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Shopping for 235 clutches lately is an eye opener. NAPA ordered me a clutch, pressure plate and throw-out-bearing $101.00, a good price however when I went to pick up and opened the box stamped on the pressure plate was MADE IN CHINA. I pushed it back across the counter. It had a ZOOM Clutch in the pack also made in CHINA. Guess I will try to find a remanufactured clutch made in USA, even if I have to pay more. Buy USA when you have an option. Sad. China is also making Brake Drums.
t :confused:

What a bummer!! I used to buy Hayes clutches for my '68 Chevelle and I thought they were American made.........makes me wonder now!
Seems like nothing is American made anymore, it's all offshore stuff. The least we can do is try to put American made parts on our old AD's.....(nothing against our Canadian friends to the north, BTW!)

Way to go man! I'm with you. I don't support communists.

How about a brake rotor for an 88 Samauri? Most of places over $100 and had to order. Auto-Zone had in stock around $90 and this is just the slip-on type, BUT, was made in Italy of all places. Jap parts, Italian made, new one to me! :rolleyes: I use a clutch and driveline place in my area, good prices, and can get new or rebuilt for most vehicles. They do them right there, don't know where they get their parts from though. The industry word here is "Global" for parts and vehicles.

there is a compay in Toronto called Fenwick they do clutch, steering boxes& racks, master cylinders & water pumps ,Try fenco.com

The really sad part about all this? This isn't Communist companies importing this crap. It is the U. S. corporations closing their U. S. factories and buying from the communists. The commies didn't say "We've got all these clutches. Anybody want 'em?" Some greedy corporate board said "We aren't getting fat enough doing this in our factory. Let's see how cheap the commies can build them, then we'll sell them for the same price we were getting for U. S. made stuff and get fatter." :mad:

If it makes you guys feel any better, this is very healthy for us on a macroeconomic scale. To compete in a global economy, a country has to be very good at specific things that other countries are willing to pay for.

It just so happens that Americans are not very good at manufacturing simple things. We are, on the whole, too smart. Americans workers are generally too skilled and ambitious to be content with minimum wage, punch the red button on the clutch-disk-erator all day long type jobs. Rather, we are much better at skilled manufacturing (cars, trucks, F-16s, 747s, microchips...), as well as services like finance and banking.

This is very good news for us, since non-skilled labor is at the very bottom of the economic food chain. The high-end manufacturing and services that we excel at bring us much more money as a country. This explains why we as a people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, while China as a people suffers with one of the lowest.

Ed

The above post was a wonderful primer on macaroni economics. However smart americans may be, I still can't find a Chinese wrench or part I can't break easily.

But to be honest, if it was a choice between a 3rd world clutch and no clutch, I'd have to buy it. Just install it and let the little commie clutch go round-and-round, round-and-round....

chip

[ 02-01-2002: Message edited by: chiphead ]

We are even having our Boeing airplane production moved overseas. Currently the plan is to do nothing but final assembly of the major body sections here in the U.S. 757 work is going to Italy, 767 to Japan, parts of the 737 in China, and engineering work on the 777 is slowly being moved to Russia. Kiss the quality goodbye, the only thing that matters to the Harvard MBA types is the short term bottom line. :mad:

We have been buying parts in my business from a company that used to be owned by some Israeli dudes on the East coast. They had top notch killer technology stuff and didn't put up with any crap . . . just got bought by some Harvard grad steered big corporation . . . who did some trimming to improve the bottom line and now the parts we get are junk. All the skilled labor cost to much to keep, I think they are about to come to the conclusion that all the cheap labor is costing them even more! You can't replace a smart conscientious $25/hr worker with someone who doesn't give a crap about anything working for $9.00 / hour.

Hey Tony, sounds like Ken's about to come around. We could send a Rep. out to sign him up!

Fred T, my father-in-law was just laid off from Boeing in Seattle, so I know where you're coming from. He said they are trying to "outsource" all production and are looking to sell all of their plants off. What a mess. If they are building 737s in China, I'm never flying again.

chiphead, I'm not sure if you were trying to insult me or not, so I'll defer. I think if you read my post again you will see that I am not implying that China makes quality stuff, nor do I buy what they make. I am merely pointing out why there is so much of it around.

Ed

Lionel,Ken pays a good wage to keep us vampires from asking to come inside. LOL

LOL Lionel . . . you will never get any arguments from me about skilled people vs unskilled people and who is best to have on the job. My experience though has been that being in a Union is no guarantee of being able to do a good job.

I have personally always had a good job and never gone more than a week without finding work when I have quit. Happy to say I have never been fired or layed off . . . always moved on when I thought I could do better somewhere else.

Wow got to share my experience with you all. I had my alternator repaired in last November and it just went out again. I returned to the rewind shop and on the front door they had a sign "help wanted". While waiting for them to check out the alternator, I asked what the qualifcations were for the job. Boss man said he'd prefer a high school grad and it helps to have some college courses. I then asked what was he paying, he said "minimum wages"! Maybe that's why he can't keep help and I had to return the alternator for re-work. Makes you want to say, "hummm..."