Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Rick]

<rant>

Is anything well built nowadays??? most things we buy don't seem to last any time at all, just some recent examples:

- DVD/video - in no time the scart connection on the back developed a dodgy connection
- Chip fryer - first time of wiping over with a damp cloth, the writing came off
- Baby chair - the lettering wiped off that too
- Petrol mower - twice in 18 months the starter cord & mechanism has fallen to pieces. The first one we bought we had to return as it wouldn't start
- Garden strimmers - last 1 year on average
- DAB radio/stereo thing - dodgy aerial connection from day 1
- Toaster - one lasted just two weeks
- Office desk - the individual height adjustment on all the legs has broken
- Washing machines - 2 years at best

These aren't cheapo own-brand things either, saying that even once-respected brands are often re-badged cheapo things anyway


It drives me potty!!!! ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

RJ

</rant>

(I feel better now )
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[Job-Rated]

It's just as well you haven't bought a 'new' car recently, then...
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Don't run your fingers over my truck & I won't run my truck over your fingers!


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[Rick]

[buzzy bee]

Hi

Tools made from Sthil are quite good, hard working and all, and last well if looked after.

Cheers

Dave

[Dirty Habit]

All is not lost Rick
Went and had a look at the Tornado last weekend. I am not a train fanatic but I do prefer Steam. What's more it's British, well apart from the boiler. Apart from admiring the power of the thing, I was impressed that a group of people said "Let's build a steam locomotive". And 19 years later, it's done. The first British built steam locomotive in almost 60 years.

_________________
1964 International Harvester

[Rick]

agreed, Tornado is a beauty. One to see definitely (along with the re-juvenated Vulcan)

RJ

(PS nearly forgot, the new telly has a speaker that reverberates at anything over 1/2 volume )
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Rick - Admin
Home:https://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk
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OCC & classic car merchandise (Austin, Ford ++):
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[Greg]

I couldn't agree more Rick, at work we bought a small Fan-Heater, (new!), after the first day it started making a creaking noise, then the ocelating part kept jamming, now the Fan just keeps stopping altogether!!......is it impossible to make a Fan Heater now in 2009???

[47p2]

We live in a throw away society today. Nobody wants anything that is old. Most items last until just out of the warranty period, and where as you or I would be annoyed about it, the younger generation look upon it as a good reason to get a new one with their new credit card.....

I also had a TV which when the volume was adjusted more than a whisper the speaker reverberated. It was a Toshiba and at 3 years old we replaced it with one of these flat jobs.
The Toshiba looked like brand new and I asked the bin men if they wanted it, to which they replied....No, chuck it in the back....I feel bad that such an item which working but needing a new speaker (which is a relatively small job) should be crushed. I had called up a few charity shops and when they heard it wasn't a flat TV were not interested in it.
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ROVER
One of Britain's Fine Cars

[Keith D]

Rick,

You started this post off with a moan about the quality of new products. I certainly sympathise with you. Almost every product we buy in Australia is made in China, even our long established and respected local brands. When I pay top dollar for a Sidchrome spanner, I expect it to be at least the same quality as the ones I bought forty years ago! But they're not. I don't think that the fact they are made in China is bad, what IS bad, is the fact that Sidchrome are cutting quality to make bigger profits.

A particular bitch of mine is 1/3 sheet orbital sanders. Working on car restorations like I do, I find that if I can get 3 months out of them, then I'm doing well. I have bought every conceiveable "good" brand that I can think of. AEG, Bosch, Ryobi etc etc. Three months max, then a smell of burning insulation and very shortly, death! Average cost around $70 - $80 each. (30-35 pounds)

In frustration, I went into my local Bunnings hardware store and asked for the cheapest 1/3 sheet orbital sander they had in stock. The assistant sneered at me and handed me an unknown Chinese brand called XU1. "Nasty thing!" was his comment. "OK", I said, "then I'll buy 2 of them." They cost me $14 each with a twelve month warantee. That was over two years ago and the second one has not needed to come out of it's box yet!

I have always been a "buy the best tool available" person and had the motto that "the cheapest tool is always the dearest", but not any more!

End of my rant! - Keith

[PAUL BEAUMONT]

To respond to Job-Related post on new cars: Try a Subaru!!
Swapped my '04 legacy for the new Diesel just before christmas.
04 Legacy had done 154K miles, still returned 35-36mpg used no oil and in the 4.5 years I owned it it cost me a rear wheel bearing, which I think was excusable. I would happily have jumped in it and driven to the other end of the country!
PAUL

[ukdave2002]

A few years ago I worked for one of the big consumer electronic manufacturers, warranty failure was closely monitored, quite simply because it costs a lot to administrate and rectify warranty failures. We constantly review failures and identified if it was worth making a production change, but it was all based on commercials; imagine a graph “cost of build” verses “reliability” its exponential and you hit a point where the costs soars for very little reliability gain, we used to spend a lot of time analyzing the cause of failures and identifying if component or production changes were worthwhile.

The process I have just described was pretty much how manufacturers had improved stuff since time began, in our business most of the improvement were around electrical component reliability and on the whole it worked, to be frank a TV made in the 60’s is about 10 time more lightly to have a component failure in its first few years than a current one, and this ratio gets worse as the 60’s TV gets older!

However the dynamics of production costs have changed and then the Chinese manufacturing trend skewed everything! Before the Chinese boom the ratio labour costs to component costs had been rising, china then bucked this trend but introduced a new major dynamic; shipping costs, so stuff needed to be lighter. The Chinese also looked for production and component shortcuts an example of this can be seen in many large tools that have cast iron components(i.e. lathes) the machined bits of the casting will generally be ok, but non machined very rough, to make them look good they will often have an 1/8” thickness or more of paint which looks nice and smooth, doesn’t necessarily affect the product, but also doesn’t instil faith in the overall quality!.

A couple of you mentioned TV speaker rattles, 20 years ago speakers would have had 4 or more screws holding them in, nowadays we want to speed up production and loose weight, so the speaker will be clipped in, with the clips being part of the plastic chassis (the chassis which would have been metal!) you can see how this is more lightly to rattle! Many components such as gears that would have been metal are now plastic.

There are a couple of worrying trends; when I worked for a manufacturer, either we or our agents repaired everything, so we had detailed information on why stuff failed. These days its often not cost effective to repair, so a faulty item will be disposed off with out any diagnosis, the 2nd is the trend for the larger distributers or retailers to get additional discount from manufacturers, but then they have to deal with any warranty claims at their cost, so again the manufactures production engineers will never see where the failures are.

Tool distributers like Axminstser sell on pallet loads of faulty/returned tools rather than looking at them to see if they can be repaired!

Final food for thought; 20 years ago the firm I work for used to charge around £300 for a years maintenance on a PC , as a dealer we got parts from the manufacturers free of charge so these costs are basicly labour and shipping,, on the same terms today we charge about £9 per year! and we have the same % level of margin!

Dave