Garrett Turbos...The end of a quality product
 

Dunno if this is the right forum, but from NASIOC:

Garrett Turbos...The end of a quality product - NASIOC


As posted by a supposed Garrett employee, 'mbtech' on NASIOC.

Here's the meat and potatoes from his post:

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)

I have a buddy who does supply chain management for them. I'm going to try and get some clarification.

Suddenly it doesn't feel bad to go with chinachargers.
If this is true that is.

If this is true, hopefully someone in America is making a quality turbo that bolts-up to the TiAL housing. I usually don't believe people who don't understand they're, there, and their.

Good information, although his use of 'there', 'they're' and 'their' was killing me.

no wonder all these copies have come to the market, they really are direct copies form the orginials. my ebay turbo has all the airesearch logos on the CHRA.

Am I missing something? My 2560 says made in Japan on the CHRA, Japan /= Mexico or China.

There is a pretty big backlash against production in mexico right now among a lot of companies. Shurflo (lots of water/meth pumps) has been nose-diving for some time partially due to quality problems, and all the major water/meth companies dont use them anymore.

Execs are usually quick to champion some new thing that saves massive $ and makes them look good to the board, but as soon as the lack of quality starts causing massive (and sometimes irreperable) damage, those same execs will become the champions of quality and USA production or at least Japan and Taiwan as opposed to Bangladesh, China, and Mexico.

I take the whole thing with a grain of salt, but I have no trouble acknowledging the possibility of it being true.

lets see what JKav has to say.

Interesting. Let's not be racist liuttle bastards here though ok? Just because a product is made in mexico or china doesn't mean it suicks. Four times the failure rate may not be that big a deal if the original failure rate was in the thousandths range. Companies treating their emnployees like shit is nothing neww and it's a very american tactic. My takeaway from this article is to try a china gt35 when I upgrade. As for the whole natioalism bullshit I would prefer it if my country was an engineering/technology superpower, not a manufacturing/assembly superpower. Maybe if the recession keeps getting worse all the laid off autoworkers/factory workers will move to mexico to get a job. That isn't necessarily bad. That is just the country evolving. If every country in the world corresponded to a star trek race, the usa would be the motherfuckin ferengi. I got garrent turbie becus of the name but thanbks for opening my mind to global options mr disgruntled. All that aside, I'm curious about the turbohe quality opinions from the real experts we have lurking around here. Beep beep paging all enguneers ...

Hey dipshit.... when did Mexico and Chine become a RACE. :bang:

Oh and stop drinking before typing...drunk typing is only acceptable when it's funny for everyone reading it.

:laugh: I read his post and thought to myself "One of us is drunk, and I'm still at work, so..."

That post depresses me greatly. It and most of the comments in this thread describe to a T what is happening at my company. Lots of employees with lots of experience getting paid next to nothing because people judge them for not knowing the difference between there, they're, and their. I am leaving the manufacturing field for the medical field soon, and will hopefully not look back.

faeflora, yes we could go to Mexico, where we will be paid what exactly? A decent Journeyman wage is somewhere around $20-25/hr. I'm not really sure since I only have experience at one place, but I do know we're very low at $20.50 for journeyman. This economy screwed me, as I was told I would get journeyman after I did a few specific things, one being as simple as bringing in my own tool box. I completed all those tasks right as the economy tanked, and have been stuck at $16/hr since April of '08. I work my ass off, they have laid off everyone that was previously helping me (making me work even harder), and I have had no compensation. No cost of living raise, nothing. We're hiring back more employees, we're buying new machines, we're picking up new orders, still nothing. The cost cutting measures ignorant management try to implement (anyone see "Undercover Boss?") are wrong and poorly planned for many reasons. For the first 5 years at this company I have 2 weeks paid vacation, which counts for everything and anything, sick, family emergency, and of course vacation.

I am sorry for yet another rant in this thread, but I wanted to get it off my chest as I just had yet another bad day. I'm both glad and pissed I'm leaving. Glad I'm leaving, pissed it's taken me this long to realize how bad it is and to find another plan.

this makes the holset hx35w's look a little more appealing now...

Fuck you I was sober and that post was empowered by blackberry. doppeganger you are the master of the drunk post and you are probably drunk now which is why you thought i was drunk when i actually was sober not drunk.

And yes the chinish and mexicese are races--- that means people of the same genetic stock you cockswaddling assmaggot pusfaced fagtard.

Sorry, the Chinese and Mexicans are nationalities, not races.



Try again soon.

I was working for a audio video conferencing equipment company, a multimillion dollar company run with 11 employees. I got laid off by the owner and my brother who still works there told me he hired 3 more people and has since purchased 2 more porsches to add to the 4 he already has.

No. You're wrong about me being wrong.

From webster:

"a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics"

You lose.

Thanks, I'm drinking and laughed at this.

+1

I hear the same thing about Deal's Gap. "Oh my gawd, there's 6 ppl that die a year there! That's double the amount from 10 years ago, oh my gawd!" Then we remember that there's triple the amount of people that ride/drive the road.

Back on topic, what do we do if Garrett's turbos really do turn out to be shitty? Gank some holsets off some semis?!:laugh:

Woa. 2+2 does not equal 15.

The original coment was mine. It's refering to the build quality of a lot things being manufactured in Mexico. The assumption that Mexicans (which is not a race, it is a nationality) are somehow inferior does not follow. I lived in PHX for 4 years and worked on a crew that was mostly Mexican. Trust me, I know better. Same for China. There is no doubt that the Chinese can make some amazing things and certanly are not inferior as a people.

But the fact is that when a lot of companies based here move production there, its not because of some philosophical alignment with local customs or the weather. It's to utilize exchange rates and cheap labor and weaker regulatory standards (if any are really present at all). And low quality results.

Read it again... "belonging to the same stock". Neither the Chinese nor Mexicans are 100% of the same stock. If I emigrated to Mexico and became a citizen, I'd be a Mexican but I wouldn't be hispanic. Likewise if I emigrated to China and became a citizen I'd be Chinese, but I wouldn't be an asian. Asian is a race, Chinese and Mexican aren't.

Edit: Hispanic as in my original post is not considered a "race" either.

Exactly!! Nationality is not a race. Fuck we are the human race..
When people figure this out. we may start to get along a little better. Guess this
makes me a racist because man I hate most people.

Riiight. One other thing that is worth consideration is that the chinese/mexican manufacturing companies are trying to make a buck too right? In the 5 parts transactions I've done on this forum, I've been "scammed" twice. Both those individuals live many hundreds of miles away from me. They shipped me crap misrepresented parts and thought that they could get away with it because they were too far away for me to choke. China is a fucking lot further away than the states and they're capitalists too now right? I'm sure that they try to cut down their own factory and materials costs as much as possible which lowers quality. If your China division ships you 10000 fucked up turboes it is much much much harder to reach overseas into some country that speaks chingchong with horrible arcane and corrupt government regulation than it is for me to sue in interstate small claims court. So, what you said + that other crap that I just said. This is the internet right? I don't have to be coherent do i?

Back to miata turbo land, how many people here have expereinced or directly know people who have experienced GT turboe failiures? My bb GT30 is aok after 30k miles.

If better product is to be had that is the yay though so I wonder about the borg warner and precision turbos. I recall a precision "big turbo" build over at m.net with methanol injection that hit 480whp or something like that. Why all the garret love? Why the garret nationalism? Are you all racist vs the other makes? fu

No, you lose again loser. Read definition B.

And your race is USA.

My nationality is American, my race is caucasian.

You fail at comprehension and I give up...

You're arguing with someone who "notched" their frame rail for a turbo like this:

http://www.mekalummezar.com/carpics/ul6.jpg

Of course he's not going to get it.

I have no idea why you are so pissed off. Your finding stuff to be angry about thats not really there and frankly, you do come off as drunk. I dont discount the possibility that this a joke. If not....

That first paragraph, yes. Companies tend to try to cut costs as much as possible. Thats true of basically all companies. In some manufacturing environments you have weaker regulations, and the ability to pay very low wages without benefits and basically screw people who work untill they die. Great cost cutting, though a bit lacking in human dignity, which apperantly does not count for much. Which is what happens in China and to much lesser extent Mexico. So you get drywall with arsenic that eats plumbing after about 3 years. You get baby formula with melanin in it. Not in all cases, but as I said, they did not move production hundreds/thousands of miles for no reason. They did it to cut costs with cheap labor and weak regs. Thats not a judgement of the people who physically make the product. Its a fact. Sorry if it angers you. Frankly it angers me. Ever see how seasonal agricultural workers are treated sometimes? It'll keep you up at night I promise you that.

No offense man, but by your own definition you have just slammed America as a 'race' and judged it the exact way you mistakenly ASSUMED China and Mexico were judged. If you hate this country so much I hope you are actually doing something to help the situation rather than just throwing words like racist around.

I mean this to be blunt, but not disrespectful. But what you fail to realize as you sit with your blackberry in Baltimore 4000 miles from any of this is that I have worked with Mexican, Serbian, Argintinian, Japanese, various European and who knows what else nationals day in and day out. I know a man who holds dual citizenship. He is incredibly articulate, and has a family here and tons of family in Chiuhaha. He told me all about life North and South of the Border and he is more knowledgeable than anyone here. And thats where I formulated my opinions regarding working conditions in Mexico. For China, feel free to talk to human rights watch. Feel free to take a gander at how people in Gangzho live.

Nobody is sitting around saying that this country is perfect. Seriously. Nobody. Not even the hardcore right-wingers.

I have a general rule, and I dont always follow it but I do generally stay close: If you would not say it in a bar directly, you probably should not post it. If you think you are some sort of badass, good for you. If you are and have such a lack of sense to come into the middle of a conversation and start screaming incoherently and calling people racists, maybe its time to revaluate how you conduct yourself.

Now that this thread is well and truly jacked, I hope that Brain's source can shed some light on the information in the 1st post.

I don't give up. Learn, my friend!

b: a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics"

Haha lol irl. Thank you for your eloquent and comprehensible contribution to the discussion on international manufacturing and turbo quality. The internet is actually somewhat similar to a bar though, except at this bar, all patrons are perpetually totally smashed. You do realize this is the internet right? We don't even know what's true about that original post.

But touche, I think I was calling "racist" in response to some other thread I've read. I'm sorry you didn't realize that. :facepalm: Instead, I should have wrote, "Nationalist zombies". I also didn't realize that this thread was full of awesome before I posted (the discussion was minimal but polite).

Fuck it, you win.

Attachment 241624

Please name me one "shared interest, habit, or characteristic" that ALL Americans share... or all Afghanis, or all Chinese...


Brain... help us get back on topic!! Please!!!

Meh. If my worst moment was only that bad I would be a much, much better person than I am. No worries.
Try being umemployed and hating everything on TV. The internet is all I have right now ;) Reality is relative.

NASCAR. Even Osama loves it.

I am flabbergasted how some people find racism ghosts everywhere. LOL @ Rotornut's post.

re: offshoring - some companies do it right and continue to produce high quality products, and some screw it up. Don't forget that when a company opens its doors overseas where labor is cheap, it's a godsend for many of those in those countries, and you can't accuse these companies of "exploiting foreign labor".

If Honeywell doesn't fix their problems, their competition will just eat their market share. It's too bad for us who buy aftermarket turbos that it seems only Garrett was taking care of us. Honestly the best thing that could happen now is if some Chinese company steps up to the plate and comes up with high quality clones of the Garrett turbos - better yet, ones wherein you mix and match your own wheels and housings. Methinks there's a business opportunity for some ex Garrett employees to start a small company that can buy Chinese made turbos, then do durability and QC testing and marketing here. Something akin to what 949 has done in the wheel market.

Per the topic at hand.

The thing that worries me about "cheap ass shit".. aka pretty much that is a copy of the original and has 'made in China' plastered on it, is that they don't care about the failure rate plain and simple. It seems that they know if they have a 40% failure rate, they'll tell us to suck it because they pretty much hold a monopoly and know that companies are not likely to take the business elsewhere. They pretty much know that there is enough profit that the shitty products they have to be replaced are just a drop in the bucket in loss compared to the profit of parts sold that either a) don't fail or b) fail but the comsumer simply buys another one and does not ask for a replacement/return. This makes me believe that they don't take as much pride in making quality products.

However, I don't doubt that there are some factories/engineers/reproducers/managers/people who do manufacture goods more precisely and have better QC...but I'd be willing to be such operations cost a bit more and yield a slightly more expensive end product then what they could have done if they wanted to be ultra cheap like many other manufacturers.

im an objectionist at heart.

That's a point. I supose the stuff you see in the news is not every single plant. But man some of it reminds me of what we learned about pre-WWI factories.

Personally, a BW S200 turbo remains an option, I have noting but good stuff regarding the extended tip compressor wheels in the DSM community.

Hatred of black people. I win again.

he's got a point.

his sense of humor is only surpassed by his fabrication skills...

I almost pissed myself reading this thread, you guys are fucking A+ XDDDD

Anyways, Im gonna go hang out with my chinnish friend and eat some fried rice while we rub dicks together. ~<3

kbai

I knew somebody was going to bring this up :laugh:

We all know the chinamen race caused global warming.

really though. Garret turbos. whats the scoop. One more time now, serious , with feeling.

Did Jaws attack? :bowrofl:

I blame labor unions.

white power!!! Only you can stop the brown revolution from tainting our gene pool. I'm going to ask Rick to create an Aryan forum so none of you browns can dirty up our Aryan purity.

Saws Jaws.....

What's happening to Garrett it's happening to every other company that got popular by it's quality products back when they were a small company. Once a company gets the name out there, get popular and it becomes more corporate. All these business people start taking over the company without any knoledge of, for example turbos. They come up with ways to cut down cost and make more money and that's all they care about.
This happens to everything even a stupid little sub place like subway or mcdonalds, they were all little delis that had quality products and tasted good, now that they became popular they are garbage but why do people still go there when they could go to a little deli with way better quality? It's all in the marketing.
I'm sorry if this post makes no scense but my brain is fried and English is my second language.
BTW I'm from argentina and it pisses me off when I have to check the box that says Hispanic in any form or application or whatever, when Argentina is made of mostly Italians and Germans, but Americans check of caucasion when alot of them are Italian like me. Just saying

Have any of you ever considered that maybe all the initial "quality" was a big waste of money? Who cares how thick my compressor housing is? OOH i have a quality 3 inch thick housing it is better than yours. The suits were probably like holy fuck mr. garret was a dumbass and his exorbitant design is dumb and wastes my money. Am I really supposed to watch out for turbyines flying through the hood?

BTW miataspeed i'm sorry you have to check the dirty spicck box that is sad. The whiteness should be better.

As Matt Cramer just pointed out to me, Honeywell did the exact same thing with Fram filters.

The market will decide if the move out of USA will hurt them or not. If they produce a crap product, people wont buy it. If they produce a better or comparable product at a lower cost, then more power to them. Maybe if businesses in the US didn't have so many hurdles to operate, they would stay in the US. Businesses in CA have to pay 8.5% just to operate in that pathetic state, that comes right out of the pocket of the consumer. I bet other States/Gov'ts are happy to GIVE incentives for them to operate in their country. And since production is cheaper elsewhere that's even better for them.

This is bullshit! I always wanted a Garrett now I got one with this damn controversy.

One day I'm gonna buy you!

Precision turbos anyone?

Since 90% of the consumer electronics seem to come from China now why is it so hard for them to produce decent car parts and furniture? Truly it isn't. They will build to the quality specified by the "manufacturer". If you want cheap crap that's what they'll build. You want a precision part of high quality materials? Pay for it and they will build it. It's the crappy specs to keep the cost down that makes the chinese parts built for US vendors that makes it junk.

^ True. IF they are in fact doing what the guy from NASIOC says they are doing, we will see if they are gong to get the same quality for cheaper, or lower qualtiy for much much cheaper. Going by that (still unconfirmed) post, they are already cutting corners in a big way at their current production facility.

PRECISION IS GARRETT. GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY.

Attachment 241623

Bosch Mahle, Borg Warner, Mitsubishi, Peirburg, Komatsu & Holset are all possible companies to step up for the aftermarket consumer turbo market. I'm sure there are many others too. Seems to be Germany or Japan for quality options. They just haven't marketed to the aftermarket the way Garrett has. Lets hope one of them steps up if Garrett really is losing quality and innovation.

Also IHI and Schwitzer.