Aftermarket Engine Parts Built Abroad
Where Do You Live?
One of the greatest obstacles in the performance automotive engine rebuilding sector is locating the best suited internal engine components to complete a comprehensive rebuild. Although many aftermarket internal engine component manufacturers are in existence, over the past several years we have seen the explosive advancement in offshore manufacturing. This creates unique concerns for engine rebuilders and vehicle owners.
There’s no question that an international adjustment in manufacturing capacity has taken place. China is the main beneficiary of the reduction in USA manufacturing. While this delivers visible short term financial relief for individuals rebuilding their engines, the long term implications are diminished part availability, quality loss and lengthier waits to acquire bought components.
The quality of engine parts produced overseas generally aren’t held to the same standards as they are in the USA. Whether it is tooling wear from mass production, or an inability to execute finish work, lots of the machined automotive parts coming from China are substandard and outside satisfactory tolerances. This pushes many stateside automotive machine shops to complete the finish work themselves to make sure that their reconditioned engines will run as intended and withstand many years of use.
Recently, we had a brand new engine block arrive at our automotive machine shop which originated from China. There was casting sand in certain non-critical regions of the engine block. The piston cylinders were outside of acceptable tolerances and there was a tiny amount of rust on the crankshaft main caps. Though these conditions were easily corrected, the cost to the client increased significantly because the cylinder block needed to be bored and honed over again. Thankfully this customer did not obtain pistons beforehand, because the standard bore pistons would not work in the engine block after we bored it oversize.
The challenge when acquiring engine blocks, and associated engine parts from offshore businesses, is they aren’t close by when a problem occurs. Undoubtedly we could have refused the engine block, though the fee to deliver it back to China would have been more expensive then the repairs that were performed.
The inability to contact a nearby or national company to support products used in engines is a difficult problem for a lot of specialized automotive machine shops. Many of these shops work hard to produce incredibly high quality motors. But when faced with a shrinking national manufacturing base, they’re learning that supplying quality machine work is becoming increasingly difficult and much more costly in the end for their greatly appreciated customers. This is part of the reason why plenty of local machine shops are letting their customers know that by building their engines locally, and supporting national internal engine part producers when available, each customer is helping to preserve an automotive sector that can be utilized by future automotive enthusiasts.
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