Rethinking "Made in China"

Early Toyotas all came with tool kits, and the "worst car sold in Canada", the LADA, came with a FULL tool kit. In general you needed it, and needed to know how to use it, if you hoped to drive one.

A poor russian copy of a poor Italian design.

Reply to
clare
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Too bad the durn things never had a functional heater - except the gas heaters that were generally functional about one year at a time.

Reply to
clare

If you want REAL seats, you buy FRENCH. Renault seats were always extremely comfortable - Peugeot and Citreon too. The seats on my 49 bug?? Not terribly comfortable, but removing two wingnuts gave you pretty good camping chairs.

Reply to
clare

Shhot the politicians and lawyers first and mabee the rest could be spared.

Reply to
clare

Oh good Lord how can any one take you seriousely?

Reply to
Leon

Who do you think the bureaucrats are trying to please????

You seem to have the unique ability to throw gasoline on the blaze and yet show no hint of any rational ability to understand the problem.

Reply to
Leon

LOL... good'n I would rather electric water than gassy water

Reply to
Leon

The legislators of course.

So what do you believe the problem to be?

Hint--blaming the teachers is like blaming the deckhands for what happened to the Titanic.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Google "humor". You might want to buy some.

Reply to
J. Clarke

That'd be a pretty neat trick, considering that the distributor on a slant-six is half-way down the block on the passenger side, and the exhaust manifold is all the way at the top of the engine on the driver's side. You'd think that someone who'd done all that work on a slant-six would know where the distributor is.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Never had any trouble but, fact was that any long distance we traveled was in convoy. Armed guards in front and recker in back. No one was left behind.

Reply to
CW

Long arms. They say memory is the first to go ... Anyone know what the hell I was burning myself on?

Reply to
LDosser

That's funny. My first diesel VW Golf (the German version of the 'rabbit') didn't make it to the end of its lifespan since my first wife totalled it in a head-on. Only thing that ever failed was the electric diesel line shutoff relay. The second never had any mechanical problems outside a CV boot or two, new brakeshoes and once, a slipped cambelt until it popped an engine seal at around 230,000 km and suddenly had oil in the water ... I decided to sell it for scrap at that point. My father still drives his, about 21 years old now, never had a breakdown yet ...

Incidentally, the Jetta and some of the Passat models had very bad reps in Germany also 30 years ago. Although the vanilla Passat SW was the travelling salesman's economy vehicle of choice. I haven't looked at them since, due to emigrating half way round the globe.

And, talking of reliable European cars, I've known quite a few series 2 Volvos that cracked half a million kilometres ... Now that Ford are messing with the Volvo design I think that will not be the case any more, I won't buy another Volvo designed & built since 2006. Currently driving an 850 wagon and an XC70. Wonderful cars to drive, but lots of little things go wrong all of the time :-(

-P.

Reply to
Peter Huebner

I'll tell you what MOST gets my goat: the materials science. Plastics made in China seem to have about half the lifespan of plastics made in Thailand. If that ... some stuff starts to crumble a week after it comes out of the box.

Generally this is not quite as much a problem with stuff designed in XXX and made in China, because they tend to do QC, but it happens still. Our Bosch washing machine, when delivered, turned out to be manufactured there. Within a week, two switches had disintegrated. Our friend bought the same model, and found herself holding the plastic handle for the door in her hand inside the first month.

Tools made from what can only be described as potmetal ... ok, the Chinese don't have the Exclusive on that one, but they excell at it. I've had Chinese 'stainless' go rusty 3 weeks after unpacking and removing the gel-packs. Chrome plating turning into a razor edged hazard in a space of weeks or even days...

I used to laugh at some Chinese made knives - they obviously had been copied as a design by people who had no idea of the intended use. Cutting edge blunt and 1 mm wide. I've seen a lot of that sort of thing in fact. Mimicry without understanding the functionality of the item.

I'm perfectly well aware of the Japanese example, and I fully expect the same thing to happen with Chinese made goods. Just as it happened with the Taiwanese and the South Koreans. I've no problems buying Japanese or Taiwanese made, somewhat more weary of Korean stuff still, except electronics.

But clearly, the Chinese are not there yet. And with their sanctioned policy of 'saving face is more important than dealing with problems or addressing the issues' this may take longer for China to get up to speed and communicate reliably with the rest of the world. There's been a lot of shit happening this last year in industrial relations between China and Australia and New Zealand, because neither side understood how to bridge this cognitive dissonance.

Some time in the last couple of years we had a German engineer & family as a Servas guest and he'd just come off a tour of duty in China, as an adviser on building up a car factory (I think, for local production of VWs) there. We asked him if he would buy one of those Chinese built cars. He went " maybe not just yet". Lol.

Personally, I shall await such time as ... for the time being I avoid them as much as possible, even if I have to pay 20 times the price, and no kidding.

f.w.i.w. -P.

Reply to
Peter Huebner

I have a Linhoff Teknica 4x5 and an array of lenses that I still use occasionally. The results I get are astounding. Worth the price just for that wonderful compensating bellows on the back.

Reply to
salty

I quite like the C30 Volvo. Ford's hands in things don't always turn out bad. The fact that a C30 fetches as much money as it does is a bit of a pisser considering that what it really *is*...is a Mazda 3. I have owned Volvos in the past without any drama.

Reply to
Robatoy

No new text?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I remember when I was a real little kid my dad had an old beater Valiant - I think it was a '64 or thereabouts. He was always having problems with the carburetor on it... years later I dated a girl with a '69, that car had a Holley 1bbl and it too had issues. Replaced the carb with a Carter and it ran splendiferously ever after. Only problems with it after that point were a ballast resistor that failed, and the fact that the points would burn just about every 9 mos. like clockwork (maybe due to a off spec replacement ballast?) then she had to have the head redone because she didn't adjust the valves (probably ever) and burned one. Other than that it was a very reliable car, wish I had it today.

nate

Reply to
N8N

Probably replacing the starter, which is on top, on the drivers side.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

It's worse than you think.

In America, we do not have a single living Nobel laureate or Fields medalist, not even the president, who is qualified, by law, to teach in the schools of my state. No winner of the Pulitzer, Booker, Hugo, Edgar, Newberry, Caldecott or other literary prize. Nor can any of the justices of the Supreme Court stand in front of a classroom as a teacher.

In my state, one can be certified to teach mathematics at the high-school level without ever having had a college course in Calculus.

Pitiful really.

Does anyone doubt that a retired Civil Engineer could teach geometry off the top of his head? Would you expect a retired nurse to be able to instruct in high school biology? And so on. Well, they can't.

Makes one want to weep.

Reply to
HeyBub

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