Thanks Pete..........Unfortuantely these laws fail to protect customers where components which are unfit for purpose, or are dangerous until the failures have been reported to relevant authorities, which in the case of vehicle parts the authority is VOSA. When a sufficient number of complaints (or a single seriously dangerous item has been identified) have been received by VOSA, they may act, but because VOSA's hands are tied by some degree by the Enterprise Act, that usually only means they can contact a manufacturer or importer requesting that they investigate their own products..........You know what the end result will be. Tyres from 'oriental' sources are one of the main issues. There is apparently evidence of several failures with certain brands, but there is difficulty in action being taken, because the factories that produce them start up one month and in the next month the production moves to another factory that has just started up. AL
There is a lot more that goes in to constructing a tyre than making a brake lever. Totally agree that budget tingtong car tyres are wank I learnt this lesson once buying the cheapest and as soon as it rained I may as well have been running around on slicks.
No problem with my Chinese levers 2 years on and as yet I haven't heard of any snapping or bending other than after a crash. As with all other brand names you can pay through the nose if you want but i,m quite happy with what i,v got. Steve
I involuntarily crash tested an extremely cheap Chinese commuter bike. Considering the scale of the impact (50 mph into the side of a car) it fared very well, there were multiple failure points sugesting a progressive crumple - exactly what you want. Given the cost of the bike it was a very good showing. Lots of the 'quality' issues with Chinese products are due to people abusing them as they are 'just cheap junk' China is capable of very high quality products if its what people want.
I've had 5 sets of 'chazzos', a set of rearsets and various other bits and bobs from China, and not had a problem with any of them, not even faded anodizing. I'd heard all sorts of crap on forums so I had a bloody good search round the internets to see if I could find any first hands reports on failures. I only came up with one, a bloke who said fitting a chinese brake lever contributed to him crashing. Turns out he decided to ride the bike knowing the lever was causing the brakes to bind - the lever wasn't the correct one for his bike, so he modified it to fit...
Its pretty much as Roy says, any quality issues that don't meet brand standards for some manufacturers get rejected, - might be as daft as a machining mark on a visible component face and so they end up just getting sold as pattern parts. The closer to OE quality you want the closer you pay, but for many bits and pieces there's nothing inherently wrong with them. The only issue is that if it doesn't perform as it should or happens to break, on your head be it, unless you're off to china for a quick trip, then happy days
