Wiper blades

---Again, your opinion, but surely not fact. I'll give you a case in
point, and this applies to every car maker out there, Honda included.

I bought Delco battery cables for my '79 Trans Am. The box had the
same Delco and GM # as the 1987 printing of the parts book. You'd
think you're in the clear, right? Nope. Design change. Parts look
NOTHING like the originals at all and require all sorts of jumper
harnesses to work now. Looks terrible on a vintage muscle car.

The "aftermarket" ones from American Autowire are exact matches for
the ORIGINAL Delco/GM parts and are equal quality.

So much for OEM being the safest.

 

You keep dragging domestics into the discussion. I know -- again from
personal experience! -- that the domestics tend to treat parts and
suppliers rather differently from the Japanese.

This is a Honda group; give Honda examples, not Whirlpool or Delco.
Although I think we got stuck with some duff Delco alternators on
NA-assembled vehicles a while back...

 

Nothing wrong with Delco alternators. I have ones 30 years old with no
problems. Easy to rebuild, made to be fixed and very inexpensive to do
so. Parts are available anywhere. Not always the case on the Japanese
stuff.

The companies themselves do not matter. Your reply tells me (along
with what you posted earlier) that you've never been on the supplier/
product management side of the business. That's been proven.

Let's take the Civic example. In your world, Honda puts high standards
on engineering and design. If that were the case, why did those early
Civic distributor parts (1988 to 1991 come to mind at the moment)
fail? Honda's fault? TEC or Hitachi's fault? All car makers have made
their share of "winners", that's a fact.

In your example, the Honda folks do all the engineering and "specs".
That's not always true. It's often jointly designed. And yes, some of
the same suppliers are supplying the American car companies AND the
Japanese too.

CTS made the Toyota throttle pedal module that was an issue in the
Toyota recall, from what I remember. CTS says they made it to Toyota's
specs. Toyota will blame CTS for making a bad part or not following
the design. The fact is that Toyota and CTS may have designed it
together, jointly.

The fact is that over time, consolidations of parts do occur by all
manufacturers, and yes, gasp, the Japanese do it too. You might not be
able to get that 1980 Honda seat belt in tan anymore, it may have to
be a black generic replacement. Simple economics tells us that Honda's
not going to keep all of those colors available for something they
probably haven't sold in years.

And yes, the OEM part you bought 10 years ago for your 1985 Honda may
not be from the same supplier if you buy it today. It may have to be
modified to fit like original. In that fashion, they can sell one part
that now covers 3 years of applications rather than one year as in the
past.

What did you do for the supplier?

 

yup. they don't have the cunningly designed frame that keeps the blade
firmly pressed against the glass. stick with the oem honda frames and
you won't have this problem.

just get new oem honda rubbers from an online supplier like
bkhondaparts.com - they work just great.

 

he's not saying "oem" as a blanket statement for all manufacturers.
he's saying "honda oem" for honda vehicles. and for honda, this would
be correct about 99% of the time. frod, gm, crapsler all use the
cheapest options available as oem, and consequently, a lot of
aftermarket is indeed better than their original equipment. for honda,
most aftermarket not made by the same supplier honda use is inferior.
if you're buying the same supplier, [denso for example] then it's
indistinguishable from oem.

wiper blades are definitely a case in point. it's easy to miss, but the
frames on honda blades have one side of the u-channel deeper than the
other. this creates a negative pressure when in a moving air flow that
keeps the blade firmly on the glass, not bouncing around leaving streaks
like most other aftermarket blade frames. now i've told you, look for
yourself at a honda frame and you'll see what i mean.

so, getting back to the op's question, yes, stick with the honda
rubbers. not only do they fit the honda frames, they're made of good
quality long lasting materials that are guaranteed trouble free.

 

---And you know that GM and the others use the cheapest suppliers
how?

You're also incorrect on the Honda parts. On newer technology, most
times, the only option for the aftermarket guys as far as suppliers IS
the OEM supplier because no one else has tooled up for the part yet
due to cost. You might ask, "well who is going to list a coil for a
2010-2011 application when it's under warranty?"

The answer is any supplier that wants to show their customers they are
on the ball---because full coverage is a sales tool, and that often
means adding the slow movers to the line to show the customer that
you're on the cutting edge of the applications that are out there,
even the new stuff. No one wants to look in a catalog and see that the
last year of Honda coverage you offer was a five year old application.
It makes you look like you're asleep at the wheel. Customers have been
known to compare the thickness of supplier's catalogs and perceive
that the fatter catalog has move coverage than the thinner catalog
(when all they were doing was spreading out the listings and wasting
paper). I kid you not!

No one is likely actually making a 2010-2011 Honda ignition coil in
the aftermarket for example (unless it's a carryover part from other
years where it's been tooled up), so if the aftermarkets want to show
coverage in their catalogs, they are buying from the OEM suppliers
(perhaps even from a dealership) and reboxing it. Honda is no
different than the other OEMs out there in this regard.

---And, we've already established that Honda is not making that blade
and frame, it's made by someone else for them. Again, it's up to the
original poster as to what blade he buys .

---That's the OP's choice, but you've already heard from someone other
than me that Anco and Trico work as good if not better than the OEM on
cars, including Honda.

 

I believe that's the same product line I bought for my Pontiac G6.
They'll be on there a year this Christmas, and still clean great (and
don't streak at all).

 

And to those who don't do their homework, also the most expensive (but
not the best) option .

 

ok, maybe not "cheapest" price, but certainly cheapest quality. i know
because i'm a materials guy and i've tested many different
manufacturers' output.

eh? what do newer parts have to do with it? see above.

you're speaking for yourself there dude. not the industry.

red herring.

as you've been told by others, the manufacturer sets the specs.
example: fram make oil filters for honda. and fram branded filters are
nowhere near the same quality as the ones made to the honda spec.

same applies to wiper blades. i've tried pretty much every brand on the
market, and i've kept coming back to honda for my cars because they last
the best. that's not bias, just observation of the facts.

my experience is exactly contrary - we completely disagree.

 

that's not entirely accurate dude. since this is a honda group, the
parts apply to honda cars. and if you can find oem quality parts for a
lower price, go knock yourself out. but if you can't, and most
aftermarket stuff is lesser quality than honda oem, people buying it
will be disappointed with its poor performance relative to what might
superficially appear to be "more expensive" components. i know i sure
as excrement don't like changing coolant pumps after only 30k miles
because the crappy aftermarket bearings and seals in the $15 component
failed when i could have bought "honda" for $55 and left it there for
over 100k.

 

Then you're using poor quality parts as you do realize that you can
buy that OEM part through various sources besides the Honda dealer and
save money on it. Of course, when Honda decides down the road to
change vendors to someone else, you of course would be getting the
same part in two boxes.

 

----But that doesn't make you a product person in the automotive
industry. It makes you a cog in the process.

----When you've spent ten years in the industry where I did, then we
can talk shop.

----Actually, I'm speaking from the industry, because when I was at my
former company and we took over our competitor who was 10 times our
size and they admitted to doing exactly the same thing with regard to
coverage.

---Doesn't matter what breed of bird it is, what I stated is the way
it is.

----And you've been told that parts are often jointly designed
together, so the spec setting process occurs together with the
component manufacturer and the OEM. But you knew that already, right?

----I've used aftermarket blades (as have others on this forum) for
Honda without any problem. Again, this is the buyer's choice, I was
giving some options for him. Doesn't matter to me, my wipers work
fine .

----And that's fine, but your knowledge of the industry needs a little
education, that's all.

 

Joe ponchoguy @ gmail.com wrote in

Except that they break a lot. Not a great thing, especially when the
alternator is in a location that makes removal difficult -- since the
automaker chose that location for packaging reasons, and originally
specified a high-quality ND alternator, but was forced into a domestic
substitution for tariff reasons...

If you say so.

1988 to 1989. Those were the bad igniters. 1990-91 didn't have that.

1992-1993 saw another disaster, with distributor bearings failing and
destroying the distributor.

Both were fixed quickly. 1994+ were fine.

The bad ones were OKI. The NEC igniters were fine.

GM never did fix the engine-killing 3800 intake-manifold coolant-leak
problem...

I don't know about now, but back when I was in the thick of things
(~1990-2000), Ford had a terrible reputation among the suppliers for being
really cheap and rigid when problems cropped up in production. Chrysler was
/really/ cheap, plus they had a tendency to arbitrarily take 5% off
invoice, then claim to the media that they had "partnered" with their
suppliers to cut costs. The Japs never did that.

Mistakes happen all the time. The defining thing is how you deal with the
screwups when they happen. The domestics are giant failures at that, a big
reason they've lost major market share..

Those were the ones I worked with. It was universally recognized among the
engineers I worked with that the Japanese were far more persnickety than
the domestics, and yet a lot more willing to work with you to try and get
things right. The domestics were more apt to use threats and unilateral
invoice-reductions.

CTS had an off-the-shelf (forget whatyacallit...rheostat?). Toyota allowed
its use because it met their specs. ND in Japan used a different
"rheostat". ND and CTS pedal assemblies were interchangeable dimensionally,
but different electrically on account of their "rheostats".

Toyota and CTS quickly recognized the potential problem, and had already
implemented a running fix by the time the media and government turned it
into a hysteria. The fixed pedal assemblies had a white dot on them. The
original ones did not. That's how dealership techs knew which cars needed
to have the pedals modified and which didn't.

Yeah, I know. I've got a 20-year-old Honda. I know all about consolidation,
and parts unavailability.

 

yeah, i have this hammer head that works perfectly after 30 years. it's
got 0 miles on it and it holds down the receipts on my desk perfectly.

moving boxes from one shelf to another doesn't qualify you for anything
buddy. and companies /do/ matter. if you knew anything about materials
or engineering, you'd understand that.

two things:

1. the failing igniter unit was made by oki, a semiconductor producer.
tec and hitachi made the distributor units, not the semicons within
them. but you'd admit that if you either knew your stuff or weren't
trying to distort the truth.

2. oki's design was fine from an electrical perspective - it anticipated
thermal loading from a semiconductor life perspective. however, their
thick film materials control was lacking and internal connections used
to break from thermal fatigue. there's almost nothing in the history of
design that's never been modified based on unanticipated application
issues. and a situation where an electronics engineer is unfamiliar
with thermal/mechanical fatigue is a classic example. honda ended up
firing oki and hiring nec.

now, paradoxically, the fact that honda stepped in and fixed both those
problems on later designs shows why they're good, not bad. frod had to
be sued before they'd fix a similar problem. and court discoveries
showed frod made their igniter units fail /deliberately/ by overheating
them on purpose. but all manufacturers are the same according to you.

no, they're almost /always/ jointly designed!!!

with completely different specs!!!

yeah, but it's cts that shipped manufacture to china and relaxed their
q.c. toyota didn't spec cts to manufacture in china - they could have
done that themselves - they speced for it to be made in the u.s., with
adequate q.c.

red herring. you're deliberately trying to distort.

see above. red herring.

move boxes from one shelf to another? oh, wait, that's you.

 

moving boxes from one shelf to another doesn't qualify you for anything
buddy.

for a shelf stacker, i'm not surprised you think that way.

no, it's irrelevant - you're deliberately trying to obfuscate.

yes, i did know that already. but that's a false argument and you're
trying to put words in my mouth.

yeah, i've used aftermarket blades that work. but i've never used an
aftermarket blade that works as well as the ones honda spec. and i've
tried every brand on the shelf.

don't paint it how it isn't buddy. you don't know what i know.

 

again, you're trying to paint it how it isn't.

you can buy "oem honda spec" componentry from a multitude of sources.
but, and you'd admit this if you weren't fundamentally dishonest, the
qualities are /way/ different from that which honda use. fram oil
filters. end of story.

now, if you could speak honestly and without some perverted need to
distort, maybe we could have had more of a conversation, but i just
don't see that happening.

 

SNIP>>

Just bought refills at the Dealer for $8 ea
MLD

 

You probably could have bought them even cheaper from some other
Honda dealer. I've found quite a price variation among Honda dealers
that are only 15 or so miles apart from each other. Then of course there
are those with on-line biseness, too, such as Majestic Honda, though
on-line order for such inexpensive parts would be overkill.

 

----Original alternator in my '84 Delta 88, 145,000 miles, never been
apart, charges perfectly. They may break in something else, but not in
GM applications. Then again, could it be bad spec'ing on Honda's part
(using your example)?

---Well, prove otherwise . You said you were "told" by product
managers which tells me you were not one. You haven't told us what you
did for the company.

---I remember the dealer giving us distributors, taking the old one
back with the VIN # and us doing the work for the customer (who had
brought the car in for other things anyway).

----I remember this too. My mother almost bought a 1993 Civic brand
new. Bought a Saturn instead.

----Both are suppliers to Honda. So whose fault? Honda or the OKI?

----Mostly on 3.1 engines the vin code M engines for example. I've had
several 3.8 engines in my family, no problems.

---What they did is lower the cost of parts when the vehicle was under
warranty so any warranty repairs were billed at lower parts rates.
Once they went out of warranty, that same OEM part went up 2 and 3
times that original amount. This was so they could keep their warranty
costs low (on paper that is).

I'm not a Ford fan, so no loss there .

----Sure they do. Takata blamed Americans for eating in their cars and
making debris fall into seat belt receivers. They would come unlatched
at bad times (like an accident). Yet, no other OEM supplier had this
problem.

----On the aftermarket side, it's joint. On the OEM side, it's joint,
depending on who it is.

---Either way, it was jointly designed . Toyota had to make sure it
fit in their car .

----Too little too late, the media really hyped it up.

-----On American cars that are classics/muscle cars, the repro market
picks up right where OEM left off. Some stuff is terrible, some stuff
is good, some is better than OEM.

 

----That and $2.25 gets you on the bus. However, the 125,000 mile
original Delco alternator in my '84 Olds 88 charges perfectly and has
never been apart. When's the last time you rebuilt a Delco 10SI?

---And if you knew anything about me, you'd know what I did. Maybe you
can't read, I don't know, but it's been posted. But I do know that you
obviously aren't a keyboard designer because the CAPS key on your
computer is notoriously absent. Were you out the day they taught
capitalization in school?

What I do know is you know nothing about the automotive parts
industry.

---. If only the igniter were the problem, why change the whole
distributor? Yet Honda's fix was to replace the entire distributor.
But you knew that because I told you, right? Sure you do. Now sit down
and get an education.

----The bottom line was the parts failed, stranded customers, angered
them and Honda's fix was to replace the whole distributor. The parts
were defective. No good. Bad. You do realize that the distributor
parts were superseded by Honda several times over the years (virtually
everything in it). Of course you do, because I just told you. But
since you've actually used a Honda OEM parts book and parts system,
you know this now too, right?

Sure you do---I just told you.

---The TFI module case. I'm well aware of it. Honda fixed the problem
when it got bad enough, they didn't do anything noble at all.

---Tell Tegger that, he believes that Honda specs them out.

---Because the engines and requirements are different, but they are
not of lesser quality because a Bosch part is in a GM versus the Bosch
part that's in something else.

-----I'd actually attempt to comment if your grammar and sentence
structure were remotely correct, but it appears you were out the day
they taught grammar in school as well.

------There you go with birds again. Keep it Honda related, this is a
Honda forum.

----No, they didn't supersede the part to a bird. But you've already
shown the group you're hardly a parts guru.

------Thanks for playing, but much like your grammar and sentence
structure skills, that's not accurate either.