Chinese Junk!

rusty6

Well-known Member
Just finished removing the gearbox from the 10x50 Farm King grain auger to replace what I thought was a badly leaking seal on the bottom.
Turns out the reason the seal leaks is that the shaft is flopping around in the housing due to what I can only guess is a worn out bearing.
If it was an original box (20+ years old) maybe I would not complain. But I replaced the original in either 2013 or 14. Tag on this gearbox
shows it was built in 2013 in China. Theres no way that should have worn out so soon. Either 2 or 3 harvests and I'm not a big farmer. The
original gear box broke a gear but the seals were still good right up til the gear broke. Maybe I can make one good one out of the two boxes.
 
I always thought that a Chinese Junk was an ancient Chinese sailing ship that is still in use today. At least according to Google (LOL).
 
(quoted from post at 11:33:01 02/15/17) I always thought that a Chinese Junk was an ancient Chinese sailing ship that is still in use today. At least according to Google (LOL).
Yes, I know that term and wish thats all it was. Unfortunately I hear so much now about replacement parts being made in China and turning out to be junk. Now I'm seeing it for myself.
 
There are some gems out there to be had if you look carefully, but there are indeed some very questionable quality parts, lack of QA on assembly, and lack of quality raw materials if you're not careful.

You may pay 3x as much for american made, but it's easier than replacing the cheap part 3 times.
 
Cheap Chinese products are the most expensive crap one can buy. IMO. Just bought a 6' PTO tiller. Has "Made in USA" stickers in several places.
Wasn't the cheapest but had more metal for supporting the gearbox. A cheaper one had "Made in China" on gearbox and on shipping crate. I passed on it.
 
I had a friend that was a machinist and he told me that if you want to pay the price, the Chinese will supply you with as good a machine tool as you can buy from any corner of the globe. However, if you want to buy something at a cheap price, you'll get cheap quality. Isn't there an old expression about that, something like "you get .........
 
Everything I buy regardless of the where it's made seems to be junk today. At least the Chinese junk is cheaper than everyone else's junk.
 
"I had a friend that was a machinist and he told me that if you want to pay the price, the Chinese will supply you with as good a machine tool as you can buy from any corner of the globe."

I always figured that had to be the case. I can't believe the stuff they build for domestic consumption could possibly be as bad as most of what they build for export.
 
Are you sure the seal didn't leak first and the bearing run dry and hot, then the shaft waller out and start flopping. Be pretty hard to tell after the fact. just sayin gobble
 
A friends dad recently built his retirement house with some amenities. He had bought some hatchery chicks along with new waterers, feeders, and feed. He had been raising the little peepers for about 2 weeks and had the carpenter coming back to do some work in the new shed so in an effort to keep the chicks settled he put them in a quiet corner in a wood box that he had received some Chinese goods in. Subsequently chicks started dying off. He said they looked healthy and would just tip over. By the time he made the call to the hatchery he had lost 10 of his 24 chicks. The lady on the other end reassured him she could analyze his problem because she had thirty years experience and asked him to describe his scenario. He described the water, the feed, the feeders, the vitamins, the box, and said while he was on the phone with her number 11 cashed it in right in front of him. She asked about the wood box that he had moved the chicks to and he described it to a tee including the writing on the box that he couldn't read. She told him to get his chicks out of the box because it was ladened with formaldehyde.
 
(quoted from post at 13:25:12 02/15/17) Are you sure the seal didn't leak first and the bearing run dry and hot, then the shaft waller out and start flopping. Be pretty hard to tell after the fact. just sayin gobble

It didn't lack oil. I check those gearboxes often and this one only started showing leakage last harvest. It got worse so I pumped in corn head grease. I think I only augered a truck load or so after that and even the grease was leaking past the seal down the shaft. Going to try and get the gear box opened up to see what the damage is and if it is repairable.
And I don't recall how much the new Chinese gear box cost but it did not seem cheap at the time and I don't think I had a choice. It came from the Farm King dealer. I noticed the original gear box that lasted 20 years was made in Canada.
 
That's what I'm getting at. I doubt they're poisoning their own chickens. It's just junk that they send here that's an issue.
 

Just when a guy begins to think that maybe, just maybe, the chinese might be getting their act together, they prove us wrong once again. I bought some simple pegboard hooks awhile back. Made in China. They were so screwed up that they wouldn't fit in the holes. I took 'em back.
 
So just out of nowhere, she asks him about the wooden box and she concludes that it is laden with formaldehyde? She should quit her job and get hired on with the Food and Drug Administration people, they're always looking for brilliant scientists that can do those kinds of things in seconds. Just wondering why a random wooden box sitting around in a farmer's shop or house would coincidentally have formaldehyde in the wood fibres. Very puzzling situation .....
 
Rrulnd I was at one of the foundries over there. The manager held up three cast iron plumbing elbows. The first domestic use, second normal export, the third USA export. Would you care to guess which one weighed less. His point was the plant will make just what the customer wants. You want cheaper we can make it , that was his message. The more I go over there the more I am convinced that statement is true.
 
I've eluded to that all along. It's not the Chinese manufacturers who are to blame. It's the American companies who are having the crap made and dumping it on us. "Don't blame an American company,blame the Chinese". Ya right.
I'm getting to be as down on American corporations as I am with about half the lazy worthless population of this country.
 
(quoted from post at 16:20:28 02/15/17) I've eluded to that all along. It's not the Chinese manufacturers who are to blame. It's the American companies who are having the crap made and dumping it on us. "Don't blame an American company,blame the Chinese". Ya right.
I'm getting to be as down on American corporations as I am with about half the lazy worthless population of this country.

This is not always, or even often the case. As with the drywall of 2004-6, the imports started out with similar materials to the US drywall. The retail use of the drywall led to investigation which found that only a certain percentage of the drywall was contaminated. In this case, the suspect is high levels of fly-ash, and the fly-ash used was high in impurities. So, the mfg started out with a decent and comparable product, but once the mfg had the contract, and started delivering, they changed their materials spec, and that's when the problem happened.

In my case, I had a company which was going to injection mold a certain high use part for boats. It had to be very tough material, and I got some samples that lasted very well and held up for months of harsh use. When I ordered 600 of them, and they were sent to me, I had four taken at random from the case, and compared to the material chemistry of the first samples. All four showed inferior materials consistency, and casting flash was much worse, as well as the color and density, and porosity were all much worse than the sample. I rejected the whole lot, and sent them back. Never got my money back from the mfg, and they stopped communicating. They KNEW they sent me inferior junk that was not to the spec we contracted for, but expected me to just deal with it, and put in on the shelf for sale.

I suppose they can make good products, from quality materials and workmanship, but then every single part must be inspected and assayed. Where's the savings? What's the downside if they break the contract? They don't have to give your money back, so on to the next chump.
 
Many wooden shipping crates, pallets, boxes, etc that travel between countries are treated to kill any critters potentially harbored in the wood that could become a new invasive species in the destination country. For this reason a person should not use wood from packaging materials imported in from anywhere to construct animal shelters out of.
 
Some of those crates or pallets are made of some exotic wood material and are clean straight stock. I guess I never mentioned he was a farmer, but rather had a used farm equipment business. He had gotten this crate from something that was shipped to him and had saved it to use in his move. I guess the old gal knows her fowl husbandry.
 
(quoted from post at 18:20:28 02/15/17) I've eluded to that all along. It's not the Chinese manufacturers who are to blame. It's the American companies who are having the crap made and dumping it on us. "Don't blame an American company,blame the Chinese". Ya right.
I'm getting to be as down on American corporations as I am with about half the lazy worthless population of this country.
I agree. China does not just send the stuff over here on their own.
Somebody over here has to order it and try to sell it.
 
From what I understand there are laws about what kind of wood can be used for international shipping. "Raw" wood is not permitted at all but heat-treated or kiln-dried wood is legal to use without pesticide treatment as is "manufactured" wood like OSB and particle board. However, some types of chemicals are still permitted for treating otherwise raw wood and this must be what the chicks were exposed to.
 
You may have a much higher opinion of the Farm King brand than I do. To me, neither the first gear box nor the second gear box should have failed. The auger manufacturer, Farm King, designed their product and purchased the gearbox and bearings that met their specifications.

Which sounds more realistic:
A). For years Farm King has neglected to check the quality of the gear boxes they were receiving and has unknowingly paid top dollar for inferior gear boxes that they put into their products and replacement parts stocks. or
B). Farm King designed and specified exactly those cheap inferior gear boxes to go into their products and replacement parts stocks.
 
(quoted from post at 22:04:54 02/15/17)

Which sounds more realistic:
A). For years Farm King has neglected to check the quality of the gear boxes they were receiving and has unknowingly paid top dollar for inferior gear boxes that they put into their products and replacement parts stocks. or
B). Farm King designed and specified exactly those cheap inferior gear boxes to go into their products and replacement parts stocks.

Maybe Farm King does put poor gear boxes in their augers or maybe I am extremely hard on machinery. They do sell a lot of these augers and I have not heard of any weakness in the gearboxes. A neighbour has the same model and as far as I know has not had a problem with it.
I have it partially disassembled but not down to the last bearing. So far everything looks good except for a lot of side play in the input shaft. Pictures to follow if I get it apart.
 
Not exact, but related. I have purchased bearings for my round baler rollers from China under the Seiko brand.....yes the Japanese watch mfgr.
brand. As fine a quality product as you would ever care to put in your hand. A lot of suppliers have 3 listings for their parts, each with a
different price and country of origin listed. Pick for yourself. So designers of equipment do just that.

As I have said before it's called "designed to cost". A Ford pinto was designed to cost what the low end buyer could afford. If the
manufacturing of the product met the spec. and the spec. was of industry standard quality, it passed the test.

A Caddillac Sedan De Ville was designed for the other end of the market. Same applies.

If you get a low end mfgr. that builds sub standard parts that don't meet the intended specs, doesn't matter where they come from.....they are
junk!
 
If the auger is known as a quality machine, is it possible that this individual auger has some binding, misalignment, bent shaft, other worn parts, non-functioning overload clutch, or damage that is putting higher than normal loads on the gearbox? If two gearboxes have failed in a short time there is probably something causing those failures. Fixing the gearbox or installing a third new gearbox without fixing the root problem could result in yet another gearbox failure.
 
That is not the fault of the Chinese, it is the fault of the cheap American that wrote up the specifications and dictated the price to the Chinese. The Chinese could make a quality gearbox, but they will not do it for almost free like the manufacturers here demand.
 
(quoted from post at 12:30:36 02/15/17) "I had a friend that was a machinist and he told me that if you want to pay the price, the Chinese will supply you with as good a machine tool as you can buy from any corner of the globe."

I always figured that had to be the case. I can't believe the stuff they build for domestic consumption could possibly be as bad as most of what they build for export.

They build good stuff for export too, but you have to pay for it.

Everyone likes to defacate on Harbor Freight tools, but look a the price you pay vs. what the same tool would cost off the tool truck. You get what you pay for has never been more true.

People just won't pay for quality. When you put two toasters on the shelf, identical in appearance, one will last 1 year and costs $10, and the other will last 5 years and costs $20. Your average consumer will buy the $10 one almost every time even though the $20 toaster is the better value by far.

People only look at the dollar amount spent. Understandable in this day and age because very few people are made of money and they have to make what they do have go as far as possible.
 
(quoted from post at 09:21:09 02/16/17)
(quoted from post at 12:30:36 02/15/17)
People only look at the dollar amount spent. Understandable in this day and age because very few people are made of money and they have to make what they do have go as far as possible.

I like to think I am past that and if given a choice I will take the quality at higher price. Especially on parts that are difficult to install. I learned that on a rotor drive belt on my combine a few years ago. Bought the cheap one to replace the original. It didn't even last one harvest and I was doing the job again. This time with the high quality belt.
 
Is anyone else a musician, or knows about instruments? I am a veteran instrument repairman. I've worked on brass, and wood instruments for decades. Mostly as a hobby, because I like finely tooled things.

Like most other consumer products, instruments have migrated from being produced mainly in Indiana, IL, NY, and other new England places to locations with cheaper labor and materials.

There's a range of stuff out there that I will work on, but a lot of stuff that comes to me I have to send back out unrepaired. Mostly because it's unrepairable, and the customer will blame me when it doesn't play right. Mostly woodwinds, but plenty of other instruments as well.

Back in the late 60s, one of the biggest builders in the world, Conn musical instrument company set up production in Nogales Mexico. The specs were the same, the materials were supposed to be the same, and the workmanship was supposed to be the same. They started moving the sax, trumpet, trombone, and french horn production to Mexico. There were instant problems. Shoddy rod fitting in to the cup, poor location and setup of the springs, lousy mother of pearl keywork, etc. The horns are now known in the industry as "MexiConns" and no one wants them.

The same happened to the others when they moved mfg to China. I can take one look at a sax or trumpet, and tell you if it's from China in a matter of seconds. Because - that's all it will last, is a matter of seconds. I've repaired badly damaged saxes from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s from Martin, Conn, Buscher, etc and bring them back to life. Trying to fix a Chinese horn is a waste of time and money.

It's very sad to tell a parent that they bought a POS for their kid to try to learn on. They always ask me what to do, and I have to tell them to spend 3 times what this new sax cost, and find one from 1960 or so. Bring it to me, spend another $300-1100 and then it will be ready for them to play. But - in another 20 years, it will be even more valuable.
 
I went to get wheel bearings for some hay wagons I had for sale. The Auto Parts store offered me 3 price points. Even though I was selling the wagons, I bought the best I could buy. I am just not made to stick the next guy. Paul
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top