Chinese rubbish!

No you're not that important m8, you replied first quoting me so I'm hardly stalking you, sorry about your troubles with the Mariner and all that, did you get your outboard sorted? I'll bet you did, go troll somewhere else.
 
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People either have short memories or are too young to remember - but I distinctly recall British cars being very average with some very average components. The probelmm was not restricted to the UK, Italy, France et had some spectacular vehicles that everyone would rather forget. Some of these cars were sold as 'executive' models but the higher price did not mean greater reliability. At least the Chinese have excuses, they are early in the learning curve and they are usually manufacturing to a specification set by someone in the 'developed' west (even if that 'west' is in Australia). The worry really is - what will happen to the remnants of industry in the 'developed' west when the Chinese get it right? - it will not be long.
 
Quality from China

A fair bit of China Phobia perhaps with some basis.
I would think that the main reason for not buying a Chinese outboard would be possible lack of after sales support spare parts etc. The design is probably good and quality control appropriate.

Quality as in Quality Control means that every example of the product is as it is expected to be. ie no stuff ups. Quality is to a standard as demanded by the purchaser (especially in the case of components for a western manufacturer). Quality does cost money. It will require checking of the product at various stages and rejection of incorrect product. That is the real aim to get the right amount of quality at the right price.
An interesting example is ball point pens. You might order 100000 pens from a manufacturer. You must negotiate the failure rate. Manufacturer might offer guaranteed.no more than 5% failure for a certain price. If you want better than .5% failure rate the price might double. Which do you order? That is the question.

I am old enough to remember going through this whole phobia with regard to Japanese manufacturers. At first it was regarded as cheap junk. This partly from fear and wishfull thinking and partly correct. Certainly cheap. The Japanese were smart enough to work on QC to the point where they showed up western (especially English) products especially cars. The world did adjust to Japanese manufacture. Albeit with demise of electronics manufacture in Oz and almost demolishing car manufacture in many places. Fortunately the cost of labour rose in Japan so that it was only the mass production and robot technology that has kept them in front.

So I imagine that China will with cheap labour conquer the world with manufacture. But their prices will rise with labour costs as the whole population rise in living standards. (a lot more of them than Japan)
After China we will see India rise up in manufacturing followed then by Africa.

No it does not bode well for UK perhaps not quite so bad for Oz with resources and USA somewhere between. The world is changing. I think for the better. We won't see China making war when they can conquer with manufacturing. Meanwhile so many things are so cheap. A throw away world which will not be good for the environment. I would like to live a long time to see what happens but mostly I am pleased I won't be here to see it. good luck olewill
 
Zagato said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zagato
Pay someone £1 to do a job and you will get £1 worth of quality... If the companies that sub the work cared more for quality than profit then...



That's what I meant "If the companies that sub the work" on! Don't blame the Chinese/little guy in most cases, he is only being paid £1, if the company at the top gave him £5 he would be able to do a better job.

One example I am well aware of is Britpart (a lot made in India but same issues) They are aware of the quality problem and are trying to turn it around. Not sure if they are paying more to the workers and those near the bottom of the line however!
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Its not the £1 wage thats the problem, its the spec they are asked to produce. It would make no difference if you paid more except the price would go up for you but the spec would be the same.
Just think how lucky we are it wasn't built in the uk with our utter s***t workforce, there would be no quality control at all and we would cut corners.
 
Pay them more and it would enable them to produce a better product. You get good and bad workers in every country, you can't generalize.

Example. Lister engines produced in India are no where near as good as the originals built in Britain as they simply don't have the equipment to produce a quality product. What these guys produce from how they have to produce the stuff is quite remarkable, it's amazing they get the damn things to work at all. That said if you produced a Lister engine in Britain to the old Lister standards they would be about 4k not 1K. Pay them more to invest in decent tooling etc and problem solved.

Having said this don't forget that there are plenty of good cheap quality products coming out of China and India - they just maybe being produced in suspect circumstances - clothing sweatshops for instance, some of the stuff is very good!

Agree also about the comment about some of our past car industry. MkII Jags rarely had more than 60% of the necessary "spot welds" in place :eek: Jag couldn't do anything about it as the company that built the bodies had an almost monopoly situation.
 
Zagato said:
Having said this don't forget that there are plenty of good cheap quality products coming out of China and India - they just maybe being produced in suspect circumstances - clothing sweatshops for instance, some of the stuff is very good!
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One subject that regularly brings out the 'Chinese rubbish' comment is anchor chain. I am currently testing a large collection of samples of Chinese and European chain for an upcoming article. The Chinese stuff is excellent.
 
It makes me laugh to see these threads, knowing that the posters are almost certainly typing their posts on computers made in China.
In my experience Chinese products are fine unless there is some final manual, possibly skilled, finishing off required, so my Epiphone guitar is superbly made, but could have been set up better by a blindfolded monkey. I investigated a mysterious fault with my tow board lighting extension lead to find that they had apparently just wired it up at random! In both cases the time I spent fixing the faults was trivial compared to the money I saved, and I like fixing stuff anyway.
 
A lot of western companies subcontract out to China because it is cheaper. Then they go to negotiate contracts to squeeze the last 1c of profit margin out of the contract for the Chinese supplier.

Normally they will be supplying several companies. You can guess which companies get the better products if you have negotiated away almost all of their margin. You do of course need quality control to check whether the products are up to scratch as well. If you have negotiated a fair contract, and have quality controls in place, you will get excellent products from China made to a reasonable price. If you have no quality control and pay only rock bottom prices then you will get the **** result you deserve.

If you want quality, you will have to pay a bit more for it - where ever it is made. Many European retailers seem to have an ethos of the lowest possible price (and forget the quality) and the Chinese (along with many others), make exactly what was asked for.
 
Zagato said:
Pay them more and it would enable them to produce a better product. You get good and bad workers in every country, you can't generalize.

Example. Lister engines produced in India are no where near as good as the originals built in Britain as they simply don't have the equipment to produce a quality product. What these guys produce from how they have to produce the stuff is quite remarkable, it's amazing they get the damn things to work at all. That said if you produced a Lister engine in Britain to the old Lister standards they would be about 4k not 1K. Pay them more to invest in decent tooling etc and problem solved.

Having said this don't forget that there are plenty of good cheap quality products coming out of China and India - they just maybe being produced in suspect circumstances - clothing sweatshops for instance, some of the stuff is very good!

Agree also about the comment about some of our past car industry. MkII Jags rarely had more than 60% of the necessary "spot welds" in place :eek: Jag couldn't do anything about it as the company that built the bodies had an almost monopoly situation.
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You mean Pressed Steel Fisher - who also had a run-in with RR Motors.

Only one thing worse than a public monopoly - a private one.
 
ukmctc said:
Its not the £1 wage thats the problem, its the spec they are asked to produce. It would make no difference if you paid more except the price would go up for you but the spec would be the same.
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Just my tuppence worth, adding to the above

Did you hear about the Chinese CE mark? All goods sold in Europe have to conform to European standards (and there are zillions of them, for everything under the sun, constantly being revised so manufacturers have to buy the latest version - for anything between £100-£600 a pop :mad: Where TF does the money go?:mad:).

Visual identification of the manufacturer's statement that the product is compliant with all the relevant standards is the CE mark.

The Chinese have shrewdly come up with their own CE mark, looking very very similar of course, which stands for "China Export" ;)

They're not daft!
 
I understand Hidea outboards has just gone bust as they have all disappeared from the local chandler here, and the staff say that's the reason. They also said they were abominable.
All heresay of course, although all the engines disappeared from the stand over night.
 
Two points, I always say, buy cheap buy twice.

However, a good friend of mine, recently retired, spent a good deal of his working life doing business in China, long before it evolved into what we know today. He always said, the Chinese will make what you want how you want, if you want quality, thats what you will get, if you want cheap, that too is what you will get.

Trouble is most people are so price concious that the importers will focus on that and that is why cheap tatty tools from B&Q, say, will last 10minutes. Same goes for many products made down to a price IMO.
 
Daydream believer said:
Just the reason NOT to buy sails made in the far east . Particularly in China
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As I mentioned earlier in the thread I have a new furling headsail from China. The sail is designed by a local sail company [Australia] with collaboration with a sail designer[Europe] that also designs for the major international sail brands. The sails are made at CSF which I believe is well inland. Check out the pdf for some interesting reading.
http://www.leesails.ca/images/Sailsfromchina2.pdf

On a side note it seems there is some fracas going on over the possibility of Lasers being manufactured in China. It seems the concern is over the possibility the Chinese boats will be too high a quality and consistent compared to the other stuff thrown together.
In my local shire we had the largest yacht company in the Southern hemisphere, its now in China.
 
From the posts it seems the initial statement, Chinese Rubbish, was in-correct - though maybe those that agree do not wear Musto, do not buy Johnson Bros, chinaware, or use mobile phones, TVs, digital cameras, laptops and still weave their own cotton and make their own 'T' shirts. China has a huge boatbuilding (leisure yacht) industry (think of a brand name and I'd guess half manufacture there). Vyv tells us (some?) Chinese chain is of excellent quality and I suspect lots of marine electronics now are made there.

So the question arises - to what did the original comment refer? We have a Chinese 2 stroke, 4.6hp outboard (cost about half that of the equivalent Japenese product), made in the new ex Bombardier factory. We use it, maybe twice a week and have done for the last 1.5 years.

I'm waiting for the Chinese to start delivering inboard diesels, no-one can convince me that the ones we use are particularly high tech and then props would be equally interesting. They already supply mast sections to Oz. What else is there?

But the statement Chinese Rubbish - I think some people might like to be a little bit less 'all embracing'

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
I'm waiting for the Chinese to start delivering inboard diesels, no-one can convince me that the ones we use are particularly high tech and then props would be equally interesting. They already supply mast sections to Oz. What else is there?

But the statement Chinese Rubbish - I think some people might like to be a little bit less 'all embracing'

Jonathan
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Check out the back section of the "Afloat" magazine. There are propulsion diesels there advertised for yachts. Auxiliary Chinese diesels have been sold here for 30 years!
 
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