Garrett - now made in China?

[Kracka]

Thank you Shane (ecoli) for linking to this in the shoutbox.

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...=1#post4969669

"I work at Garrett Turbos, now called Honeywell Turbo Technologies which there so proud of. When Cliff Garrett Owned Garrett He used to brown bag his lunch everyday and cared for a quality Product. If he knew what Honeywell has done now he would turn over in his grave. Honeywell bought Garrett In 1998 or 1999. After this they opened up a turbo testing lab in shanghai China and quickly moved there turbo overhaul to Mexicali Mexico, quickly after Garrett overhaul went belly-up. So they moved there whole production to Mexicali Mexico, as if that first failure was not a sign.

Garrett Turbos made a quality product for a fair price. A turbo is a precision instrument. Garrett turbos was part of Garrett Air Research (on 190th st. In Torrance ca.) Where they have a huge facility designing turbine engines, and so on. Most of the senior technicians in our main turbo facility (Lomita Blvd Torrance ca) came from our air research. If you’re building jet engines a turbo is not all that difficult. Well Cliff Garrett dies. At that time ALL production of Garrett Turbos was at Lomita Torrance ca. Also all engineering and research was there as well. After we were bought and production was sent to Mexico to save costs. Our production numbers doubled. And cost was cut in half our failure rate tripled. Well who cares Honeywell is making money and lots of it. Turbos are considered Honeywell’s golden egg. They feel that turbos are going to take over big. Which it already has in the diesel market. We make ford diesel turbos, daf, Chevrolet, some Audi, vw, fiat, Perkins. Millions of turbos. And there now all coming from china and Mexico. Well up until lately the company figured if the product was designed in the US and assembled in Mexico we would be ok. Well to further there profit and **** the customer once again....the LAST of what makes turbo American leaves in January 2011. We will close the doors to the Torrance Lab. In Torrance we did all our racing turbos (wrc stuff, Audi racing etc..) then in the garret garage we did the turbos you people buy for your Subaru’s. Actually I take that back. They take turbos that were made on a production line somewhere else in the world, and change a couple of parts on a bench in Torrance (wheels, housing..etc) and send it to you the customer saying it was made in the us.....no it was not it was just repackaged and altered a little. Well as of Jan 2011 all your turbos will be made in Mexico or china or Czech Republic. This is the last Garrett facility in the United States.

We have huge law suits pending due to turbo failures. GM is probably going to leave us.... ford has already sued us. Caterpillar has one of the largest recalls in garret history in the process. Our name is becoming ****. The last few VERY smart guys left in the company are being fired to save costs, but see our profit is already good.....they just want more. Please don’t spend 1500$ on a gt35r. Now that it’s costing Honeywell less to build turbos do you think you will see a smaller bill when you order there product? NO!. They are going to charge you even more for even less. There are countless procedures that are being terminated everyday that made our turbos THE BEST. They keep cutting corner after corner. Did you know that we shave metal off our turbine and compressor housings until they are at the EXTREME minimum needed to contain in the event of failure they are shaving every nickel off the cost of a turbo. Did you know that 2000$ gt40 you buy is all mark up. I won’t dare say the actual cost to the company in fear of a lawsuit but lets just say your sales tax is more then the production cost.

Do not buy these turbos. BorgWarner and mitsu are trying there best to compete with us making a quality product. Honeywell is using its big name to back junky turbos Like Toyota is starting to do. I guarantee in the next 8 months you will see a huge decline in quality. All designing and production is in CHINA AND MEXICO. Honeywell is taking back all there benefits they used to supply us with as employees. That way when they lay us off its as cheap as possible. Instead of saying "Well after we take a hit laying those people off we will make tons" they are just taking back all there benefits so they walk away clean and clear. We used to get a severance package. Which they just took away. One of the head engineers involved in the t3 project. (Designing the first t3) he is still with our company. he was supposed to get 44 weeks of pay if he ever got layed off (30 days and 1 week for every year with the company. 40 years with the company)Due to the new Honeywell rules he gets only 16 weeks pay they stole all that pack after promising it to him for 40 years. My fingers and about to fall off typing all this and I am heated so I don’t care about grammar I’m concerned about you people not supporting a Nazi company. Take your business elsewhere. Somewhere where you will get what your money pays for. Have a nice day and don’t forget if you hear the name HTT Honeywell Turbo Technologies Stay away

(They still use the garret stamp on the turbos)"

[scheides]

Booo.

Yay mitsu!

[deadeye]

Not surprising. Honeywell did the same thing with fram filters when they acquired allied signal. Its pretty sad but they are the cliche for american stuff these days. Start out here making good stuff and end up in China making junk.

One more reason to be happy about sticking with mitsu stuff.

[awd-drifter]

damn, that sucks. yah for mitsu though . Whoever is managing the production of Garret turbos is full of fail.

[Kracka]

I wonder if this is the same reason a lot of Garrett IC cores are leaking even when brand new?

[Matt D.]

Originally Posted by Kracka

I wonder if this is the same reason a lot of Garrett IC cores are leaking even when brand new?

I wouldn't doubt it. If they're cutting costs like is stated in that article the who knows what other corners they're cutting with their products.

[A//// Guy]

Tons of stuff is made in china and its still quality. Depends how the company manages the stuff being made in china, and how strict they are with standards, etc.

[mlomker]

I have a friend that use to work for Honeywell IT. They sold off their whole IT department to IBM Global, who he now works for. It sounds like Honeywell's goal is to have nothing but a corporate office...they are well on the way.

[Constant_Project21]

Outsourcing is a real sum bitch. I hate seeing longstanding US companies being shipped out to Mexico and China, and in turn producing a shitty, cheaply made product. I'll know to stay away from garrett in the future.

[Kracka]

Originally Posted by A//// Guy

Tons of stuff is made in china and its still quality. Depends how the company manages the stuff being made in china, and how strict they are with stangards, etc.

Very true. There are some high quality parts coming out of China. It does seem to greatly depend on how willing each company is to pursue and demand only tightly controlled quality parts. Take Competition clutches for example, they obviously had a bad run of poorly controlled components, but the owner flew over to the factory in China to figure out and solve the issue. Since then (last summer), I haven't heard any stories of failures so they obviously got it right. The third try was the charm, but for the first two at least they stood behind their products 100% and did what it took to keep customers satisfied. Anyway, back on topic, I hope Garrett handles their overseas manufacturing in a similar manner, but from that article it definitely does not sound like it. If true, I can't see the OEM market going to them for parts in the future.

[tehehodi]

Well coming form a sort of machining background. I know their tolerances for machining suck donkey balls aren't as close to the specs as it would be in the u.s. Say turning a rod down from 1.000" to .500 +/- .0001 woudl be like +/-.0008 or something in china. ISO standads suck there. But I really don't know what i'm talking about, It's been long since I've machined anything.

[Kracka]

Can anyone explain what ISO standards actually mean, and if they vary from one country to another? I've looked up a few articles online and it just leads to more questions being raised.

[LingLing]

That's pretty shitty. Just another big corporation trying to stay afloat and make millions. Customer service? Quality Product? What are those?

[tehehodi]

Originally Posted by Kracka

Can anyone explain what ISO standards actually mean, and if they vary from one country to another? I've looked up a few articles online and it just leads to more questions being raised.

My father said that china uses metric, and U.S. uses inches. Tolerances are tighter here in the u.s. versus china.
Thats all he remembers. I know the company i used to work for in burnsville switched from ISO 9000 to 9001 and there were more things to check on 1 part and the tolerances were a little tighter.

www.iso.org has more info than i can explain

[mlomker]

It's basically just a boatload of paperwork. ISO does *not* dictate tolerances or anything like that...all it means is that you have documented standards and controls in place that attempt to meet those standards.

As always, what you don't measure tends to have corners cut. The companies that outsource overseas have to measure *everything*. If they don't then the Chinese/Mexicans/etc are going to cut those corners to obtain more profit.

[Shane@DBPerformance]

Any company using inches nowdays is stupid. Chinese tolerances probably aren't as good because they use Chinese made measuring tools.

[Matt D.]

Originally Posted by A//// Guy

Tons of stuff is made in china and its still quality. Depends how the company manages the stuff being made in china, and how strict they are with standards, etc.

Agreed. The company I work for is starting to have some parts produced in China and our tolerances are the most strict of anyone that we compete with, and the quality of our products shows that.

[sleepydsm]

ISO standards are a joke, just a bunch of expensive paperwork explaining the specific process as something is manufactured. And it's very loosely followed, if at all. But without it a company looks like shit. I am now in the machining world, and I know a lot of stuff is being sent to China and Mexico. It is significantly cheaper, but it actually doesn't necessarily mean a shittier product. Lots of companies have their overseas shops set up to their standards, and hold their standards. In the US I'd say most modern production stuff here is metric threads, and dimensions are about 50/50 standard and metric.

Honeywell/Garrett has been spiraling downhill for a long time...

But I personally have seen quality cut for cost and timeliness right here in the USA...

[CarPsyco84]

Heh, I second the ISO standards being a large paperwork waste, I've heard ASE cert for mechanics being similar... ISO just gives a dude up at the front desk something to do and comeback and pretend he knows how to calibrate the instruments out in the shop like those of us that actually use it don't know if its out of whack or not. The tolerances are pretty much set by whoever engineers the part(s) to set the tolerances tight when they need to be and not when it doesn't matter. The problem with getting a bunch of stupid office people that don't know anything involved is when the machine shop that makes the parts tells the customer that they either can't make the part to said tolerances or its too expensive, so then some clown at the customers company says thats ok you don't need to make that turbine shaft +-.0005" +-.005" will be ok.
stuff like this happens alot.
Oh, and all the US miltary parts we make at our work (which is alot of the parts we make), the prints are all metric, which is interesting because we have to use american made sheets of material and they only come in standard sized thickness, but the parts are engineered for metric standard thickness's so we have to get variances all the time for that stuff.

[blackrosenova400]

ASE certification is a joke. The tests are meaningless. Ive taken three of them and they have no bearing on whether you are or arent a good technition. The questions are written by some assclown who thinks he knows what hes talking about, but has no clue. ASE is just a stupid organization that have created a symbol for themselves to make money. Technically the people that are getting screwed are the people who dont know how to work on there own vehicles, and think they are going to an "ASE" certified shop.

Its funny this thread just cam up because me and my fellow technitions were just talking about how pointless and a waste of time ASE is. In fact from what we discussed, shops only need 1 tech, and they can buy all the "We are ASE certified" crap they want.