On Ebay for a 749/999 - I know they are cheap - in fact they are that cheap it makes you think they have to be shit quality (probably are) but @ £15.88 delivered air freight from China - how the fuk do they do it and make a profit. More baffling: I bought some two colour anodised climbing style shackle key rings from Singapore on Ebay for £0.08 each. I bought 1 to start with to see if it turned up. It did in a little over a week. £0.08p including free delivery, airfreight and came in a 6"x4" jiffy bag that would have probably cost £0.50 in my local post office. How? What's the air freight cost? Who can explain that one?
I have noticed this with other stuff like bits for my GoPro from Hong Kong. Packaging alone is more expensive than the total charge. The only explanation I can think of is they are sponsored (subsidised) by the Chinese goverment.
I have also bought a couple of cheap sets of levers from two different sources and the quality has been quite good for the price. I think you mean carabiner for the keyrings, I bought 16 of them from different sources some as low as between £0.01 and £0.06 delivered, the listing did state that it cost more to send it than the item would cost to buy. I agree I am not sure how they can produce the quality and then sell it at what seems a loss. Not everything turns up in a decent timescale at times, I waited 5 1/2 weeks for a wi-fi repeater to turn up and in the end got a refund as it never showed up at all.
That's the ones yes, I got them from a Penny upwards too - most I paid was £0.12. That was nearly quite scarey - just counted and I bought 15. I did see the note saying they loose money too - crazy world we live in at times...
Chinese slate less than 1/2 the price of Welsh delivered to your door Apparently they use it as ballast in the ships Funny old world
Would you hang off a rope cleaning big bens pointers with them though . The carabiners I mean . Not the leavers. Think somewhere down the line child labour will have occurred
^^^^^ Same here spent a couple of quid for some nice the above, mixed colour ones, all anodised. I used them to hold up a sun sail shade in my garden during the summer and they did a good job. As mentioned why they are selling these things at such a seeming loss seems daft, in the case of the Carabiners the cheapest ones came from Singapore at literally £0.01 and the slightly dearer and bigger ones came from China for a whopping £0.18p for 3, again with free postage. I liked to know what they pay to ship them as they sell loads and even at buy it now prices, which no one seems to pay, they must make no profit at all. I wonder if it something to do with trying to get elevated seller status on eBay as you wouldn't get too many complaints over something that costs £0.01p!!!!
Did you buy these leavers Exige? Can't help but wonder what they are really like. Pictures can often be miss leading but to honest they look fairly good to me. Just can't help but think what would happen if you was to squeeze the brake leaver just a little bit to much. Would it stand up to the job it's intended to do? Mmmmmmm........
I must confess that my monser 1100s is fitted with some of these £15 levers. Theyve been fitted for 3 years and have been faultless. The same day as i purchased them i also dropped £160 on some asv's for my old 848. Yes the ASV are nice but not 10x nicer. Ive not bothered on the 1199 and even sold the asv even though they fitted.
I had a pair of pazzo on my D675 and a pair of these chinse on my 696 . They were identical in appearance, and even the fittings were the same. I bet they are produced in the same factory
The topic of Chinky levers/parts have been beaten to death since the dawn of the interweb...There will always be the closed brain brigade! Just make absolutely sure the brake lever/plunger is correctly adjusted when you fit it, otherwise you make be looking at the sky/road/sky/road/sky/road when the front end locks up!:Woot:
No problems at all with the Chinese CNC levers, had them fitted to my Versys for around a year, no they didn't catch fire, kill children or fall apart when used. No different from Pazzo's which I had on my Triumph - at the end of the day the wear point (the pivot "bushing") is off the original levers anyway. The way I see it Pazzo/CRG/Titax did all the R&D, some Chinese company gets hold of a set, reproduces the design using a CAD program and then chucks them at a big block of ally on a CNC machine and produces them in the 000's while avoiding all the health and safety stuff to get them out the door at a tenner a piece. Once you have the design at the most it is tweaking a couple of measurements for different bikes - say the pivot point diameter, thickness of the perch or the cable mount - in the program and press go.
They really don't need to tweak anything - they are totally immune from any copyright or design right laws as their government isn't bothered. We use China for mould tools as I've said before (not technical ones as they just not good enough) but for simpler tools and levers it's simple, the machining tolerances will be just as good and if not, perfectly adequate. One thing is for sure - the alloy quality will be a shit grade and not a posh grade. And those companies who have sneakily moved their high brand products to China and still command a high price will be shit material too. We have to police our toolmakers to ensure they use European tool steel, European electrics / runner systems and European polymers for trails. And when I say Police, I really mean it - they will produce direct copies including packaging for hot runner systems - we have to track serial numbers throughout the process. If we send European polymer out there and don't attend the trial they sell it on and use shit. If you send European quality steels and don't watch them they will sell it and use shit. The Chinese levers has been done to death, this thread was about some thing different - cost and economics that don't appear to stack.
bought a rear brake lever for my ss from china cost was £21 was dubios of quality for the money but actually not badly made also had led indicators from china and they seem absolutely fine set of four cost around £12 a set of two in uk around £40 and still says made in china on the packaging so economics so far works for me but think I would be careful on what I ordered from china
So how did they do that for £3 each, to manufacture, pack, post air mail - it would cost far more for us on postage cost alone. Are our inflated postage costs subsidising foreign post coming the other way. We would be charged about £3 to send to somewhere in the UK for a package like that - I think second class is around £2.95 as I paid £3.95 the other day for 2nd recorded.
They come in an independent package by airmail when you buy direct. Normally Chinese goods come in containers crammed full - this I can understand. I'm talking goods purchased direct ands posted individually direct to your house via airmail like the key ring shackles mentioned earlier.
