so I'll leave it there. 

Have you tried going to your local dealer (or the online equivalent) for parts? Wanting to buy parts from a retail parts counter and wanting to buy quality parts are mostly mutually exclusive these days. 

All the Honda parts I've bought from the Honda dealer have worked great and had "made in Japan" stamped on them. 

californiamilleghia said:

"once upon a time I ordered from China. In addition to specifying what factories were used we also had the right to reject an entire batch if the failure rate was above X amount."

And they will sell the rejects to someone else , they are not going to scrap them and eat the cost !

a friends  company makes consumer electronics in China 100s of millions a year , they pay for all the design work , tooling etc , 

But he can go to the local Electronic market in any large Chinese city  and 'His" product is for sale , some with blank boxes and some with his boxes !

Just look at aliexpress , you can  buy  all kinds of products, some are knockoffs,  some out of the same tooling as the original.

BEWARE !    

Um no.................not the way I do contracts. We inspected them when they arrived here, if they failed they were scraped and there would be no RMA as these were proprietary parts specific to our machines (slot machines manufacturer). Additionally there would be no retail market for the parts, so they couldn't sell them locally. It's a great incentive to have proper quality control when you know you're going to eat tens of thousands of dollars if you don't. 

As for the cost, in my particular case it wasn't 100% about cost savings, at the time local suppliers were having capacity issues.

By the time you deal with the landed costs, the additional logistics and other factors you only end up saving between 3-5%.  Of course when your are making 500,000 somethings that adds up to a lot of money.

 The Chinese Government has a habit of changing the rules/regulations in the middle of the game.  They  make some really capricious decisions...........almost vendetta like. 

While I may buy Chinese products, if it were ever solely my decision, I certainly wouldn't manufacture in China. That 3-5% savings isn't worth the almost 100% certainty that your product will be sold on the black market and your IP stolen at some level.

In reply to Tom Suddard :

Also there are numerous dealers that now sell OEM parts online; making it even easier.