Quote:
Originally Posted by 911heaven
20 years ago now I bought 964 Cab accident car for 4k. It had been hit hard enough on a rear quarter to bust one of the tranny 4 bolt casting off and broke the adjoining engine case as well. We stripped the case down, and my Japanese friend (engineer, machinist/mechanic) proceeded to weld the engine case back together where it had broken off (from top to bottom nearly). He kept complaining that it was hard due to the fact that the alum rods he was using were so much cleaner than the filthy aluminum Porsche used in their engine cases. He did a proper job, but he did comment that Japanese engine cases are made of much higher quality material. Makes you think too about other components Porsche makes that are or were lesser than. This close friend and foreign car mechanic/car restorer said all German cars break down often for these reasons i.e. quality of components and clearances. Moreover, as he said. that's why Japanese cars don't break down conversely, especially Toyota. For what it's worth.
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Quality of parts and components has always meant something different to the Japanese in comparison to the rest of the world. I remember reading a case study in college where an American tractor company contracted a Japanese firm to make starter motors for their tractors. They insisted that they would tolerate no more than a 5% defect rate! This got lost in translation. When their order was ready there were about 10 pallets of starters and then the Japanese said there was an 11th pallet with the bad starters. They were really confused why the Americans wanted 5% bad starters, they painted red X's on these. To them they would only deliver 100% good starters and would test every one before they shipped them. It was a different mentality in terms of what quality means.
---Adam