The owner of the mom-and-pop auto supply insisted that they were of the highest quality, and they looked OK, for what it's worth. I paid around $30 ea. After about 15,000 miles, these made in china rotor cracked on my 96 Sebring Jx conv. and shaved down one pad in no time. They were also full of surface pits. This time I insisted on USA-made rotors and got them at AutoZone for $44 each vs $25 for the junk. Not a big difference in price. Kelsey-Hayes Autospecialty brand has Made in USA on the label and a big US flag sticker on the box, however, the rotor has CANADA molded into the rotor. OK, made in America. Boycott that cheap junk before they drive all of the the quality guys out of business.
Well...yeah. With very few exceptions, Chinese auto parts are junk.
You expected maybe for them to say "Here, buy these garbage Chinese rotors. They're junk, but they'll get you out of our face and keep groceries on our table."?
? How do rotors "look OK" at the relevant level, without the use of e.g. an electron microscope or at least some metallurgical analysis technique?
Chrysler paid less than that for similar junk rotors, because they bought them by the ten thousand.
They'll probably last long and well.
It's already too late. The quality stuff is getting scarcer and scarcer, harder and harder to get. More and more, Chinese crapola is the only option. This is a result of companies being taken over by MBAs who consider it beneath them to know anything about icky auto parts beyond "they can be made cheaper in China" and "With an ISO 9000 certified factory, quality is a nonissue".
Yeah, I've patronized this small auto parts store for years, and trusted their judgment. No more. I was impressed with the AutoZone guy (let the flames begin) he went out of his way to call around to two non-AZ stores to get me the USA-made part in 20 minutes, at a reasonable price, from a shop-only parts distr. The place was jammed, they were actually helping people install things on their cars in the parking lot, while the traditional shops nearby were empty. The only chinese-made parts that are good are the ones with intense quality control by those that put their brand name on it. Try going after the ying-yang trading co. in a product liability case when those cheap tree lights burn your house down.
How many parts coming out of chinese factories / from chinese vendors (mainland communist china, not hong kong or taiwan) have you been responsible for? I ask this question, because one can squeeze hard and baby sit, and waste countless hours and spend alot time in the industrial cess pools of pollution over there and get good parts for a little while.
The amount of engineering man-hours dedicated to the baby sitting is huge. With a trusted US, western european, or japanese source I could just turn them loose. I wouldn't have to worry that they'd start making crap on me. And should something bad happen, it would be corrected and NOT return. Taiwan and hong kong vendors somewhat worse. China, constant villagance was needed. I only found one vendor in china over dozens of parts that rose to the level of my favorite US and european vendors. They made labels. In fact the worst label suppiler I delt with was in europe. (I mention it to demostrate that to me it's all about the parts and responsiveness of the vendor)
To me it's like the old commerical, pay me now or pay me later. I'd rather not deal with field returns, defective parts on the factory floor, etc and so forth.
quality systems put in place have no way of stopping it. engineers are often told who is going to make the parts. when it's the lowest bidder it's like squeezing water from a rock to get quality parts.
Yup, invariably the chinese rotors are made from crap metal and the QC on the finished part is non-existent. Years ago, my family's service station used to spec "white box" rotors for customers who demanded the cheapest price we could get. After a year or two of dealing with spotty (at best) quality from Chinese parts we decided to just turn the business away if they're not willing to spring for quality parts. It's just not worth the aggravation to save (in the greater scheme of things) a rather trivial amount of money.
Having lived and worked in both China and Hong Kong, it is fair to say that quality and pride in one's work are sorely missing in the PRC. 60 years of communism and corruption have really transformed a country once known for an industrious and inventive workforce into the 3rd world slum you see today. Sad.
As another poster pointed out, they *can* provide quality parts. They just choose not to since there really isn't any cost effective way to monitor them other than stationing your own expensive expat engineers on site to babysit. Taking your case to the courts is a joke since the Chinese legal system is a complete farce. Until that's fixed, you're basically stuck with the current situation. The carrot doesn't work. There needs to be an effective stick.
No - the laws of physics are different over there. (I was going to let that statement lay just like that, but I guess I better add that I'm only kidding, else someone might think I'm serious.)
Unfortunately or furtunately, depending on whether you're the consumer or an MBA, that's the nature of modern business. Quality above and beyond the minimum spec. and market forces are considered "non-value-added", even if there would be value added to the consumer. "Value-added" in modern business is a euphemism for "profit improvement". The market forces say to sacrifice everything for light weight, fuel mileage, and cram everything in minimum space towards those first two as long as the minimum durability/reliability specs. are statistically met, and the net loss in consumer perception of value (and therefore sales - negative $$) doesn't outweigh the manufacturing cost savings (positive $$).
With the improved process repeatibility of the modern production line, the safety factors are trimmed to the bone. In the old days, things were so "overdesigned" out of necessity to allow for the huge statistical process variation - hence the perception (generally correct) of huge capability of abuse without damage on the typical vehicle or part. Today, special measures have to be taken to design in abuse capability, i.e, if coolant is lost, the computer can sense it and cut power to the engine in a limp-home mode without doing damage. With minimum safety factors, if such abuse capability is not intentionally designed in, unless the consumer is paying attention, you lose an engine, or at least do serious damage. But the complexity (in not having to implement the safeguards) is much lower.
So we have a choice of highly complex, expensive to repair, light, and fast vehicles, or heavy abuse-capable vehicles that can't handle well or accelerate very fast and get worse gas mileage. Maybe the SUV is a combination of both - best or worst of both worlds? 8^)
Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")
I have been preaching this for many years. My car parts guy knows that when I buy any rotors/drums, that they will be giving me "MADE IN USA" or "MADE IN CANADA" parts only, no matter the price. Pay $25 for the cheapo and R/R soon or pay $40 for the good one. Besides that, your brakes are too important to put inferior parts on. You LIFE depends on them.
To be more precise, the engineering is okay, but if you use softer junk metal, it's going to wear a lot faster. Kind of like making a copy out of aluminum instead of stainless steel. Looks good and fits, but put stress on it and suddenly things change.
It's not just the metal. I've had a number of chinese rotors that were warped right out of the box. There is also really poor quality control on the machining.
Approximately 11/16/03 20:10, Joseph Oberlander uttered for posterity:
That means nothing. Japan has been using scrap American steel for decades, everything from car body steel to airplanes and battleships. What matters is how the scrap is re-refined and manufactured into whatever.
Hardest darned body steel I ever ran into was a '70 Datsun 2000 Roadster. Ruined two Dremel bits until I broke down and bought a tungsten one. Those same other Dremel bits would cut American body steel like butter.
Yes, because you have a truck, with much larger rotors containing integral hubs and machined bearing seats, inner and outer -- not the simple miniature metal discs most of today's passenger cars use.
One of the few, I'm sure. I've resorted to just punching in the information myself, it's faster and more accurate. I have gotten good response from the manager and employees in respect to returns and finding parts but the employees (especially the younger ones) don't know enough about cars to give you an educated opinion on much of anything.. =o'
I went to O'reillys for a pinion seal. The guy asked me, "what size?" I said, 7 5/8'ths. He said, I only have 7.5 and I said, "that's fine, it's sometimes called 7 1/2 ." Then I looked at the screen and it said, "7.5 and
7.625" I guess I shouldn't set my expectations so high, huh?
Ya know, cheap parts bashing aside, this sounds like you have a problem other than the rotors.. one pad shaved down makes me think about a sticky/hanging caliper/slide.
Often overlooked during a pad change is the need to take apart the rubber gasket and bushing and pin, clean them with a rag and apply good lube. I use a synthetic break lube and it has eliminated caliper hang-ups once and for all.
So are Raybestos Canadian rotors!! I bought Raybestos PG Plus rotors that are imported from Canada and they came pre-warped right out of the box. I exchanged them and the next set was also warped.
I bought no name rotors and they're smooth as silk.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.