I found this thread on another forum , in the drag racing section.




Quote:
Originally Posted by mbtech
I work at Garrett Turbos, now called Honeywell Turbo Technologies which there so proud of. When Cliff Garrett Owned Garrett He used to brown bag his lunch everyday and cared for a quality Product. If he knew what Honeywell has done now he would turn over in his grave. Honeywell bought Garrett In 1998 or 1999. After this they opened up a turbo testing lab in shanghai China and quickly moved there turbo overhaul to Mexicali Mexico, quickly after Garrett overhaul went belly-up. So they moved there whole production to Mexicali Mexico, as if that first failure was not a sign.

Garrett Turbos made a quality product for a fair price. A turbo is a precision instrument. Garrett turbos was part of Garrett Air Research (on 190th st. In Torrance ca.) Where they have a huge facility designing turbine engines, and so on. Most of the senior technicians in our main turbo facility (Lomita Blvd Torrance ca) came from our air research. If you’re building jet engines a turbo is not all that difficult. Well Cliff Garrett dies. At that time ALL production of Garrett Turbos was at Lomita Torrance ca. Also all engineering and research was there as well. After we were bought and production was sent to Mexico to save costs. Our production numbers doubled. And cost was cut in half our failure rate tripled. Well who cares Honeywell is making money and lots of it. Turbos are considered Honeywell’s golden egg. They feel that turbos are going to take over big. Which it already has in the diesel market. We make ford diesel turbos, daf, Chevrolet, some Audi, vw, fiat, Perkins. Millions of turbos. And there now all coming from china and Mexico. Well up until lately the company figured if the product was designed in the US and assembled in Mexico we would be ok. Well to further there profit and **** the customer once again....the LAST of what makes turbo American leaves in January 2011. We will close the doors to the Torrance Lab. In Torrance we did all our racing turbos (wrc stuff, Audi racing etc..) then in the garret garage we did the turbos you people buy for your Subaru’s. Actually I take that back. They take turbos that were made on a production line somewhere else in the world, and change a couple of parts on a bench in Torrance (wheels, housing..etc) and send it to you the customer saying it was made in the us.....no it was not it was just repackaged and altered a little. Well as of Jan 2011 all your turbos will be made in Mexico or china or Czech Republic. This is the last Garrett facility in the United States.

We have huge law suits pending due to turbo failures. GM is probably going to leave us.... ford has already sued us. Caterpillar has one of the largest recalls in garret history in the process. Our name is becoming ****. The last few VERY smart guys left in the company are being fired to save costs, but see our profit is already good.....they just want more. Please don’t spend 1500$ on a gt35r. Now that it’s costing Honeywell less to build turbos do you think you will see a smaller bill when you order there product? NO!. They are going to charge you even more for even less. There are countless procedures that are being terminated everyday that made our turbos THE BEST. They keep cutting corner after corner. Did you know that we shave metal off our turbine and compressor housings until they are at the EXTREME minimum needed to contain in the event of failure they are shaving every nickel off the cost of a turbo. Did you know that 2000$ gt40 you buy is all mark up. I won’t dare say the actual cost to the company in fear of a lawsuit but lets just say your sales tax is more then the production cost.

Do not buy these turbos. BorgWarner and mitsu are trying there best to compete with us making a quality product. Honeywell is using its big name to back junky turbos Like Toyota is starting to do. I guarantee in the next 8 months you will see a huge decline in quality. All designing and production is in CHINA AND MEXICO. Honeywell is taking back all there benefits they used to supply us with as employees. That way when they lay us off its as cheap as possible. Instead of saying "Well after we take a hit laying those people off we will make tons" they are just taking back all there benefits so they walk away clean and clear. We used to get a severance package. Which they just took away. One of the head engineers involved in the t3 project. (Designing the first t3) he is still with our company. he was supposed to get 44 weeks of pay if he ever got layed off (30 days and 1 week for every year with the company. 40 years with the company)Due to the new Honeywell rules he gets only 16 weeks pay they stole all that pack after promising it to him for 40 years. My fingers and about to fall off typing all this and I am heated so I don’t care about grammar I’m concerned about you people not supporting a **** company. Take your business elsewhere. Somewhere where you will get what your money pays for. Have a nice day and don’t forget if you hear the name HTT Honeywell Turbo Technologies Stay away

(They still use the garret stamp on the turbos)
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Well this IS an internet rumor, and we don't know who this guy is or what motivates him, but I'm sure there's a kernal of truth to it at least.

The question is: how do we know that the other manufacturers aren't excessively cutting costs at the expense of quality? Sounds like a pretty typical manufacturing scenario unfortunately.

 

I agree

 

Welcome to the New America.

 

You mean NWO

 

i'm trying to confirm this as i have a garret turbo

 

Exactly, or better known as globalization sponsored by corporations.

 

So what exactly is wrong with a company trying to save money by moving their production? You lose your job? Welcome to 2010.

thewird

 

Turbo failures have been prominent on the heavy engine side. Not all Garrett's parts are coming from overseas though. One of my suppliers I work with handles a good deal of their compressor housings in North Carolina. Sending most parts over seas doesn't surprise me as all companies are doing it. The company I work for has gone so far as to basically lay off all lower design level engineers and force project level people to send work to a certain Indian engineering firm. Not real successful though and management would never admit it, we now have as many US contractors as direct hires. All this is the main reason I'm looking for the made in the USA print on my products now. Just another reason to buy Precision turbos???

 

Aren't the Precision turbo's made in China too. Or parts of them, same as Garrett :P.

thewird

 

true, I'm off to ebay to buy me a china made turbo...

 

It was more a question. Are they I know they are headquartered here in Indiana. They have been pushing their own product over Garrett's. I'll have to give them a call and ask.

 

Garrett screwed over a few places, Precision being one(why they are now making their own CHRA's and wheels), my main turbo supplier being two, that's after being the number one MD in sales for over 20yrs straight. (millions in sales annually) They just yanked it and gave it to someone else to try and sweeten a corporate deal with bosch. All that said Garrett's failure rate is less than 2%, their performance division accounts for less than 2% of their sales as well. I will continue to sell their product until I feel they are not keeping the level of quality I have experienced.

~S~

 

I wanted to unbiasly comment on this forum post in regards to:
1. Outsourcing 2. Employees 3. Quality of turbos

1. It is a fact that turbos are mainly made in low cost regions. Honestly though, most car parts are made in low cost regions. This is driven by the auto companies like GM who only care about the bottom line and lack to see the bigger picture of making a car that is worth owning (separate topic in itself). This is further driven by American companies seeing the value of an MBA more than an engineering degree. I attribute much of America's decline to the MBA (All worthless IMHO).

2. Fundamentally, a technology driven company should be focused on employing and keeping top engineering talent. Over the past year or so, since the economy has declined, many American engineers were either laid off or slowly replaced by lower cost region engineers (not unlike other American companies). This is a deeper rooted problem that is driven by greedy CEO's and satisfying share holders. After upsetting the tight knit engineering community, many have now quit and left major gaps in the young talent they need to be keeping.

3. While it is true that there have been quality issues with recent turbos, most of these failures are related to the complicated variable nozzle systems that emissions are essentially mandating. Even though components may be made outside of the US, there is much higher quality control over these suppliers and these turbos are still light years better than ebay turbos. You'd be an idiot to think otherwise. For simple turbos like most aftermarket guys use, there is decades of legacy knowledge that make it a good turbo. (even though I strongly disagree with the company's direction in recent years)

 

this thread is turning political pretty fast... let's get back to turbos.

Zero-R, where are you getting this data on failure rates?

 

I live in the center of OE automotive. All the OEM suppliers are stationed here. From our experience, 2% is an industry standard. pretty fascinating how that business model works.