I was reading on one of the other forums where the chinese mini fuse pack, 120 for $5 bucks, from Harbor freight are no good. They will not open at the rated amperage, and some of them would not open at all. jd

 

Wouldn't surprise me at all.
I'm getting tired of buying cheap Chinese junk.
.

 

Figures. A safety device that isn't safe. Wanna buy some petfood, tires, toohpaste, vitamins lifesaving drugs, etc? Don't buy Chinese. Getting really old.

I am more and more convinced that Chinese manufacturing is like an old Twilite Zone episode... This guy was abducted by aliens and woke up inside his apartment. Everything looked OK but as he tried to use stuff he discovered everything was just a shell. It looked OK on the outside but there was nothing on the inside and nothing worked.

Just like Chinese made products.

Arrr, cheap stuff often sucks,

Jim Henderson

 

It really wouldn't suprise me anymore. I'm stay away from that chinese junk. I like to pass the time walking through the aisles of stores like harbour freight (we don't have any in canada) but I rarley buy anything.

 

Princess Auto?

They do have some name brand stuff reasonably cheap. I got my wife a Motorola car charger/hands free speaker for $10. And it was a real Motorola. I would have gotten one for myself, but it was the last one.

 

As I recall fuses require 200% of rate amperage for something like 60 sec to open. Maybe it had to do with how they were tested. I'm not disagreeing that Chinese stuff is often junk, especially any kind of metal tool. Their metal it typically cheap, but think about this. The head of the FDA in China was executed over the tainted food issue. The head of the Chinese company that made the toys with lead based paint for Mattel just committed suicide. Now that what I call serious quality control.

 

Yup, Princess Auto is the store, I spent close to 2 hours in one this weekend just walking around, many things I wanted to buy but couldn't really justify or trust. I was just sayin that we dont have harbour freight over here.

 

Yeah, I know. I could walk around in there for hours.

 

They always have great deals in their surplus isles....very addicting store.

 

Fuses have different ratings for fast and slow blow. I still don't think I'd use a cheap product for a safety item though.

Chinese stuff does seem to have a lot of issues. The NANKANG tire thing comes to mind (trailer tires). I wonder if there really is something quantifiable there - beyond just considering Chinese products to be sub-standard. WHY is the quality of these things what it is? Is it all of the stuff from over there, or just some? Are the raw materials at fault, or is it the process? To what extent is the workmanship at fault? Are there design or tooling flaws?

Or is it all just plain garbage period...

I wonder if they have any quality controls at all.

 

Thanks jimdandy. They didn’t explain their test methods well. I don't doubt they were a faulty product, but something doesn’t seem right. If they direct shorted the fuse across the battery as they say that whole fuse should be toast. I think the Chinese lack the interest to have good quality control in many cases. They think, why test? They might find something wrong and have to make changes that raise costs. Also why should they care if they can't be sued for harm? They can get away with things US manufacturers can’t. It takes something major before they get the message and then they take it too seriously and look for someone to take the fall.

 

I think the question is going to come down to 'Who (as an importer) is going to run those tests, before releasing what may be unsafe or otherwise unacceptable products into the US market?'.

I would think there are restrictions on such products, even if there are no quality controls in the country of origin. At the very least things like that should be required to have a label stating "This product has not been tested to US standards" or some such.

Which is a good point, most items sold in the USA that have been independently tested have a U.L. (Underwriters Laboratories) mark on the label. It might be just good practice to make sure things we buy are UL Listed to begin with....

 

Here's the kicker. How do we know that they didn't hook those fuses up to a DEAD battery?

 

-with Chinese cables...

 

I used to work for an American High tech company that got bought out by a Chinese(Taiwan) company. Attention to quality became something like... "If it breaks, that is what the warranty is for, we just send them a new one and hope it works."

Some of the stuff they made and shipped to us was quite ridiculous in whatever thought process went into it. Rube Goldberg must have been Chinese. Our favorite answer when we sent a technical problem to them was... "It works fine here".

My experience with Chinese stuff is that generally low tech stuff is either decent and cheap or made with shoddy materials. Chinese high tech or complex machine work has been pretty bad in my experience. I still hate Chinese rubber. I almost can't ride my bike anymore since I can't get a set of CHinese tubes that will last more than a season and usually when I do have a blow out the spares are dry rotted, so I walk a lot. Gotta find me a shop that sells good rubber.

I think the Chinese mind set is make a buck any way you can and if it takes cutting corners either no one will notice or only a few problems will pop up and few will complain.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Jim Henderson