Manufacturer's quality issues?

Chassi paint on the Pete's has been bad for years, hit it with a pressure washer straight from the factory and say good buy to it. Quality seems to get compromised when quantity takes over. Even the wiring in late model us trucks has taken a turn for the worst compared to the 90s models.
The Dashes and interior have gone to the plasticky European look and feel.
Can't wait to see what the next 10 - 20 years brings us.

 

So now it's not just Columbias that are throw away trucks?

My 1994 FLD and my 2005 Columbia were both lacking in quality as delivered. I just lived with it and finished/ improved on what was lacking from the factory, taking comfort that I had saved $30K or more over a Paccar product. 7 years and 800.000 miles later, the Columbia is as tight as ever. It's been a great truck.

Western Stars aren't what they used to be when they were hand built Kelowna, but they have two great things going for them.

1) Freightliner Air suspension
2) DD 15 is an option

 

As far as chassis paint, I'm wondering if the factory would let you paint it with por15 or equivalent product. If applied correctly it will *NOT* rust.

 

My company got a KW T800W in last year. $170,000 truck and the truck came into the shop on two different occasions with "air leaks". These air leaks were from not having a ferrel installed in the copper air line compression fitting. The one line was the air supply to the trailer. That truck also several non dot issues that I had to fix when we got it that the factory screwed up on such as the step bolts weren't actually holding the step on as they missed the bottom lip on the step. We have another T800 that we got last year that had the interior door panel fall of with less that 10,000 miles. We have a 1998 Western star that is in much better condition that the newer Kw's that we got and the Western Star has had a hard life.

 

Maybe if they stopped putting cabs together with adhesives and went back to welding and bolts things wouldn't leak as much.

I drive a 2013" Cascadia. It's got 74,xxx to date and it's had a few issues new radiator being the biggest but nothing major. Overall assembly appears to be good.

 

And the radiator is a vendor part. The same vendor sells to most makes. So it would failed bolted it to a Pete as well.

 

The 587 and the T680/700 are the only models put together with adhesive, the others are still done using the huckbolts.

 

The cascadias are assembled with adhesives.

 

I meant for the paccar trucks.

 

The 660 isn't?