Just a thought.....?

[Greg Reimer 7376]

Often pondered on this forum is concern over the indecisiveness we seem to be headed in as a nation.Often lamented on, by myself and others, is the outsourcing of goods and services to outside interests. I recently told my story about a jack and a winch for my trailer.My Suburban, which apparently sat for quite a bit before I got it,needed a brake job. The fluid looked pretty bad, so I bought a new master cylinder at Napa, (no rebuilt crap),bench bled it and installed it, only to have very poor brake performance. I bled and rebled, and had a stuck rear wheel cylinder and some really ugly fluid come out. I went back to Napa, bought two new rear wheel cylinders and a rear brake hose. When I got this stuff home, then got it out to install it, it was all made in China. Napa? I thought it was an all-American holdout. Guess again!! Often times at work, we go through lots of electrical parts,relays,solenoids,the like, and always specify OEM whenever possible. Seems like Delco switches, parts like this, etc. all are made in places like Singapore, China,Mexico, et all. Quality is down on this stuff as well. Then I had a thought. GM is in deep doo-doo over ignition switch failures on millions of cars. Now, we know that GM doesn't make that many of its parts, most stuff is supplied by vendors licensed by GM,so they could have been made anywhere. What is the chance that all these ignition switches and other electrical parts were outsourced from who knows where, and the vile stench of bad goods overtook the sweet aroma of a low price? Sounds like a practice that came around and bit them good,doesn't it?

[GTX JOHN]

Well said Greg!

[Ed Wright]

Greg, I have bought from NAPA for years. That is very disappointing to hear.

About GM using vendors for their parts: Ford & Chrysler does too. The manufacturers pretty much just design & assemble their cars. An engineer for GM told me there are parts on all three brands actually made by the same vendors. I didn't ask him which parts. This was probably fifteen years ago. At least they were probably made in the U.S. then. GM's Declo points, condensers, etc , used to say "Made in Mexico" on the boxes, back when they still used points & condensers.
They all use outside vendors.

[Greg Reimer 7376]

This is true. Around 1980 or so, I worked on a 76 Chrysler Cordoba, 318 engine, made a weird noise around the lower front of the engine. Air pump for the smog system noisy. I removed the pump and the bypass valve, that was the culprit. Turning it over, it had GM cast into it. Chrysler was buying smog pump hardware from GM. Makes sense. Why does each manufacturer have to reinvent the same wheel every time? At least those parts then were made in America!

[Jeff Niceswanger]

If anybody remembers the Ford and Mercury Taurus/Sable line that was burning down peoples houses as they sit unattended in their garages...Maybe it was the LTD....Anyways,....I worked in the plant that made them.1973-1981 // Essex Wire ( United Technologies) . Zanesville Ohio...They moved the plant, to Mexico many years ago. There were 2 plants in town, one made wiring harnesses, the other electro-mechanical switches. Headlight, dimmer, ignition etc...about 3000 employees in all.
It was an Ignition switch problem also. Ford was trying to duplicate the small "Arc" that the Jap Cars had in their switches. You had to really bend your wrist around to go through the entire swing of our switch (to get it started)....Instead of coming up with a new switch, they just used smaller spacing between the contacts in the switch. But,,,it put the hot and the ground too close together, and as the switch wore, and flaking and soot got between them,a short would occur, and some resulted in fires......

We made the national news also, but back then it was at 6:30 at night, as 24 hour news had not been invented yet.....

[John Kissel]

My memory might be wrong, but I thought certain things had to be made in America by law like hydraulic brake parts. I changed wheel cylinders in my early FireBird and bought all Wagner stuff, and the cheyneeze didn't copy the right front properly as they left out the machined flat surface to locate it in the backing plate. I called Wagner and the rep. looked up the blue prints and said "oops we will fix that".. John Kissel

[Dan Bennett]

A few years back I was reading an industrial trade maqazine and noticed an ad from an offshore supplier. They touted their "one stop" capabilities in that all the manufacturer had to do was provide them with the specs for the part or assembly. They would then engineer it and produce it.

This ad showed a complete headlight capsule. According to the text, the manufacturer would do anything electrical. Ever since I read that, I've looked at replacement parts in a different light. Even though it may have been produced on a US assembly line, the engineering was done by a company I'd never heard of.

This just added to the unease I got a few years earlier when a Goodyear engineer told me that no tire company designed their own tread configurations - there were outside "styling" companies who would sell the designs to the tire manufacturers. The selection evidently hinged on what they felt they could promote the best.

[David Lee]

We can just blame ourselves for the current problem ith Chinese and other foreign made crap. WE allowed ourselves to be happy with the chep microwaves TV and computers made abroad. Now its all but impossible to buy rebar that is made here. Maybe if we got angry enough at the companies who were selling this crap and the companies who sending all the injection molding machines over to china we would not be facing this problem

[Bill Edgeworth]

It’s a complicated issue. 90% of the time it’s the result of us all wanting more for less.
Even when you expect nothing but the best you can still get junk. Example; Earlier this year Austin Martin had a recall due to the electronic accelerator pedal breaking. Austin Martin sub contracted making the part to a British tier one automotive parts supplier who then sub contracted the job to a Chinese auto parts supplier whose injection molded parts supplier substituted a cheap resin to save money over the specified material. So even when you are buying a $300,000 luxury sports car this can happen.
But as mentioned lots of other things lead to offshoring. Example in the last two decades lots of American companies have been purchased by foreign interests just to gut them for their customer base to up production at existing foreign factories. And in the case of the company I work for offshoring happened because some of the large US glass companies no longer wanted to deal with distributors and/or dropped production of certain items. They decided they would not deal with anyone that was not lets say a big beverage company buying a 500 million+ parts a year. It lead to us going from primarily being a distributor for US companies to distributing mostly for Asian and European companies.
In the end I have to ask why can we buy a Chinese made TV for less in America than what it costs a consumer in China? That’s where subsidies and fair trade practices come into play.

[Dan Bennett]

Originally Posted by Bill Edgeworth

...That’s where subsidies and fair trade practices come into play.

Your reply hits the target dead center, Bill.

In the early 90s I was working for a division of Anheuser Busch that made aluminum beverage cans. The raw material was a large roll of aluminum stock, each one weighing anywhere from 10 to 14 thousand pounds.

The company decided to switch from Alcoa (made in Alcoa, Tennessee; 500 miles away) to an asian company. The Japanese coil could be shipped the 6000 miles and still be sold for 20% cheaper. As far as I can see, there wasn't any aluminum ore deposits on the islands so they were buying the stuff on the open market just like us. The Japanese government was making that price happen.

I never understood why we never took a small portion of the money we paid to enemies for foreign aid so we could do the same thing for our companies and working people. I guess I'm not smart enough to be in Congress.