Chinese Diesel Engines

[endoftheroad]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Personally, I wouldn't trust the Chinese engine for use as a mooring anchor, or Chinese Chain to go with it.

I won't get fooled again.

OMG! I was going to say the same thing but thought someone would say I was out of order.

I would consider it an insult to have my boat hanging onto a Chineese Diesel.

A John Deere tractor would be more like it, or a huge Navy boat windless, Civil War cannons.

[sycankiz]

Rudolf Diesel was thinking of a revolutionary machine that could work with what ?

Fossil fuels as we use them today ?

[pagu]

Good point endoftheroad and you're of course absolutely correct, we all have a lot of experience with Chinese made or assembled products and as if to prove your point, I just checked the lable on the Mountain Harware jacket, (A respected US brand), made in China. And the Mac laptop I’m tapping this response on .... yep you guessed it. This is all fun debate, but the thousands of words on this post so far fail to address Albro359’s original simple question; “Does anyone have any experience with these Chinese marine diesels?” I’m in possession of two, so will soon put them to test and can perhaps then offer some real review. You never know endoftheroad, your warning might prove correct and they’ll prove to be a pile of junk! Or they might be good value for the relatively modest price tag. Good at least to have an open enough mind to explore that.

[endoftheroad]

Originally Posted by pagu

Good point endoftheroad and you're of course absolutely correct, we all have a lot of experience with Chinese made or assembled products and as if to prove your point, I just checked the lable on the Mountain Harware jacket, (A respected US brand), made in China. And the Mac laptop I’m tapping this response on .... yep you guessed it. This is all fun debate, but the thousands of words on this post so far fail to address Albro359’s original simple question; “Does anyone have any experience with these Chinese marine diesels?” I’m in possession of two, so will soon put them to test and can perhaps then offer some real review. You never know endoftheroad, your warning might prove correct and they’ll prove to be a pile of junk! Or they might be good value for the relatively modest price tag. Good at least to have an open enough mind to explore that.

We can be highly critical here on the forum, we tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
I'm happy for your purchase and look forward to hearing a successful report.


You're a real sport and I appreciate your tactfull response towards someone as unrefined as myself.

cheers

[pagu]

A nobel reply endoftheroad, thank you. I'll try to offer some objective feedback on these donks as I get to know mine.

[Sabbatical II]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

One of the latest "Made in China" disasters I purchased was a medium sized plastic storage tub from Walmart, which lasted a week before it cracked. I hadn't even used it yet... Honestly, how can they screw up a plastic storage tub?

Very easily and probably because Walmart asked the Chinese manufacturers, "how cheap can you make these?" not, this is the quality we want and how much will it cost. The problem is usually the greed of the western importers.

My company purchased a Chinese bus in 2008 and it was absolute rubbish. The aim of the Australian importers was to offer a product that was so cheap that everyone had to buy it. They became high volume suppliers to the market overnight. Everyone got stung badly. The importers had to rethink and send Australian supervisors to the factory to raise the standards or no one would continue to buy the product. The standard has been raised immeasurably and much of their cost advantage has gone out the window. It proved that they certainly do have the technical expertise if that's what they are asked to produce. They also know how to do it cheap. Which do you want? For us just ordering another new bus now, the new higher quality Chinese version is $400K & Australian built bus built on an imported Volvo chassis is $520K. We'll still buy local this time thanks!

Next time there may be no choice because the Aussie builders just can't compete and the volume sales in most markets is predominantly price driven.

[foggysail]

Originally Posted by Sabbatical II

Very easily and probably because Walmart asked the Chinese manufacturers, "how cheap can you make these?" not, this is the quality we want and how much will it cost. The problem is usually the greed of the western importers.

.

I agree! One of the popular TV networks did a show about 2 years ago dumping on how Chinese labor was being exploited. A Chinese manager being interviewed defended his company saying "he wanted to provide more for his employees, but Walmart refused to be charged another $.03/shirt which the company manufactured!!!"

[aclmck]

i won a Chinese generator about 7 years ago just as ours died so i reluctantly put it to work 22hp, air cooled now has 3000+ hours on it and no sign of problems cost a few hundred bucks new (were considered throw aways then)

took a bit of work to suppress the noise but i can't complain i know several boats with these chinese marine engines and none of them with any problems but none with many hours yet.

worth a serious look at if you need to save money on a replacement.

Parts for my motor are generally easy enough to find via a local who looks outside the square or the net. not that i have needed anything much at this stage

[DeepFrz]

What are the current figures for the percentage of world manufacturing done in China? 80%? I know 10 years ago it was 70%. If you look at the technology China is using internally you can see world leading stuff. From Ports and shipping control software to trains and military equipment. China has been reinvented and they produce many very high quality products. It seems the attitude in the US is that cheaper is better until the thing breaks down and then they howl.

[Reefmagnet]

I remember talking with an importer around 25 years ago that specialised in products from Taiwan at the time. He showed me two hydraulic car jacks that looked pretty much identical. He explained that one was utter rubbish, and the other was equal to anything else made. He told me the only difference was how much the buyer was prepared to pay and that the price difference really wasn't that great. He said, just like some previous posters, that you get what you pay for.

I also worked for a US multinational company for many years. We had a procurement director who became obsessed with getting cheap product from China for a period of time. The products sourced were rubbish for the most part with some clearly not "fit for purpose". An example was a multi-cored electrical cable that didn't last more than a few weeks in service until the wires started to break. Multi-core cables are designed to prevent any one wire in the core from having stress placed on it (causing it to fatigue and break) by spiraling all the wires around a central synthetic or hemp core. This cheaply sourced Chinese stuff had no synthetic core. The saddest part is the company didn't reduce the selling price of these crap products, instead merely used the differential in buying to selling prices to boost the bottom line.

So the whole point is that now, as it has been in the past, you can get both good quality and poor quality from China, it just depends on how much you are prepared to pay. In the example of a diesel engine, if the manufacturer doesn't employ engineers, metallurgists, trade foundrymen and machinists etc then they will produce a cheaper and inferior product compared to the manufacturer that does.

[romanos2b]

This is true that China can produce high quality standards items. So maybe instead of generalizing about chinese engines, we should talk about the brands. We all know that the US or EU can produce very good and very bad engines too, it oftens depend on which brand manufacture the engine.
So, which chinese engine brands seem to be reliables ?

[endoftheroad]

[Emmalina]

A guy here bought a Sail outboard supposed to be made in Tiawan and a honda copy. We unpacked it from a box that said made in China. Oiled it up and fired it up no problem and very quiet. Saw the guy a month later and he had a Yam on the back of his dinghy when asked he just replied "don't ask" I buy a lot of stuff from China and if you realize its cheap and cheerful your ok. Don't expect it to last. As mentioned before QC is the issue in China and material quality.

[Teknav]

On a recent attendance to the Consumers Electronic Show in Las Vegas, I stopped at China's pavilion to browse at the latest gadgets. I was given a bunch of free samples which included calculators, flashlights, flash drives, software, Multi-colored pens, among other nick-nacks. One flashlight had 15 LED's; brilliant light came through when powered ON. When I opened the knurkled top to check the batteries, metal shavings started to unravel. The black paint started to peel off, every time I screwed back-on the top. The batteries lasted about 3 hours, before totally going dead. By day 2, there were hardly any engineers browsing Chinese-made electronics gadgets in their pavilion. In the meantime, american pavilions were jammed with visitors from all over the world, including Chinese. It looked like QC in Chinese manufactured products did not exist; cheap, in the long run, is expensive. Mauritz

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

There is no Chinese version of ISO9000 certification; it's global and includes the chain of suppliers. I.e. when the engine manufacturer does not make the steel themselves but buy it elsewhere, in order to get and keep their certification, they can only buy it from a company that is also ISO9001 certified.

I have worked with Chinese electronics developers: their way of thinking is very free, very straight forward and of the highest levels. This is why they are taking over from us. Instead of trying to ignore this, we should improve ourselves to the same or higher level. Before we do that, our empires need to fall first because most will keep ignoring it until then, no matter of how bad but clear the signs are. This is what history tells us again and again.

Comfortably Numb is what we are :P

"Empires need to fall", As in a new way of accounting ? sounds futuristic to me !