Shopsmith Forums

In most any manufacturing process there is various grades of finished products. In the US the old standard was grade A and everything else was scrapped and redone. Sadly that is not true anymore.

However in many Asian nations all grade A are exported to the US and select European countries. Grade B went to some European countries and other Asian countries. Grade C was retained in country and used. They had very very little rejects! How that is today I do not know. I suspect A grade is now marked precision or medical grade and everything else is grade A even in US manufacturing.

Most American consumers feel they will be ripped off and many actually expect it. 30 years ago refrigerators lasted 30 years or longer, today said life span 7 to 10 years if you are lucky. 30 years ago TVs lasted 20 years today your are looking at 5-7 years. Bearings in production Equipment lasted a life time. Today consumer equipment that is labeled and priced as production equipment have bearings that frequently fail. JUNK!

Yes, Ed, there is JUNK on the market; however, there are many examples of quality items too.

Without doing a great deal of research it is unfair to tag consumer equipment as JUNK without quantifying that statement.

Using your example of refrigerators, in the fifties what did a typical residential refrigerator cost (in terms of % of income). I have a Sears refrigerator in the house now. It is the 2nd one installed here since the house was new. Total investments about $1200. As a % of income, that is pretty reasonable for equipment that has served us for 39 years. I will admit that this second one has been repaired under a service warranty a few times but that just speaks well of the Sears warranty.

Be careful with your broad brush statements.. I do not consider these to be junk by any means.

Dusty that is my point you can no longer buy a refrigerator that lasts that long. My Grandson had a summer job working for Lowes delivering appliances. He said there were two types they hauled out if houses very old that lasted for years and very new that died within 5-8 years.

My neighbor is a contractor appliance repair for a large appliance chain in the area. I asked him what freezer and refrigerator should I buy to replace my 45 year old freezer and 27 year old refrigerator. His answer most any but none of them last much longer than 5-7 years. He kind of leaned toward GE but even then just because parts were easy to get.

Oh forgot to mention refrigerator now costs me 4 times what my old refrigerator did.

My first refrigerator was GE 16 cu ft bought in 1979 for $500. Replaced it a year ago with a Kenmore 16 cu ft for $450. Funny watching HGTV, folks now say appliances need replacing since they "look dated" after a few years. So my take on it is that many appliances are being replaced only for style and features.

I gotta ask:

How many of those refrigerator/freezer that were 'replaced' stopped 'functioning' because of a defrost heater or a defrost timer failure?

El cheapo brand "Norge" still chilling after at least two decades. Currently on the fifth or sixth defrost heater and the timer has been jury rigged once.

Refrigeration parts still A-OK. They are what is the most reliable and I suspect many are junked because of the electrical defrost stuff failing.


BTW, replacing the heater can be a very labor intensive task.

P.S. Back in the 'old' days manual defrosting was a monthly(?) chore that was considered 'normal'. A bit messy to say the least.

Apparently quotes aren't working either.

rcplaneguy - So true. White may never be trending, but it is never dated either. Although I must admit that we recently replace ours, not because the old one had failed but because we got a really good deal on one with the freezer on the bottom a feature SWMBO wanted. At the warehouse I work (courier) out of there is another company that delivers furniture and appliances. They had delivered a new fridge and brought this one back, it works great, aprox. 4 years old, black with stainless steel doors, one of the crisper drawers is cracked. we paid $200 plus $50 for delivery. We would have preferred white but it was a deal we couldn't refuse.

JPG - We had a fridge some time ago where the drain from the freezer would ice up, I found a fix on the internet that involved winding some copper wire around the heater and extending a loop down into drain hole. it work properly then till we replaced it with a larger (used) model that someone gave us. .

re failing prematurely, I suspect this is partly due to failure to do regular maintenance, ie cleaning dust out of the coils.

LOL,,,,Ya got to love it when prices are based on income and not quality,,,,, that said ,,,,,,I have a chest freezer in the garage that was made by International Harvester , made back in the 50's I think ,,it needs a new cord and a paint job ,,,,the last time I plugged it in it still worked.

Remember when President Nixon made this speech?

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... -07-24.pdf

From best bearings to freezers and refrigerators. I guess I highjacked my own thread.

I didn't want to talk about that any way. None of my machines have "the best bearings"; not even those that are thirty years old.

I think it is across the board like you mentioned , not just bearings, back to the bearings,,,,if you look at the cause of bearing failure it is usually the housing from friction,,heat,,or lack of lube not the bearings them selves .

Quality bearings are the answer. That is why 10ER's are still running after 60+ years with original bearings.

I spent 12 years overhauling aircraft generators as a civilian after 24 years active duty in the AF. Bearing failures were not a problem in most circumstances. There were some exceptions. The C-5 aircraft generators started having pre-mature bearing failures. I worked with the General Electric engineer (generator manufacturer) and we determined that DLA (Defense Logistic Agency) had substituted an OEM (GE) bearing with one that was third party. It had the same "specs" but it did not last nearly as long.

For example, the F-22 generator runs at 10,000 RPM for hours on end and I never saw a bearing failure on all the generators I repaired.

For us SS users it probably does not make a difference. However, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE IN BEARINGS EVEN THOSE WITH THE SAME "SPECS".