They could appear identical, but with a different pawl.

The NHTSA Recall and images from someone who painted the contact issue. There's another photo out there that shows the older units had good contact. NHTSA says 5% failure during the last production, but no one should have to rely on checking this brand themselves. So jack stands, fuses, .......

It would probably be a good idea for anyone with anyone's ratcheting jack stands to paint and check, just like a differential.




I ordered a set of the Strongway stands from Northern Tool, I'll try to get images later. Hip deep working on the wife's salon before our governer releases us from house arrest. You know, the guy who said the Bill of Rights was above his pay grade, despite taking the oath to uphold it.

 

Perfect example of the things to be concerned about w/ Chinese manufacturing.

Fact is - they are more than able to build a quality product. That has no bearing on what actually happens.

For years, they might turn out a cheap (but generally acceptable) product. Then out of the blue they have problems. Equipment and instrumentation wears out at the factory. They have a poor quality control program (if any at all). They catch the problem after failures show up in the market place.

How many threads out there are filled with people standing up for Chinese manufacturing? Most of us here have seen quite a few.

The thing about buying OEM from big (American) companies, is that they have very good programs to "oversee" manufacturing and they have good QA/QC programs. They also have good preventative maintenance programs and they follow all the process safety regulations that require safety studies that include "what if?" risk assessments.

You go to a restaurant and see that the bathrooms are filthy and the salad bar has wilting lettuce .......... how many people wonder what the kitchen looks like??!!

You get what you pay for in most cases.

 

As talked about before, it's the culture. QC is not part of the Confusion culture, and as I noted before, what my company learned was you need to have a USA based QC advisor over there 24/7 or things go away quickly. A new plant starts out well, and then it's downhill. The idea of replacing worn tooling is not strong. Notice I said advisor, being a USA or any other country's business, you are not in full control ..... of anything, you are a secondary partner. And of course, anything made of metal over there will never have the same consistency as North American or European materials.

You have the same being true in other countries, but they usually improve as they want to keep the business.

It's a problem to some extent everywhere. In 20 years of owning her shop, my wife goes through cleaning companies for about 18-24 months. They start out strong, get lazy. Small and large companies.

 

Plastics are now highly engineered materials. They will not be the same (there vs here) either. I suspect the same for rubber and derivative goods.

 

Agreed Mark, I was stuck on the jack stands theme for steel. Ed's issue of so many ICP sensors may fall into that. From what I've heard, my old company's Mexican plant has run into the issue with basic materials sourced from China used in brake pads as well as the other Federal-Mogul plants of other products. I shouldn't limit that to Mexico, plants in India and Europe also use base materials coming out of China.