Got offered another engine

The original oil pans on the ‘74 NTC 350’s Pete put in my uncles 359’s have Made in Japan molded into them. Cummins has had Komatsu as a partner since the 70’s. They have been building many parts for the old NH 743-220’s. Cummins has had parts made in India since at least the late 80’s supplying majority of the NH/NT 855 parts since then.
Back in the ‘70’s some KTA crate motors were imported fromJapan.

 

The thing is about aftermarket parts being made in China and India, many companies do not do their due diligence with quality control and quality assurance.

So say I get my hands on bearing prints for say a Ford engine, I send them over to several manufacturers of bearings for quotes to China and India. I get maybe three or four quotes back and I select two out of them. They send me samples and I check them out. They are most likely the best of the best to get the work and if I do want to get parts from the company, then I have to ensure throughout the entire production of the parts that the quality is good from number one to the last. This is where these companies that buy these parts in bulk to sell retail or even wholesale, do not continue to do the spot checks of the incoming shipments and this is where the crap gets through and it fails the customer. Many times, they need to engage a company that just does quality checks before it is shipped.

Now one of the things that I was listening to today was a complaint about a classic car carb, it get toasted quickly with our fuel which uses ethanol. This is caused by those here who send a carb over there to be reproduced and do not specify a zinc material to be used, but rather aluminum which corrodes quickly. You can not use these carbs for more than 6 months.

 

The carb thing is a pain. The Rochester “replacements” on amazon are bad knock-offs. The simple parts like accelerator pumps and gaskets are just enough of a different size that rebuild kits parts for real ones don’t fit. And like you say the aluminum is soft enough that carb cleaners damage it.

 

I'd choose the Taiwan from those 3 , US has had a presence there since the 50's started teaching them mfg techniques in 60's by the 80's every dodad you seen , Made in Taiwan . Mfg sector has matured there , but it aint USA for sure.

 

I bought a master overhaul kit from EATON for my RTO-15615 about 8 years ago and there were 4 different bearing brands in the box, not one of them was produced on this continent.

 

Go to the dealership and buy new parts for a Harley, finding a part of any kind made in USA are like finding a chicken with fangs. When I built the black Softail I call the EBay bike I chose the Ultima ElBruto engine for a reason, it had the words MADE IN USA cast in the left engine case…..

 

It's really bad the quality of parts nowadays. And not just some parts , it seems to be everything is affected. I'm on the 3rd water pump on a Detroit 60 12.7 since April. The first one lasted 3 months . The second one starts leaking out the weep hole as we're filling it with coolant. The 3rd one seems to be working, fingers crossed. Every one of them came from Detroit .

 

it seems like a concerted effort to make combustion engines hard , expensive and less reliable to repair . Go electric is what the brain virus infected want

 

You best look at something other than Cummins if you want dealer support for an engine of that vintage…at least around here the Cummins dealer acts like they can’t get Cummins stuff for them and is selling pai instead. A long time parts lady retired recently and had told me that the n14e won’t be supported much longer…not sure what info she has but that’s what I was told.