Ron, in a long-ago phone call, I said that I would happily pay twice as much for a part that lasts four times as long. I begged you to send my criticism of those horrid front side reflectors that lost all of their orange within a year up to the manufacturing decision makers, I said that they could *make more money* by spending the extra dollar for excellent non-fading orange dye, and charge $12.00 instead of $8.00, so long as we knew these things were guaranteed to maintain their color.
You told me at the time that you had no means to communicate with the manufacturers, that you were at the stone cold mercy of cargo shippers and that we were lucky that they even bothered to make our low volume parts.
At the time, I retired from our conversation somewhat wiser to the constraints that you have to battle under but all the more despairing of our new world's cynicism and indifference to quality.
Not necessarily the cargo shippers, Colin, so much as the manufacturers. For many of them these parts are merely an afterthought that they haven't bothered to discontinue yet but almost certainly will as soon as the molds or tooling break. The Indian side marker lenses are such an example. Another example is faucets for late Westy Buses with city water hookups. Over time the manufacturer's tolerances had slipped, causing them to be a tad too tall so that they would not always clear the cabinet lid without modification. I bugged and bugged the manufacturer to improve on the issue. Eventually he said that it had barely been worth bothering to churn them out at all given the dwindling demand over the years, and now knowing that they were no longer quite right he had decided to stop making them entirely rather than to put any further effort into them. From now on he would only make them if we ordered thousands at a time - an impossible number to sell. So my efforts backfired and now they're permanently gone. Now there are other cases where manufacturers are much more responsive (such as Koni, who now makes long-discontinued Bus shocks just for us), or I can find other sourcing (such as late Bus front turn signal lenses; found the OEM supplier in Brazil, much nicer than the Indian knockoff) or there are other solutions (such as Vanagon faucets, which we now own the tooling for so we control our own quality). And I also work closely with several European suppliers who have close ties with Volkswagen and/or Westfalia and can sometimes exert influence that nobody Stateside can do. So it is not always the case that nothing can be done - it varies tremendously from vendor to vendor. My point is, don't assume that when better quality can't be had it isn't for lack of caring or trying. (As an aside, one thing that may change this situation over the long haul is 3D printing. Over time that may make it possible to produce better quality parts in low volume. The day isn't here yet but there is promise for the future. )
The "rebuilt" distributor I received had numerous little dabs of yellow paint applied to it... Seems rather unlikely a core return would have any such things
Kreemoweet,
you were the one who said in your previous post that "maybe they sent someone's core return by mistake." Now you contradict yourself. (Not that I'm saying that's what happened; I don't know.)
Brand new distributors of similar or identical design can readily be had today for $75.00 up. There is no evidence I'm aware of that these are of inadequte quality. The last new distributor I bought 6 years ago was a Mexican Bosch, of excellent quality, for $160.
Please point me to a $75 brand new SVDA distributor that isn't no-name Chinese crap. I will be first in line to buy it! And the Mexican Bosch's have not been made in years. If they were, I'd be selling them.
Like I said, I can't speak directly to what Kreemoweet received at this late date. Maybe there are quality issues but if so they have not been reflected in return rate (which has so far been zero). I am not an engineer, I am a parts specialist. As such, my concern is not so much WHY a part fails as WHETHER it fails. I look at failure rates (both short and long term), as well as feedback from both customers and overseas retail partners. If a part uses mismatched washers or some such thing but it has no disernible impact on performance or failure rates, I don't much care (unless the item has cosmetic value, or is so pricey that you'd expect it to be nothing less than a work of art). But if it is unreliable or doesn't fit, then I don't want to sell it even if it looks perfect and costs a nickel. At that point I have to look at my options. Will the manufacturer be responsive or do they not care? Is there a better product available that I can simply switch to instead of working with the existing supplier? Was this a bad run or is it a long-term issue? These distributors are on my radar and if I learn of issues I will take them up with the manufacturer. In fact if Kreemoweet had sent us an email 7 months ago they'd have been on my radar for 7 months already.