So, who spend Christmas Day fixing Chinese E36 M3?

We didn't do a lot this Christmas, gift wise. Not that we couldn't afford it, fortunately, just didn't feel like it. It's been a very difficult year, losing the MiL, pets, etc. Anyway, HF and the dollar store were the source of the majority of presents from a number standpoint, if not a monitary standpoint. Christmas Day had me dissassembling Chinese LED flashlights and finding the design faults/assembly faults, super glueing them back together with some tinfoil, going to the next one. Trying to figure out why the HF rechargeable batteries didn't work (+ end is shorter than the other batteries), etc.

I bought me a mini helicopter at Walgreens for $13. Of course, it didn't work properly. It would only get about 2" off the deck with a full charge and eventually fully died. I think the power supply in the chopper fried. Back it went the next day. They didn't even want to see a receipt. Just said "Go get another one and leave that one on the counter." The next one did better. Still a bit flakey to fly, but it will fly. I'm still balancing out the weight distribution, and I have a feeling that it won't last long enough to worry about replacing the 6 AA batteries in the controller/charger. I just can't figure out how it can be sold for $13. Think of the parts: IR transmitter, receiver, microprocessors in the chopper and controller, two motors under control by a driver transistor, gears, connectors, bright flashing LED under computer control (solid until it "connects"), 5 switches, two variable resistors with child-resistant controls, injection molded plastic controller, rechargable light weight battery in the chopper with control circuits, transporation from half way around the world to the local Walgreen's, engineering, all for $13. Just amazing.

Oh, and cat hair in the tail rotor will bring you down faster than a SAM-7.

My dad got me a similar cheap helicopter. The two main blades are hinged near the head for travel/shipping purposes I suppose, problem is the screws thread into the bottom half of the plastic blade and strip out very quickly. Now all of a sudden you can't tighten the blades down and they don't fly too well that way!

Oh well, I may play with it some more later and see if I can rig something else up for securing the blades.

This is the one - http://www.xheli.com/yesydr2rarec.html

I fixed the dual-head DVD/VCR player we bought a while back to replace the DVD player I had for about 5 years. The DVD's would no longer play, so I cracked the case, plugged it in, loaded a DVD and no spin. The laser head moved at least, a quick flick of the finger on the DVD and it spun up appropriately.

Hmm, the motor has a bad spot on the comm? Well, lets take a look at the wiring first. Ah, the solder joints at the PCB look like something a monkey would accomplish given enough time, solder and soldering irons. So, fire up the POS soldering station I bought from Radio Shack, managed to get enough solder melted, replaced and properly flowed without ruining the surrounding plastic parts. Put it all together and voila! a working DVD player again.

If I can repair the power supply in the old DVD player then I'll have two working DVD players for the two TV's in the house. Oddly, when I cracked the old DVD player open, we found a standard DVD-Rom, missing the front bezel, from a PC with a proprietary circuit board and power supply. I think replacing the blown caps will resurrect the thing.

The Chinese foreign exchange student I looked at this weekend didn't work, I passed.

battery powered remote control bumpercars, two per pack, one worked and one didn't. re-soldered a couple connections and it's all good. i also found one chinese AAA battery that didn't fit in the AAA battery slot of the toy.

FWIW, i didn't buy or receive anything made in China this year.

I got a Playstation, with three games, a Sony analog controller, and a Sony memory card, for $40 including tax.

I haven't had time to fix any Chinese stuff. I'm still working on my International A license in Gran Turismo.

Since 680+ employees in our chain lost their jobs 3 days before Christmas (several in our own company with GM employee spouses, double whammy) I refuse to buy Chinese E36 M3 (or shop at Walmart).

Lesley, I certainly understand. FWIW, I see Uncle Bill as initiating the destruction of our industry by creating inside deals with the CHICOMS, then The W going along to get along with the plan. The net result was that after 16 years, we have no industry left, outside of the automotiive industry which largly used foreign made parts. Wait... nope, don't have that one left either. Oh well. So, that means that we, (and I'm including those on Canada) have a choice of buying Chinese E36 M3 or Indian/Pakistani E36 M3. Now even Budweiser is owned by the foreigners (Europeans) and Miller is owned by the South Africans.

Not buying the Chinese E36 M3 did contribute to our down-sizing Christmas at the Dr.Hess Household. I got a Made in USA (I think) item of about $150 and Dr.Linda got a Made Somewhere in Asia item of about $150 (there are no U.S. made electronics items anymore), plus a few HF items and a few Walgreens items like the chopper. We also don't buy Chinese food or pet food products, but you can't tell where most of it come from anymore anyway.

Those LED flashlights, two for like three-fifty at HF or one for a buck at the dollar store. How can you sell a machined, annodized aluminum tube with a machined endcap containing a switch, 7 bright white LED's, a circuit board, resistor or two maybe, reflector, battery holder and three AAA batteries, shipping, packaging, distribution, etc. for around a buck? It would cost me $10-20 to make it myself if I bought raw materials in bulk and had free labor. OK, so their QC isn't that good and I had to fix it. Still, the parts are worth more than that. In fact, I'm thinking of buying a few of them and using them to make LED trailer tail lights out of. For a couple dollars, I'd have LED trailer lights with virtually no current draw on my pull behind bike trailer project.

Wal*Mart just sells what people want to buy, remember. Unfortunately, after Sam died, the "We buy US made E36 M3" philosophy died also. Humm, when was the Lizard Queen on the BoD at Wally World?

And the thread title should read "...Spent..." Sorry 'bout that.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one really sick of buying cheap Chinese crap for Christmas 'just because'. Unfortunately, the old standby made in USA reasonably priced tool gifts continue to go the way of the dodo, like when Vise Grips sent their production overseas. Or when Starrett shut down their Charleston assembly plant which IIRC was their last US plant, no US made tape measures.

derekshannon wrote: In reply to Jensenman: How does a group like us start a revolution? I could EASILY do without anything foreign or at least from that s-hole, China.

It's really not that hard to make informed decisions about what products you buy.

I'm not saying it's easy, and it certainly takes some discipline...but it helps to be aware.

Clem

I got this: And some clothes, some made in the US and some not(but not from China), so I didn't have to fix any Chinese crap.

Now, if the Chinese came up with a magic oil additive....

Anyway, I see our (US) manufacturing industry as being either deliberately destroyed by our "leaders" or deliberately left to die by same "leaders" while foreigners bled us dry at great profit. It didnt' help that our corporations were being run by corrupt shiney happy persons focused on five minutes into the future as they outsourced every single aspect of their companies except top management, for some strange reason. They never stopped to wonder: After outsourcing all the jobs, who's going to be left to buy their crap?

The kicker is: some stuff from China is pretty darn good. I bought an Alpine head unit and 4 channel amplifier, when i pulled them out of the box 'Made in China'. So far after six years they have been exemplary. The fit, finish etc is on a par with anything Alpine manufactured in Japan. Then I bought some Polk speakers, same story. Guess what: they are better than the Japanese made Infinity speakers I had in another car.

It's easy to bash the cheap Chinese stuff but when they make world class stuff at a lower price... man, it's difficult to say 'buy American/Japanese/German' or whatever.

yeah i have to agree with jensenman some stuff from china turns out to be ok, but I still don't like it. I know some of the lenses for Nikon are now made there, that made a ton of people mad figuring the optics would got to E36 M3, but they are still good.

Sadly for me to buy just about anything local I would have to go to a Wal Mart, its about the only thing in this town.

Hell then you try to get help with your "made in america' product call the 1800 and who are you talking to? Outsourcing is cheaper I get it, but if every job in america get's outsourced then what? So we can't afford our lifestyles as is, and no one wants to pay us the wage we demand to work, WTF is going on. I think I just broke my own brain.

Yeah, agreed - but our way of life is already down the toilet. We're paying for our insatiable need for cheaper, faster, more. It's like a pyramid scheme that we've reached the end of.

It's hard to "buy local" when it's three times the price, but I offset that by buying a hell of a lot of used goods. I hate to sound like an old fart, but I think I'd rather go back to paying a bit more for quality, fixing things when they break instead of tossing them. I'd like to slam the door on the influx of cheap E36 M3, halt the desecration of glorious old downtown heritage buildings turned into dollar stores, and I berkeleying hate off-site call centres.

I did a quick search for Red Wing shoes to find out which ones were still made in the USA, and I came across this blogger:

blogger said: Oh, yeah, one more reminder, a year after I got into my union, in around '97 Carhartt was building a new facility with nonunion labor, the entire Building and Construction Trades threw a Boycott on their merchandise. A month later my internationals magazine informed us that the boycott was over, Carhartt agreed to never again build an American textile mill without the use of union construction. Carhartt has kept to that promise. They have never again built a facility in the USA, they have done quite the opposite, they have closed almost all of them.

With ideologies such as these, how can American companies be expected to compete with overseas competition? It's not only the consumer's mind that has to change; it's the whole system that needs an overhaul.

Lesley wrote: Yeah, agreed - but our way of life is already down the toilet. We're paying for our insatiable need for cheaper, faster, more. It's like a pyramid scheme that we've reached the end of.

Plus eleventy billion. The whole 'Made in China' thing is another facet of the thinking which brought us the mortgage meltdown, i.e. 'I want my instant gratification cheap and I want it RIGHT NOW'!

MitchellC wrote: I did a quick search for Red Wing shoes to find out which ones were still made in the USA, and I came across this blogger:

blogger said: Oh, yeah, one more reminder, a year after I got into my union, in around '97 Carhartt was building a new facility with nonunion labor, the entire Building and Construction Trades threw a Boycott on their merchandise. A month later my internationals magazine informed us that the boycott was over, Carhartt agreed to never again build an American textile mill without the use of union construction. Carhartt has kept to that promise. They have never again built a facility in the USA, they have done quite the opposite, they have closed almost all of them.

With ideologies such as these, how can American companies be expected to compete with overseas competition? It's not only the consumer's mind that has to change; it's the whole system that needs an overhaul.

I'm all for boycotting against something you think is wrong or don't believe in but you have to be careful, you might get what you ask for! Detroit has moved as much as politically possible out of country for these same lower cost reasons.

FYI - numerous studies have shown that building a project "prevailing wage" (i.e. union gift wrapped) cost the Owner 10-15% more. I work for a non-union contractor but we do a lot of work as Construction Managers and our projects typically end up about 40-50% union with no prevailing wage and a competitive bidding process - nothing wrong with that. Everyone gets a fair shot on a level playing field (if union labor costs are slightly higher who's fault is that)?