Rolls Royce wouldn't have let a car with such a glaring defect out of the factory. Just Saying.
Also, many things are made in Mexico that aren't crap. Much like Chinese factories, if you put the money behind it and to QC, it's fine. BMW has a factory there now. I haven't heard about any QC issues... Bombardier also has a plant there... The Canadian assembly needed to "correct" the shape with a sledge hammer to "make it fit"... You get what you pay for.
Also, many things are made in Mexico that aren't crap. Much like Chinese factories, if you put the money behind it and to QC, it's fine. BMW has a factory there now. I haven't heard about any QC issues... Bombardier also has a plant there... The Canadian assembly needed to "correct" the shape with a sledge hammer to "make it fit"... You get what you pay for.
Yes, understood...and I come from a long career in a plant that manufactured electronics products from the day I started in 1973 until the last production line was shut down in the late 2000's.
We went from a Defects Per Unit level of greater than 1 on high dollar police walkie talkies (I was one of the tech's fixing them) to a DPHU (hundred units) number in the 0.10 to 0.1 range on similar products in the late 2000's.
Cell phone manufacturing came in the late 90's and was the last to leave. Since it was nearly fully automated the mistakes were usually human error, like loading the wrong reel of parts. Unfortunately the run rate was high enough that thousands of bad phones would get built before the first one got through all the testing, so there could be lots of "D's." Therefore the DPHU system was abandoned in favor of something cooked up by a PHD who didn't know an ohm from a gigawatt.
I have found far too many bad tubes, and bad batches of tubes from the last days of tube manufacturing at Sylvania to write them off as random errors. I got a bulk packed box of 100 Sylvania 6V6GTA's from an auction at NASA in Cape Canaveral Florida. The entire lot of vintage components had been in climate controlled storage for years. Imagine my surprise to get home, crack open the box and find 20 of the tubes with white getters. I tossed them and kept the rest. That was 20+ years ago. Before I left Florida in 2014, I reopened the box to find that more than half of the remaining tubes have turned white, or lost most of their getter. I went through the box again a couple years ago. There were a few more white heads. The remaining tubes were stuck in an audio amp and cranked up. There were a few that worked good. Most had high distortion, or would not hold a stable bias point. None can be trusted.
The 35LR6 in the picture was one of a lot of 40 tubes I bought. NONE of them had the tabs on the plates bent over or twisted (Sylvania did both) to keep the micas from coming loose. There were a few other tubes in the lot that had loose parts. Those that remained properly assembled did work good, but none can be trusted in an amp the will not just sit upright in its cabinet forever.
We took TV's out to the Everglades and shot them. A FMJ .223 will usually go right through the face and out the back of the TV set leaving a nice clean hole on the way in and an ugly hole on the way out....no implosion. A 12 gauge rifled slug to the side of the set about 2 inches in from the front will make it rain glass and plastic for about a minute.....Hey, I was about 17 then, yes younger and stoopider!
I conducted a series of experiments in high school. The best scream from a scared teacher resulted from two loops of .032 solder around the prongs of the plug. I love the smell of lead vapor in the morning.
It even inherited the VW salute, the propensity to lift the inside rear wheel on hard cornering. People who watched me race mine said it looked like a dog at a fire hydrant!
The only one of those that I ever saw was in a 1978 Omni and it WAS a VW engine complete with WV part numbers. Chrysler got payback in the early 2000's when VW's Routan minivan was actually a rebadged Dodge Grand Caravan made in Canada.
It was my experience that the rest of the car fell apart before the motor. I did blow more than my share of head gaskets, but I was running upwards of 15 pounds of boost.
Those of us who raced the aforementioned Chrysler 2.2L 4 cylinder engines knew that the best blocks were from Mexican built turbo motors made in 1984 - 1987.
When Motorola quit making police radios in Florida, the factory was moved to Reynosa Mexico. They turned out some reasonably good quality, but the drug gangs took over the town, and infiltrated Motorola. When black market radios showed up on the streets of New York pre-programmed with the NYPD frequencies and scrambling codes, the Reynosa factory was shut down. All the radios are now made in Malaysia.
My last CRT TV was a 36 inch flat screen Sony Trinitron. It did work nice and was reliable. It just had one drawback.....it weighed 260 pounds most of which was in the CRT. Someone who was moving away gave it to me, and 3 years later I gave it away. I drove around for about a month with it in the back of my Volvo wagon, asking anyone I knew if they wanted a free TV. Finally a friend who had rental property was happy.....a good TV that nobody can steal!
We at the shop used to discuss a similar thing....
For instance, a VCR might have sub-standard wave soldering on a board.
We'd say "it must have been a Monday or Friday job.
AKA = not yet awake on Monday, or in a hurry to get their paycheck and party on a Friday.
That saying is well known, old, yet it's actually not accurate.
I've seen plenty of "high end expensive" products that result in failures too.
And on the other end, some cheap products that seem to last forever.
It's all about the quality of the individual components (transistors, caps, etc) and the actual design of the circuitry and externals which determines the longevity of a product.
Ok, but generally speaking, if you pay 12.50$ for a coffee maker at Wal-Mart and it dies in 3 months, and you buy another POS coffee maker from Wal-Mart, and it dies in the same 3 months? But people can't afford a better machine so they're locked into a cycle of cheap disposable goods...
Terry Pratchett had a theory about this based on boots...
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Seems to make a lot of sense...
Terry Pratchett had a theory about this based on boots...
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Seems to make a lot of sense...
I can understand all that, yes.
And like I said before, a lot of it depends on the overall quality of components, and I'll add in Quality Control for good measure.
I use a "cheap" drip coffeemaker for my daily brew.
Cafe Uno, a single-cup job that brews a mug in about 7 minutes.
It's all plastic, cheap, compact. - sold basically for dorm students for around $14-19.
The first one I picked up at a yard sale in 2009 for $3, new in the box.
The thing lasted about 11 years before it started acting up - shutting down before the last bit of water was empty.
Luckily, I picked up another one 4 years ago at a discount store for $5 to replace it.
I got my money's worth from it.
Oh, I have other ones, a fancy stainless steel Quisinart 4 cup packed away, and some red plastic 1 cup job.
Gotta have backups, gotta have my coffee.
And I even have a nice Farberware 4 cup percolator that I got cheap for $7 (costs $50 new)
As for boots, ya buy cardboard cheapie boots, how long they gonna last, right?
Stuff like that, clothing, things used in harsh weather, are more prone to wearing out.
Footware gets the most abuse, and investing "more" for a quality boot/shoe/sneaker is worthwhile - I get what you're saying - why buy cheap every few years when it all adds up to buying better stuff that lasts - and the higher cost makes it worthwhile.
I'd sooner spend $50-60 on some sneakers that last me years and years, than a pair of cheap ones for $19.95 that wear thin in 2 years.
Last few pairs have been Skechers, they gave me good service over the higher-priced Nikes I used to get.
Besides, Nike pulled some crap that I didn't like politically.
They ain't gettin my money no more.....LOL!
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I admit to being confused by the car on a Monday or Friday saying. That is an old saying from back when it took 50 hours to build a car, and that was spread over a number of days. I get the sentiment and perhaps it makes sense to other products, but not with cars. Even now where they take only 20 hours, it's still over a number of days.
I remember ours was black and white Televista TV and we had to pay Licence fees to watch TV in those days. Mid 70s and 80s American, German and mostly British shows were brodcast. The Lucy Show, The Jerry Lewis Show, Different Strokes, Cosmos (Carl Sagan) were famous here back then. German series was The Old Fox, Didi's Comedy show.
Yes Minister, Allo Allo, Fawlty towers, The goodies, Are you being served, Sorry!, To the manor born, Some mothers do have them... were British. I used to like Jeremy Berret's Sherlock holmes in 80s.
Typical LED TVs.
The two minor issues I find are viewing angle and small/tiny down firing speakers in average modern TVs.
Regards
Yes Minister, Allo Allo, Fawlty towers, The goodies, Are you being served, Sorry!, To the manor born, Some mothers do have them... were British. I used to like Jeremy Berret's Sherlock holmes in 80s.
Typical LED TVs.
The two minor issues I find are viewing angle and small/tiny down firing speakers in average modern TVs.
Regards
The notion around these parts is the mass manufacturers have two standards for manufacturing. The developed countries get strict Quality controlled products and little compromised one are sold here. (Am talking about components and stuff) No Complaints but what it has done is whatever okayish components locals were manufacturing are shut down and replaced with even more cheaper no guarantee to work stuff. I had Stereo RCA cord and one pin was short inside (Or I pushed it too hard as it was not fitting in my amplifier inputs) hearing no sound I increased the volume and it blew the IC. Second one was a DC supply pin which was tight fitting in socket while taking out it broke off from the pressed shaft of -Ve terminal.
Only few major remaining companies manufacture here and presumably they also import some stuff; but are of comparatively good quality so I am ok with it. But In small towns like us the choices are no longer there as shops mostly stocks cheap stuff and sometimes you are forced to buy it as makeshift arrangement.
Regards
For me, the cheap drip maker makes coffee that tastes like weak plastic trash. I use a 60$ Keurig now and I get a consistant coffee every time. And it doesn't cost me 3$ and a trip to the corner
As far as shoes? 20$ pair of shoes would last me about 2 months if I was lucky. These days I wear Saucony hiking shoes - they actually fit!! I don't buy Nike because they are low quality overpriced garbage that don't fit my feet. My other half loves to waste 300$ on Jordans though. Go figure.
I have some $20 shoes, and a couple pairs of $100 Vibrams. They are all over 10 years old and still in good shape due to lack of use. The Nike's that my mother in law bought me fell apart in two years despite only being worn 4 or 5 times.
I have not had any shoes on my feet since the virus came. I usually only wear shoes to the gym (required) and I haven't been there since March.
Most of my hiking is done barefoot. The Vibrams come out for really rough or slippery terrain, or a Tough Mudder event. The water in the creek behind my house is pretty cold now....I get out when my feet start turning blue.
When I lived in Florida it was a $1 or $2 pair of flip flops. Now that I have moved to the land of snow and ice, I have upgraded to $20 Crocs flip flops to get some good tread that grips on the snow. The $1 stuff kept resulting in me leaving butt prints in the snow.
I took a two week vacation to Florida in September.....I didn't even bring a pair of shoes, and the flip flops hit my feet only a few times during the whole trip.
The little wooden sign over my bed that was bought in a tourist shop in Florida reads "It's never too cold for flip flops" I have found that mostly true, but it can be too deep. That applies to both mud and snow.
Unfortunately deep mud can pull the shoes off my feet. I spent nearly an hour digging in the mud at a Tough Mudder to retrieve a Vibram....finished the rest of the course barefoot, but I had already done the obstacles requiring traction on muddy sheet metal.
Attachments
Yes, sometimes. For reasons I can't understand my hands get cold but my feet don't.
My feet sweat badly making for some serious stink when I had to wear shoes at work. Once they started hiring lots of people from the middle east, India and Pakistan, who wore sandals a lot, it only took one argument in HR to convince them not to discriminate against other sandal wearers like me. This got me banned from using things like fork lifts and pallet jacks....OK by me.
It all depends on the temperature and wind speed. On a calm day I can work up a sweat even in below freezing weather. In that case no shirt is warmer than a wet shirt.....ditto the flip flops or bare feet. Strong wind or wet snow does require some waterproof / windproof outerwear.
There have been days where conditions required a thick winter coat and boots, but not many. I do keep these things in my van during the winter ever since I had to dig and salt my Honda out of a snow bank in flip flops and a T-shirt in windy 20 degree (-7C) weather a few years ago. For most of the winters I have lived here, or spent here (over 20) I never used them even to work outside all day.
That's some pretty amazing "feats" you got there, George.
In the last couple-few years, I cant even sleep w/o socks on. Hands? Now I know what the Eagles meant when they said "Given to a man with hands as cold as ice"...
I worked my way up to 3-4 miles jogging this summer. Figured the circulation necessary to support that might help with the cooler appendages. Nope. Wash my hands w/o waiting for the hot water to get there, or handle something out of the freezer - it takes a while for them to come back up to normal temperature.
In the last couple-few years, I cant even sleep w/o socks on. Hands? Now I know what the Eagles meant when they said "Given to a man with hands as cold as ice"...
I worked my way up to 3-4 miles jogging this summer. Figured the circulation necessary to support that might help with the cooler appendages. Nope. Wash my hands w/o waiting for the hot water to get there, or handle something out of the freezer - it takes a while for them to come back up to normal temperature.
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