Buy American, I'd rather not.......

[Katfish]

Here's a rant,

I always see people posting about "Chinese" crap and they wished they could find "American" made stuff.  My son took off the 2 rear rims and took them and tires to get mounted.
What he brought back pissed me off.   Both rims have 1/4" deep gouges all over the place and actually put a pretty deep cut in his hand while handling them.  The 1 rim has 15 stick-on weights and an equal amount exactly 180 reg on the other side.  Wouldn't these cancel each other?
I work in the electronic industry and the people in China line up 10 deep and are very conscious about their work.  The people here in the good ol USA are too busy checking Facebook and talking about how wasted they're going to get on the weekend.

Rant off

[70 Challenger Lover]

I think a lot of Chinese stuff has really come a long way. When I was a kid growing up in the 70s, I heard the same complaints about made in Japan. Now Japanese products are considered very high end.

I can't help but agree on American pride. There are a lot of fine Americans producing fine products but in my opinion, we have been sliding for years. If we don't reinvent ourselves as a country at some point, our grandkids will be living in a has been country.

I've experienced stuff like you have with your wheels and it's really a shame. Fewer people seem to care about their work each year. That's partly why I've learned to do so many things myself. Can't trust other people to care like you do.

[Roadman]

Here's a rant,

I always see people posting about "Chinese" crap and they wished they could find "American" made stuff.  My son took off the 2 rear rims and took them and tires to get mounted.
What he brought back pissed me off.   Both rims have 1/4" deep gouges all over the place and actually put a pretty deep cut in his hand while handling them.  The 1 rim has 15 stick-on weights and an equal amount exactly 180 reg on the other side.  Wouldn't these cancel each other?
I work in the electronic industry and the people in China line up 10 deep and are very conscious about their work.  The people here in the good ol USA are too busy checking Facebook and talking about how wasted they're going to get on the weekend.

Rant off

               So are you bitchin about the quality of the machine the tires were changed on, or the people doing the work. ????       If it's the employees, take your business some place else. Same with machine.     MADE IN AMERICA   

[GoodysGotaCuda]

Here's a rant,

I always see people posting about "Chinese" crap and they wished they could find "American" made stuff.  My son took off the 2 rear rims and took them and tires to get mounted.
What he brought back pissed me off.   Both rims have 1/4" deep gouges all over the place and actually put a pretty deep cut in his hand while handling them.  The 1 rim has 15 stick-on weights and an equal amount exactly 180 reg on the other side.  Wouldn't these cancel each other?
I work in the electronic industry and the people in China line up 10 deep and are very conscious about their work.  The people here in the good ol USA are too busy checking Facebook and talking about how wasted they're going to get on the weekend.

Rant off

Yep. People think that lower wage "American" work automatically provides you with some level of ingrained quality. It doesn't.

Some of the last work that I paid for was from a muffler shop on my old Warlock. I just wanted the rusted stock muffler replaced and was quoted $95. Seemed fair and worth my time. Upon pickup, it turned into $195 and they "forgot to add labor"...even more reason I will continue to work on and build my own junk. For $200, I could have gotten a nice upgrade muffler.

[anlauto]

Funny "short story"...
Last month I purchased a set of YearOne 17" rally wheels......

Because I had them shipped to my US address for free, I have import the items to Canada as a commercial business. The CBSA wants to know the "country of origin" on all the parts coming in.....

I couldn't find that info anywhere on their website so I called the sales department to find out. The sales person proudly told me they were MADE IN THE USA !

Wasn't until I had them mounted that the mechanic pointed out that right on the box it says "Made in China"

Not that I care, but I could have been in deepshit declaring them improperly at the border

[Brads70]

Quality will only be as good as the customer demands. Chinese or otherwise.They build the minimum quality for the cheapest price . They are capable of building quality but no one wants to pay for it.
If we demand cheap prices than we will get cheap products generally.
If dollar store scissors are selling and quality ones $30-40 are not  guess which ones will be out of business and no longer reproduced.
The consumer is more to blame as the producer

[RUNCHARGER]

We have a tool dealer here (sort of like a harbour freight I guess), they had some zip wheels cheaper than my regular zip wheels so I bought a few. Started using one and bang it was sticking in the ceiling of the shop. Foolishly mounted another one and the same thing happened. After that I went back to the N.A. made zip wheels. Cheap, Chinese stuff isn't worth it. Just about all the car parts I've ever bought that were made in China were unusable as well, just a waste of money. It's not worth the consequences.
Of course the irony is the last set of American Racing wheels I bought were made in China.

[70 Challenger Lover]

Quality will only be as good as the customer demands. Chinese or otherwise.They build the minimum quality for the cheapest price . They are capable of building quality but no one wants to pay for it.
If we demand cheap prices than we will get cheap products generally.
If dollar store scissors are selling and quality ones $30-40 are not  guess which ones will be out of business and no longer reproduced.
The consumer is more to blame as the producer

I couldn't agree more to this. I took Katfish's story mainly as a complaint that American workers don't seem to care like they used to but when it comes to producing items that are sold in stores, we Americans have become addicted to products that are super low priced. As much as we gripe about the cheap quality of Harbor Freight, most of us shop in their stores regularly. I buy their $10 grinders, abuse them for a couple years until they blow up and buy another. Hard to justify paying 20 times that for a higher quality one even when I know it will last.

With globalization, hard to even know for sure what's made in America anymore. If I buy a $200 grinder that's made in America, I may just find that all of the components are made elsewhere and it's simply assembled here in America. Maybe by the guy who worked on Katfish's wheels before he got fired for texting all day at work.

[cataclysm80]

Quality will only be as good as the customer demands. Chinese or otherwise.They build the minimum quality for the cheapest price . They are capable of building quality but no one wants to pay for it.
If we demand cheap prices than we will get cheap products generally.
If dollar store scissors are selling and quality ones $30-40 are not  guess which ones will be out of business and no longer reproduced.
The consumer is more to blame as the producer

 

[cataclysm80]

The sales person proudly told me they were MADE IN THE USA !

Wasn't until I had them mounted that the mechanic pointed out that right on the box it says "Made in China"

Not that I care, but I could have been in deepshit declaring them improperly at the border

I've run into that occasionally on customs forms. 
I sometimes sell collectors cards.  (rectangular printed cardstock)
The company who sells the product and owns the rights is a US company, and the items are sold in the USA.  If you want to buy the item, it comes from the USA.
However, the company selling them has them printed by a company in Belgium.
The printer in Belgium, buys the cardstock from France or sometimes Germany.

When I ship international, I'm not sure what to put on the customs form for country of origin.

[soundcontrol]

I buy a lot of welding and grinding supplies direct from China, it's so cheap so I just can't resist. Sometimes it is real crap, some stuff is as good as the stuff I buy in good tool stores here. It's a hit and miss, really. 

If you talk about any country that has a good reputation for quality, I think Germany is top of the line, also Finland makes stuff with great quality.
So... I got a German TIG welder, a Stahlwerk. Just to find out later its made in China! 
No problems with it though, been working great for 2 years now.

[Katfish]

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man, but people just don't take pride in their work like they used to.
And I agree, it's our own fault, you get what you pay for.  In our quest to cheaper "stuff" we've exported all the jobs that require skilled labor, so we end up with what we have.

Don't get me started on the guy last week who told me he could only set the toe for the alignment because the car was too low......

[wldgtx]

I don't feel like posting in these type of threads gets anywhere.

You are going to see polar opposite viewpoints, and some that agree. 

I will say this, much like most of the other stuff people bitch about... If you don't like the way something is... then change it.  I made the mistake of buying an off brand set of wheels for my old daily driver.  When I got them, I took them to the tire place for them to be mounted and the tire shop told me I was in for a long run of problems with them.  I asked him why and he promptly said, because they are cheap china wheels that are not made to specs that we have here in the states.  I chuckled and said okay.

Despite his warning I went on, and they lasted 3 months before I had to remove them and put the originals back on.  When he took them apart for me (I was selling the tires).  He showed me all of the hairline cracks, one of the wheels actually broke while I was driving. 

We aren't perfect, but no one is.

[GoodysGotaCuda]

I don't feel like posting in these type of threads gets anywhere.

You are going to see polar opposite viewpoints, and some that agree. 

I will say this, much like most of the other stuff people bitch about... If you don't like the way something is... then change it.  I made the mistake of buying an off brand set of wheels for my old daily driver.  When I got them, I took them to the tire place for them to be mounted and the tire shop told me I was in for a long run of problems with them.  I asked him why and he promptly said, because they are cheap china wheels that are not made to specs that we have here in the states.  I chuckled and said okay.

Despite his warning I went on, and they lasted 3 months before I had to remove them and put the originals back on.  When he took them apart for me (I was selling the tires).  He showed me all of the hairline cracks, one of the wheels actually broke while I was driving. 

We aren't perfect, but no one is.

FYI, you will find "made in China" cast into most every wheel put on a car today. Ford, GM, Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, etc. As it's been mentioned before, if you'll pay a little more, China has the capability of producing quality parts.

Made In: China. And for the record, we're not happy about it. At AEV, we remain committed to American manufacturing, and we would much rather have our wheels manufactured in the US. But right now, you can't get wheels made in the US at aftermarket volumes.

What happened? Most of the US wheel manufacturing used to be based in California. In the early nineties, China targeted the wheel industry as a strategic growth industry. They set up incentives for the construction of wheel manufacturing facilities, began offering export credits of 22% on wheels, and fully subsidized the cost of new tooling. US plants couldn't compete. Most US manufacturers ended up selling their equipment to China, created partnerships with the Chinese plants, and became middle men importing wheels back to the US.

Today, the only cast wheel plants left in the US are for high volume OE wheel programs. So unfortunately, buying from China is a necessary evil of being in the aftermarket cast wheel business. We have made the effort to buy from a high quality Chinese plant. Our plant also produces OE wheels for Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Harley Davidson, among others. Our supplier has Americans on the ground in China who oversee our programs for us, and we have been over to China to inspect and visit the plant. 

When lower volume manufacturing becomes feasible again in the US, we will be first in line. Over the past 20 years, the Chinese government has stopped subsidizing tooling, has been phasing out the wheel export credits, and as of 2011 they finally eliminated the wheel credits. We hope that in time, US plants will be able to compete and we will start to see some volume move back to the US.

https://secure.aev-conversions.com/shop/jk-pintler

[torredcuda]

If the person doing the wheel balancing  screwed up it was either the person not caring about their job, lack of proper training or the management not making sure they are doing it correctly. I see lack of work ethic in a lot of younger people but also see some who are very hard workers who do a good job. As far as products I think US made is not what it used to be and Japan has come a long way but 90% of China made stuff is still crap but yes, consumers are to blame because as long as it sells they will keep making crap. Did you go back to the tire store and ask the manager about the wheel weights?