rdamon This will move from China to another country where it can be done cheaper, just like it did from Japan, Korea, Taiwan before.
This will move from China to another country where it can be done cheaper, just like it did from Japan, Korea, Taiwan before.
deleted.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zardoz rdamon This will move from China to another country where it can be done cheaper, just like it did from Japan, Korea, Taiwan before. If you are one of us old-timers, then you might remember from the '60s when "Made in Japan" was a euphemism for "A real piece of junk"? Not so much anymore.
If you are one of us old-timers, then you might remember from the '60s when "Made in Japan" was a euphemism for "A real piece of junk"? Not so much anymore.
I guess I belong to the old timers club then (although in the 70s).. can well remember shopping for my first used car.. came down to a choice between a Ford Bobcat and some kind of Datsun. I chose the Ford (beautiful red with mag wheels.. thus suitable transportation to my teenaged brain). As it turned out a pile of junk that one could actually see rust away from one hour to the next. Not sure the Datsun would have been any better or worse though.
UlrichAs it turned out a pile of junk that one could actually see rust away from one hour to the next. Not sure the Datsun would have been any better or worse though.
There was a period where all steel seemed to be junk and everything seemed to rust away before your eyes. For fire trucks, it seemed to coincide with the era of "safety yellow" (often known as "slime yellow" or "slime green." Those rusty flourescent fire trucks may have been one reason the color didn't catch on.
Datsun reminds me of a joke.
They had designed the car but couldn't figure out what to call it. Desperate, they called on a German for advice. When he asked when they needed an answer, they told him, like, yesterday. His reply? "Dat soon?"
Where's the groan emoji when you need it?
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
As to "junk" from the Orient, I recently ordered an alarm clock from a mail order house, and received what was purported to be such that was made in China. It would not alarm, nor would it run--and if you were not careful, a pin holding the base in place would drop out. I sent it back, calling it a piece of "Chinese junk," asking that if they could send me one that would perform, do so. They returned what I had paid, less the cost of shipping it back. I have not dealt with that company since.
Johnny
I have been fighting membership, but keep getting close every year. I guess it beats the alternative.
I remember the same worry about Japan and it got worse in the 90's when they went on a buying spree.
Things have a way of correcting themselves (Unlike the spell-check here)
This list will only get longer
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-scrambles-to-stem-manufacturing-exodus-as-50-companies-leave
These companies know however that China if they stay after the Trade war is over will more than likely go back to what they were doing before it started. Why they are China and could care less about what a contract states as most of them have seen their previous contracts declared null and void by the Chinese Government and had new ones imposed upon them by Chinese officials.
zardozIf you are one of us old-timers, then you might remember from the '60s when "Made in Japan" was a euphemism for "A real piece of junk"?
Not from my teenage viewpoint. Most American-made living room stereo equipment was total crap in a fancy wood cabinet. That is when I learned to buy Japanese (Sony, Teac) and German (Dual, Sennheiser) component electronics for my musical enjoyment.
My father got tired of the insulting and poor excuses for American car sales and 'service'; we were Volkswagen and Toyota owners from then on. Later Soichiro Honda showed that clever engineering and great marketing can produce and sell vehicles surpassing American counterparts in fuel economy and reliability. I'm still waiting (but not holding my breath) for this country's modern equivalents of the Honda Super Cub and Civic CVCC. 'Mericans seem to want giant SUVs with giant hip-hop dental grilles. But I digress.
It is hard to see how tariffs will 'encourage' an existing American manufacturing company to invest in bringing production back. An entrepreneur with deep pockets might do it, but that's a 'long game' as Tesla watchers know ...
Links to my Google Maps ---> Sunset Route overview, SoCal metro, Yuma sub, Gila sub, SR east of Tucson, BNSF Northern Transcon and Southern Transcon *** Why you should support Ukraine! ***
MikeF90 zardoz If you are one of us old-timers, then you might remember from the '60s when "Made in Japan" was a euphemism for "A real piece of junk"? My father got tired of the insulting and poor excuses for American car sales and 'service'; we were Volkswagen and Toyota owners from then on. Later Soichiro Honda showed that clever engineering and great marketing can produce and sell vehicles surpassing American counterparts in fuel economy and reliability. I'm still waiting (but not holding my breath) for this country's modern equivalents of the Honda Super Cub and Civic CVCC. 'Mericans seem to want giant SUVs with giant hip-hop dental grilles. But I digress.
zardoz If you are one of us old-timers, then you might remember from the '60s when "Made in Japan" was a euphemism for "A real piece of junk"?
Had several Japanese vehicles - 73 Honda Civic - broke the camshaft drive gear at about 45K miles. 78 Honda Accord - front fenders rusted out - odometer cable broke among other issues. 82 Toyota Cressida - siezed engine, DEALER installing the replacement CUT the Main Wiring Harness that ran behind the head of the inline 6 cylinder engine. Operated fine until the slop (rain, snow, salt etc.) of late Fall and early Winter - various things would stop working and then start working.
Japanese Quality.
American cars of the 70's and 80's weren't much better.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
China Built A Railroad to Nowhere in Kenya
https://tinyurl.com/y6x6qdkz
BaltACD American cars of the 70's and 80's weren't much better.
Surely you are joking.
charlie hebdo BaltACD American cars of the 70's and 80's weren't much better. Surely you are joking.
Nope - 70's cars had emissions equipment that killed both performance and fuel economy and that 'technology' continued through the early 80's. It wasn't until the late 80's that computers and EFI started to become commonplace and both performance and fuel economy improved. Emissions control using carburators was using sledge hammers as fly swatters - barely effective
The steel of the day was pretty poor, too. Everything rusted out.
Saw it in the fire service, too. That's probably one reason for the proliferation of aluminum and stainless fire truck bodies now.
BaltACDHad several Japanese vehicles - 73 Honda Civic - broke the camshaft drive gear at about 45K miles. 78 Honda Accord - front fenders rusted out - odometer cable broke among other issues. 82 Toyota Cressida - siezed engine,
And that was on a vehicle that had almost all highway miles. Traded it in on a CJ5, and have been a Jeeper ever since.
BaltACDNope - 70's cars had emissions equipment that killed both performance and fuel economy and that 'technology' continued through the early 80's.
He's referring more to build quality than fundamental engineering. It was a nightmare to get a car built right from the factory in those years, one problem being that the folks making them didn't always distinguish screwing together from screwing up. To this day I can't get the soft boot cover on my '76 Cadillac because the snaps for it weren't put on right ... doors hung funny, plastic trim didn't fit, thin steel to save money that would deflect badly if you put your knee against the door panel ... and this is a car that listed for $13,500 in 1975! There was always a little list of problems when you received your new car in those years that the dealer would have to fix ... after which you were likelier than not to have a 'new problem' when you got it back.
Now, I remember thinking what a terrible thing for the American car industry it would be if the Japanese got around to making Lincolns, which of course they subsequently dld in the Deming era where the Japanese embraced good quality control to go with a go-go industrial attitude. It helped that they had no Walter Reuther cultural antagonism, too -- something I keep waiting for railroad managements to think about, but they never seem to care.
I well remember the fun American automakers had approximating technological features before the rise of too-cheap-to-meter electronics. Does anyone here remember the magic box that brought Chrysler Panelescent lighting (which you have to see to believe) to life? Or the early-calculator-speed "electronic fuel injection" on early-'80s Imperials 'that was so bad dealers had to have a program to retrofit carburetors. Now imagine the convergence zone between cheap economy pricing and 'planned product obsolescence' that was the low end of American production.
Friend of mine had a Vega when I was in college; I loved that car. Of course, come to find it was a Cosworth Vega, not really representative of ljne-build Verta-Pak optimized commodity production.
The big thing the Japanese did was ... well. does anyone remember those 'coming financial crisis' books of the '70s? One of them, I think in the mid-Seventies, spoke with horror of a not-too-future age in which a Volkwagen ... shudder! ... would cost SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! Tha Japanese, assisted in no small part by the fuel crisis, brought about a world in which small cheap cars sold by arrogant people could be sold for seven, and then much more, dollars. And for that price it became possible to start providing real features and build quality. And for American companies to start designing actual small cars instead of the laughable domestic 'compacts' and rebadged European or Asian offerings that we used to see. (One of the turning points I remember fas the Ford Contour/Mystique, which I recall as famously involving over $2 billion of development money to build a 'world car' -- was there any domestic line at any price that commanded that amount before then?)
We've come a long way from analyst perceptions of the tropes of PSR.
The 70's were a horror show for automobiles - no matter who was building them - US - Japan - W. Germany - England - Sweden - Norway.
Short sighted engineering solutions, build quality issues and on and on.
Masocist that I am - I still have my 1979 Triumph TR7 Convertible - about ready to turn the clock (odometer) to 59K (real clock doesn't work). It is my Sunny Day toy car and hasn't had the top up for about 30 years.
Overmod There was always a little list of problems when you received your new car in those years that the dealer would have to fix
Remember back then? Most of the the railroad auto carriers were open air and not even enclosed. Probably not a lot of kids throwing rocks back then but still, passing trains would create a draft at times and kick up debris or have debris blow out of boxcars with their doors open or ice falling from tunnel roofs.
The best part I saw of General Motors design was placement of the exhaust pipe right under the fuel fill gap for the gas tank on one of their Chevy vans when I worked at GM as an EDS contractor. An obvious oversight. I got to talk with one of the auto design engineers once over lunch and he would tell me about all sorts of snafu's they would find after the car entered production. One involved the road monster sized Caprice Classic of the 1990s. Turned out in Florida, statistically a lot of them were getting into accidents. What they found was that older folks with arthritis in their feet and legs could not apply enough foot pounds of pressure to brake the car in time on some higher speed roads where the light would turn to red fast. And the car would sail right into the intersection even though the driver had a red light.
I was referring strictly to build quality mistakes, but yes, there could be problems with delivery or 'during storage' -- we always bought 'luxury' cars or the equivalent, so the dealer prep costs usually covered any appearance issues right up to spot touchup on the sly.
CMStPnPOne involved the road monster sized Caprice Classic of the 1990s....
You mean the design actually related to the Roadmaster, the one that you could spec with LT-1 to go 140mph but still get mid-20s mpg on the highway? That's something I wouldn't have thought of as a difficult car to brake-proportion...
Turned out in Florida, statistically a lot of them were getting into accidents. What they found was that older folks with arthritis in their feet and legs could not apply enough foot pounds of pressure to brake the car in time on some higher speed roads where the light would turn to red fast. And the car would sail right into the intersection even though the driver had a red light.
Bet that's not a size or weight problem, that's an assist problem. I observed something almost insanely similar on early-80s Lincolns, particularly the Mark VI, where a quick stab on the brakes produced a hard pedal with almost zero depression or actual brake application. If you kept it pushed down it would quickly 'soften' and go into servo brake application, but if you tried to modulate it for antilock action, you wouldn't get much actual decel, at least not initially.
This was almost the exact opposite of the effect with the hydroboosted 4-wheel disc system on mid-to-late '70s Lincolns, which was and is still the gold standard for how brakes on large vehicles should work.
I was one of the guinea pigs who discovered the little antilock catch-22 on the mechanical ABS-VI systems GM built around that time. Sooner or later, most GM drivers would wear down some of their brake pads/shoes and either replace them or have a shop do it. Unbeknownst to the hoi at commercial brake shops, if the antilock brakes had been fired at any point before the replacement was done, a somewhat complicated (and, more importantly, proprietary) resetting of the ABS pistons to a reference position had to be conducted before the vehicle was bled and returned to service.
If that were not done, the effective volume that the ABS system would pump per 'pulse' when the motor ran would be reduced. This was highly significant because the ABS VI system relied on a spill valve to relieve the line pressure between pumps (otherwise the brakes would lock on instead of modulating) and so the next time the ABS fired it would "pump the brakes" at what might be greatly reduced intensity, with no warning to the driver (who, instead, had been exhorted to 'stomp and steer' without further thinking if a skid developed for any reason).
I discovered this in a '94 diesel 3/4-ton Suburban on a wet day in Shreveport, coming up on traffic stopped for a light. This was not a particularly rapid approach, but slick enough that the ABS started firing, well back of the stopped traffic. I stomped and steered -- with perfect steering response, weaving through gaps in the stopped cars, up onto a grassy median and back down again in front of all the stopped cars, and around into the direction of traffic on the cross street, probably over 400' total. Felt exactly like having two glass plates rubbing together with oil in between ... viscous, but not particularly decelerating.
Note that any 'test' of the brake system would have revealed perfect hydraulic actuation at an arbitrarily high pressure absent actuation of the ABS, and of course no mechanical problem with the lines or pump of the ABS system itself. So who would the police and the insurance company blame for this adventure? "Going too fast for conditions"? So my ears *** up any time I hear a GM product with this system 'sailing right into an intersection' whether driven by old folks or not.
CMStPnP The best part I saw of General Motors design was placement of the exhaust pipe right under the fuel fill gap for the gas tank on one of their Chevy vans when I worked at GM as an EDS contractor. An obvious oversight.
The best part I saw of General Motors design was placement of the exhaust pipe right under the fuel fill gap for the gas tank on one of their Chevy vans when I worked at GM as an EDS contractor. An obvious oversight.
Chrysler did the same thing. Still own a 1978 Dodge B-300 window van. The exhaust pipe ( only a single for a 400 V-8 ) is mountd just under the fuel fill opening. Several times spilled gasoline on the pipe and rapidly vacated the area until it all vaporized.
blue streak 1 CMStPnP The best part I saw of General Motors design was placement of the exhaust pipe right under the fuel fill gap for the gas tank on one of their Chevy vans when I worked at GM as an EDS contractor. An obvious oversight. Chrysler did the same thing. Still own a 1978 Dodge B-300 window van. The exhaust pipe ( only a single for a 400 V-8 ) is mountd just under the fuel fill opening. Several times spilled gasoline on the pipe and rapidly vacated the area until it all vaporized.
You did have the engine shut down didn't you? Exhaust pipe temperature at its outlet is not high enough to ignite gas. Temperature at the exhaust manifold is another thing.
Brian SchmidtLOMBARD, Ill. — Precision Scheduled Railroading is helping to lift shippers opinions of railroads according to the recently released State of Logistics report of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. “Railroads did partic... http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/07/08-precision-railroading-helped-railroads-do-well-in-the-eyes-of-logistics-managers-report-says
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/07/08-precision-railroading-helped-railroads-do-well-in-the-eyes-of-logistics-managers-report-says
The Atomic Bomb did wonders for 'urban renewal' for both Heroshima and Nagasaki.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.