Are all "Made in China" products crap?

I used to drink coffee with a gentleman named Bob Crist. He died a few years ago which is why I use his actual name.

He retired in the early 1990s when he was in his mid-50s. His wife told him to go back to work because he still had a lot of good years left in him.

He spent several years in Egypt and in Com-China helping part suppliers adapt "Western" quality models. The reason "Western" is in quotes is because these methods were honed and refined in Japan by people like Taguchi and corporations like Toyota.

According to Bob, Chinese tools come in three distinct quality levels. Or at least did in the 1990s.

Take a set of vernier or digital calipers as an example.

The lowest level was of dubious quality but could be made to work with enough tender-loving-care. The "stainless steel" might not be stainless steel. The jaws might wobble. The vernier etched on the slide or frame might not be square to the world and a tenth-of-a-millimeter might be something other than 0.100 millimeters.

But they can be made to work with enough tender loving care. A quality expert can sort through twenty of them and pick out the five that are the least shitty.

A line can be painted across the jaws to indicate exactly where the object being measured must contact the jaws.

A piece of drill-rod of known diameter that is at the part's specification can be used to verify drift or if it is a digital device it can be zeroed to the drill-rod and then the part can be measured relative to that zero.

Each caliper can be assigned to a specific measurement technician who will learn the tool's quirks and learn how to work around them.

The next level

The next level of quality is industrial-commodity

This is the level that was intended for use in the industry and in Universities.

Materials were usually an appropriate tool-steel that had been heat treated and cryogenically-treated to stabilize it dimensionally. They might not have been as good as a Japanese, Swiss or US product but they were entirely satisfactory for making bicycles, commodity bearings and so on.

The next level was military

Com-China typically bought Swiss tools for military arms production. Chinese still dislike the Japanese because of WWII. Bob was not able to buy these kinds of tools for his company. It was forbidden.

How does this translate to diesel engines?

Projects and products the Chinese government approved of were allocated material and tools that were "good enough". Since reliable small-diesel engines are critical for irrigation and other food production, shabby quality or under-the-table dealing would be dealt with in a draconian manner.

Another Bob Crist story

Every six months the jails of the big city where his factory was located would fill up. The Chinese method of making more room in the jail was to take the prisoners who had been there longest to an auditorium and line them up.

An official would methodically walk down the line and execute them with a semi-automatic handgun. It was a slow process because his assistant had to collect the spent brass casing and put it in a zip-lock baggie, along with a mugshot of the deceased and a "toe-tag". The baggie was mailed to the deceased's family along with a bill for the cost of the bullet and the cost of the cremation.

Culturally, having a felon in the family was not a failure of society but a failure of the family. Therefore it was the family's financial responsibility to deal with the fallout.

But...but...but... you might be sputtering. What if his wife (or parents) didn't know?

A. She knew he was bopping people on the head and stealing their wallets.

B. Or she was in denial. She did not want to know.

C. Or she was complicit.

In China, you don't want to FAFO.

That is why I don't think a Chinesium is necessarily a piece of junk. Of course, it would be far better to find one that has been on the market for five years and have access to reviews by US users.

Diesel engines are different than gas engines. Gas engines accumulate far more damage at high load, high RPM. Diesel engines accumulate almost the same amount of damage per RPM regardless of load or speed (unless you do crazy stuff like remove the governor). Since each cycle adds damage it behooves the user to run them at 2500RPM instead of 3600RPM if the work allows it.

Another thing that I get out of the reviews is that the air induction system is undersized or the filter too restrictive. "Runs too rich" is another way of saying "Not getting enough air".

Two of the reviews involve the compression release. One stuck on, the other stuck off. That suggests that the machine staking the compression release pivot is over-swedging the end of the pin or the that the pivot has burrs in the hole. The fix is to lube with 90-140 diffy lube and switch the compression release about fifty times. If that is insufficient, add a mild, abrasive cleanser like Comet to the lube to make a slurry and repeat the fifty on-off cycles. Clean all of the slurry off because Comet is corrosive. Or, since I have some diatomaceous earth in stock, I will just use that. DE is inert.

I am still leaning toward getting one (or two) of these engines. 500 gallons of heating oil could rototill a lot of gardens.

Let the buyer be beware.