Brief rant -- fitment problem reports

[BarracksSi]

Now, I'm not going to complain about CTR wings, seeing how they're not made for the Si in the first place...

What I am going to bitch about is the apparently poor fitment of WAY TOO MANY aftermarket parts. Not just for our EPs, but for cars in general. Hoods, radio kits, spoilers/wings/skirts/lips/hairpieces, suspension parts, on and on and on... According to reports here, some have even lied outright -- "Yes, it'll fit, no modifications needed!"

The VIS carbon fiber hood in a recent thread tripped my trigger, prompting me to gripe here. The owner described that it was damaged in shipping and that it required several modifications just to make it properly functional.

The thing is, he's not the only one, and that's not the only company.

Do manufacturers just slap together something to throw out the door? Do they not even bother test-fitting? Are their quality control standards really that low?

Mindless, that's what I say.

[thaseint]

I had a VIS hood on my old EJ hatch and it fit perfectly and was of top notch quality...


As for your general topic, its true that aftermarket parts do not fit as well as OEM; but thats just the nature of the beast. Unless you're willing to spend top dollar on parts then you'll continue to see the slightly off fitments. You have to remember that the stuff is also aftermarket, these places might be manufacturing hoods for hundreds of other cars and they are doing the best job they can...which for the most part is pretty good. When Honda makes a part they are able to spend time on designing each individual part because they have billions of dollars at stake and they have to meet certain safety standards. An aftermarket company can simply slap an "Off-road/show use only" label on their and be covered if something should go awry. The companies aren't being mindless they are just using common business sense, if they have X amount of dollars to play with then it will be proportional to the quality, Y. I'm sure VIS could make a 100% perfect OEM quality fitting hood, but they'd also have to raise the cost of their hoods to about $1000 just to do it.

[BarracksSi]

I don't see why it would cost so much more if they just used the correct measurements in the first place.

That's the nature of my beef -- why can't companies just make stuff that fits? It makes me think that they really didn't try it out on a real car, or that they don't find the OEM dimensions, or use any other methods to get it right.

Or, maybe they did, and had a perfect prototype or first run, and their crafting methods are just so sloppy that subsequent examples don't fit like they should.

Maybe they think, "Ah, it's close enough, the people buying this will have ways of forcing it to fit."

I've yet to get into buying aftermarket parts, and this nonsense makes me want to stay out. Customers should be able to expect better.

[thaseint]

The problem is that every run of parts is different, in a perfect world every part that entered a mold would come up as perfect as the original. The difference between the finished products should be minimal, but sometimes there are bad runs or faulty fitting products. The aftermarket companies do test fit the prototypes but like I said, if an aftermarket manufacture was to focus on every car in detail and perfect each product to OEM fit they'd use time and man hours which equals money. You shouldn't have to force fit a part, unless it's some incredibly cheap part or you just got an oddball part...which MOST reputable manufactures will gladly replace. If it's a VIS distributor that you dealt with then contact VIS directly and let them know whats going on.

Again it goes back to getting what you pay for and what expectations you have. When I bought my VIS hood I wasn't expecting it to fit exactly like OEM, fortunatly it was near perfect enough for me though. Truth be told, aftermarket will NEVER fit as good as OEM unless you buy some of the expensive stuff or have the part custom fit, and even some of the expensive stuff can have problems. If aftermarket companies spent more time researching each individual car and using higher quality materials the consumer would ultimately end up footing the bill. Remember that VIS also makes hoods for everything from Acura to VW. The manufacturers are in the business to make money first and please the customer second, those two factors alone are dependent on numerous other factors.

[potator]

Originally posted by BarracksSi
That's the nature of my beef

Hahaha.

[cj miller]

i think they do a good enough job.

[steve_jones]

If manufacturers take their time in producing the original product, and take time producing a proper mold, there should be no reason why the final product should fit as if it was factory. The tollerences on the actual car , rarley change, so the problems dont lye there, its all down to the sill of the person who makes the original and the time they put into it.

Alot of people rush this process, and therfore the final product will never fit right.

Unfortunatley these people get away with it because there are people out there who will always buy their stuff no matter how bad it is

Rant over

steve

[furious]

It is all about the expense, that's for sure. It isn't just about molding measurements, there are always imperfections that need to be manufactured out. The tolerances that are permitted to the fabs are much lower for OE, and the cost would be very high on aftermarket to replicate the same quality. If you want perfect fitting (small gaps, perfect alignment), aftermarket companies can do that but:

cost would be higher than OE

point is that OE can sell its highly fitting parts as they have already made the investments for the process and fab...but the aftermarketers would have to charge you a load just to make cost, let alone profit.

They can and do get the measurements right, they just cannot make a profittable investment in fabbing precise parts. :(

[Tekdemon]

One of the reasons Japanese cars are overall more reliable than US-made cars, has actually been the large amount of work and money they invested into lowering the differences in a batch of parts substantially...

Originally Japanese cars and electronics were looked upon as garbage of course, but after some serious work with the tolerances with which all the little components that made up the electronics/cars, and the Japanese ended up getting far better "overall" reliability, in the sense that, although there would still be those American cars that would be just as reliable, or even more reliable, the Japanese would have 95% of their cars guaranteed to be of a relatively high reliability, whereas the Americans might have had 70% very reliable, but that 25% difference there would be what you *don't* want.

Seems off topic yes, but it actually does relate. Basically what I'm saying is, the tightness of how all the parts fit, particularly in a Honda or Toyota, is UNBELIEVABLY well controlled. In order to achieve that same level of tolerance in an aftermarket supplier's parts, they would have to fine tune their process over time with lots of money. After all, the Japanese had to go through a toothing period learning how to make their cars more reliable over DECADES. It seems that the Koreans are finally learning to control tolerances much better(with Hyundai posting impressive first year reliability #'s now-although they lit a fire under their own ass with their 10 year warranties and probably sped up their own improvement from how much $$$ they were shelling out each year just to fix the cars-supposedly they spend about 1/2 as much on the newer ones in warranty repairs compared to when they started the warranty!), but even they have needed MASSIVE cash infusions to get there.

Now, there is a way for a small, low cash flow firm to produce stuff that's almost OEM perfect. Just dump a LOT of parts that don't quite make it to that level of fit. Of course, if you're only getting 30% yields, and have to throw away 70% of the parts you make, it's going to jack the price up really high, and make you pretty uncompetitive.

So that's that. Either a company slowly invests money to improve yields over time(which I'm sure most companies try to do, since obviously it gives them an edge over their competition), or it jacks the price up 200% now and just throws away the parts that aren't up to snuff.

I think some of the aftermarket co's (like Mugen) do that jacking the price up unbelievably thing...although, I sometimes do wonder if their aftermarket radiator cap *really* is any better than just the regular Honda one, and if they really dumped enough "bad" radiator caps to make theirs of superior fit and finish =P

Haha, not that you'd really miss the 20 ricer HP =P