Originally Posted By: Trav
Yes and no. Timken is heavily invested in a quite a few ventures in China, wheel hubs a bearings seem to outsourced from some unknown to us companies. this can be good or bad, we have no idea.
On the other hand if you open a plant, control the materials, foundry, casting and bearing production, the QC and even the end packaging it doesn't matter if its on mars. SKF and INA and possibly a few others are doing just this.
As is Hilti, Makita, Nikon, Canon, almost every PC manufacturer in world and hundreds of others.
I have zero issues buying from companies that do this, VW I was reading last year makes more parts in China than in Europe in their own factories for Asian product produced vehicles, some are also sent to Europe and the US/NA market. They are the same or better quality.
The COO lines have been seriously blurred over the last decade. I hate to see it but there is not much we can do about it other than not repair or own things and that IMO is getting a bit silly.
Buy what you still can based on COO and what you cant get at least get it from a company manufacturing in China or Taiwan producing their own goods there.
Yes that was my concern, if they were just selling relabeled parts. When I was working on Semis and trailers we built our own trailers and the axles always came with cheap Chinese bearings. Those bearings would turn the hub oil black and I would eventually have to replace them. I always replaced them with USA made Timkens.