December 15, 2022
#460
Gentle reader,
When I was a little boy in the 1960's I already KNEW what I wanted "to be" when I grew up, an Auto Mechanic. I was a car nut from age two. And I did just that, beginning with signing up for the two-year training classes in our city. They occurred during every afternoon of my junior and senior years of high school. I received a gift from an unknown person who mentioned to the local Mobil station owner that I was training to be a mechanic. He called my house and left a message. I called him back and rode my bicycle over to his station to interview. I was sixteen but did not yet have my driver's license.
But, that is not what this is about. It is about China. Like it or not, it IS the world's factory. Making a huge percentage of what we consume every day. China also has THE largest share of new automobiles and trucks being made and sold compared to Europe or the US. Some western car companies have been bought by Chinese car makers, or are partnering with them to build those brands in China. In fact there are cars which were made in China on US roads right now. Volvo is one brand where many of their cars are built in China.
Let's talk about the OTHER gorilla in the room: Amazon. What started as a website to sell BOOKS at a discount over your local book store, but has grown to dominate north America as THE preeminent seller of all kinds of goods.
This is a photo of the 2005 Volvo V50 wagon I was very fortunate to find and buy in 2014. There was something missing from it then. It may not be evident in the picture. But, I finally saw it and set out to find a replacement part for it. What was it? The little plastic cover which hides the nut and mounting arm of the rear window wiper.
My go to place since 1998 to find things was eBay. Sure enough there was a seller providing many genuine new Volvo parts. I found said piece, ordered it and once it arrived, I snapped it in place and all was well.
I stopped being a professional car mechanic in early 1982 when I went to work for Washington, D.C.'s subway company, WMATA, as an Electro-Mechanic. Why? We were in a severe recession and people were not spending money getting their cars worked on. We had one child and a second on the way. They could only pay us minimum wage. Something had to change.
However, I continued to work on our own vehicles whenever feasible. And I did so for another thirty-five years. By then, I owned this wonderful wagon which turned out to be somewhat rare, at least in north America. Why? Because it has this:
The VAST majority of automobiles and light trucks sold in North America (and most of the rest of the world) have automatic transmissions. And why not? They are easier to drive, they won't stall if you did something wrong with that third pedal, and in stop-and-go traffic, they are wonderful! Plus, they can shift gears MUCH faster than we can shift manual transmissions. But, at least to enthusiasts like me, they are boring.
But, I have gotten off track. I had bought a replacement 13" (33cm) wiper blade for my Volvo via eBay a couple years ago. It was not Volvo brand, but it fit and the price was good.
As time went by, it began to not clean so well, as wiper blades are wont to do. Also, the blade did not stay attached to the 2005 wiper arm. It did if the arm was down, but raise it for any reason and the blade fell off.
By then, I had decided that I had enough of working on vehicles of any kind and took my car to the local Volvo shop. Even for oil changes! They, of course usually provide only genuine Volvo parts for their customer's cars.
But, I did not want to bother them for something so trivial. So, on to, "the jungle site" as one YouTuber I admire refers to Amazon, I went. Sure enough, they had the correct rear wiper arm for a great price and for a few dollars more, they would add a new rear blade too. To quote Rango, voiced by Johnny Depp, "This is where it gets... complicated."
By visual comparison with the old 2005 rear arm, the 2021 replacement seemed to be identical. Seemed is the key word here.
It bolted on just like the old one. It held the blade, which the old one no longer did. I installed both parts, it swung back and forth just like the old one, and seemed to be working fine. Problem solved, that is until it rained the first (and every) time after that! Only a small portion of the blade actually stayed attached the glass! WTH?
This is the Chinese made mounting arm.
Below is the replacement Genuine Volvo mounting arm.
Notice
anything different from the Chinese-made one above? Since I have no idea if you see it or not, I'll point it out to you. The Volvo arm does not have that silver metal piece pressed into the Chinese-made arm to fit over the wiper motor shaft. Why is that?
This is the underside of the brand new, made-in-Belgium, genuine Volvo wiper mounting arm. It is made from cast metal. Also it was made for Volvo by BOSCH.
This is the Chinese made arm AFTER I did two modifications to it. It had the exact same shape and size as the genuine Volvo arm. The hollow underside was the same size and shape as the Volvo one. So, why did I feel the need to modify it? Because unlike the factory arm, it is made of hard RUBBER. Not, solid metal like the Volvo arm! Of course, by the time I had realized that, the old arm was long gone. Disappeared into the local landfill.
This photo is a little blurry, sorry about that, but look at the photo above it for clarity. I felt that the hollow area was the problem and carefully bent a wire hanger and cut it to fit inside the hollow area and applied a lot of E6000 glue. Which is fantastic stuff. Hoping to stiffen it.
And I was correct. They were not cheap. They showed their discount price for the arm was around sixty two dollars and a new blade close to twenty. Ouch! Add shipping and it would be over $100. But, going cheap worked in the past, so I spent the money. They had to order the parts from Volvo, but eventually, they arrived in Virginia. Well packed in a box way too big. But they arrived just fine.
Unlike the Chinese replacement wiper arm, the Volvo one was complete with the little plastic cover my car was missing when I bought it eight years ago.
Once I had it installed and aligned correctly, I got in the car, started it up, and pressed the wiper stalk forward. That engaged the rear window washer function. The iconic blue fluid squirted on the tailgate glass and the wiper starting swinging back and forth rapidly. And it worked EXACTLY as it is supposed to. No surprise there. The glass was nice and clean. No streaks. No missed areas. Perfect.
We, especially those who have newer vehicles to drive, take every function, especially the "TECH" their cars possess, take for granted that everything they ask of it will perform flawlessly every time. And most of the time it does. Every time.
Well, as someone who has lived in SEVEN decades, and been driving for almost sixty years and once owned a car fourteen years older than he is, I can tell you, cars have progressed LIGHTYEARS from what the 1941 Plymouth coupe I was making into a hot rod did and did not do.
Yes, dear reader, that IS yours truly, at age 18 in Richmond, Virginia in the 1970's. I bought the coupe from a fellow mechanic at the Chevrolet dealer where I worked. He had bought it from the Parts Manager, who had bought it (when it was still stock) from yet another mechanic. The Parts Manager had completely transformed and updated the Plymouth with complete Chevrolet drivetrain (engine, transmission, driveshaft and rear axle) as well as "modern aircraft style" (telescoping instead of lever action) shock absorbers. He added a front antisway bar and added power brakes. The fellow mechanic I bought it from had removed the modified Chevy V8 engine from it to put in his race car. The Plymouth had a late-1950's Corvette close-ratio three speed manual transmission with floor shifter. His fabricated clutch linkage left something to be desired, so I installed a three-speed automatic transmission to get it drivable. Factory sales brochure for the "New for '41!" Plymouth cars and light pickup trucks.
But, I have digressed again! The point I was making is the cars I began driving in had power NOTHING. The windows door locks, brakes, and steering were all manual. To open a window, one manually wound a lever on the door panel to lower the glass down and rotated it the other way to raise it. What YOU drive (unless you drive Volvos even older than mine) has SO MANY computer controlled things it makes the NASA Apollo Moon Rocket seem like it came from the Bronze Age. And you expect everything to work every time. And 99% of the time it does. Cars nowadays are so reliable and safe, that most if not all of the thousands of parts and pieces it came from the factory will still be working fine ten or more years and hundreds of thousands of mile later.
Back to the point of this now lengthy article is that when your car needs to be fixed: Pay the extra money for GENUINE parts. If you cannot afford that, if it is something complicated and really expensive, then get a remanufactured one. Because it will still be made from the factory parts, but things which had failed or leaked will have been replaced with brand new parts and it will work just as well as it did when it left the factory. Do that, and your car or truck will reward you with many more years of safe, comfortable and carefree miles.
To see what happens when car and truck owners DO NOT take care of their vehicles, watch some of the videos on this channel: Just Rolled In - YouTube You may not always understand what you are looking at in some of the scenes, but gradually you will and believe me, it will instill in you to maintain your vehicle! Your very life and the lives of your passengers and those in the vehicles around you, will thank you. You only have one life to live. Pay the extra money to make sure your car or truck will continue to flawlessly do everything you ask of it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article. Your kind comments below or on Facebook are what inspire me to come up with new things to share with you.
Scott Robb
December 15, 2022
#460
Notice anything different from the Chinese-made one above? Since I have no idea if you see it or not, I'll point it out to you. The Volvo arm does not have that silver metal piece pressed into the Chinese-made arm to fit over the wiper motor shaft. Why is that?
