a hapeth of stainless

[Guest]

Why do manufacturers do it ? I noticed that my solarvent which is 18 months old has the fan bit fixed with two ordinary steel screws which have totally rusted and would have to be drilled out. The item cost £80 plus .. two little ss scrws would cost mo more than 5 pence ... what miserable skinflints.

 

[Guest]

Isn't that a real bitch. As a sailor who has an electronics manufacturing business, I swore I would never do those kind of things to my customers, to the extent that we often disassemble parts from suppliers and rebuild them completely with non ferrous parts.

Since our customers are primarily in the USA, we even remove press-fit studs with metric threads, ream the holes out, and insert new stainless studs with USA threads so the customer can purchase a replacement nut locally when he drops it in the bilge.

 

[Guest]

There\'s stainless and there\'s stainless!

Also beware incompatibilities in stainless steels. A 13Cr stainless fastening on an 18/8 component will corrode almost as quickly as if it had been a carbon steel. Particularly a problem with self-tappers and grub screws, which need to be hard, not a normal property of 18/8 stainless steels. In this case check with a magnet, 13Cr is attracted but 18/8 not.

 

[Guest]

My Golden Rust Award goes to....

Honda and Garmin.

Two year's ago I bought the new BH2 2 HP outboard.
The nut near the twist grip throttle is covered in rust which has bled to other areas.

The exterior Garmin GPS aerial has two bolts which have completely rusted.

Why do these, in my view, exceptional manufacturer's, fall down on simple but important areas ?

 

[Guest]

Has anyone tried contacting the guilty parties to point out the error of their ways? I would be interested to hear what success you might have had. Some companies really do care, but the top brass (or stainless steel?) are sometimes unaware until we bring it to their notice.

 

[Guest]

I posted to what must be the largest UK supplier of maritime goods regarding a problem I was having, and suggested that noone at the top gets to hear of these things. Next day, I got a call from the MD (or purporting to be..) who was p***d off that I was complaining about his company. I was impressed that he had actually recd the emailed complaint, but not so impressed that he was p***d off with me, rather than his company's failings.