A local guy who is big into performance has a late model Bonneville Salt Flat Mustang with soybean fenders, hood, and seat covers. If they can do that with soybeans then why not rice…
In cross section, the stuff is kind of gold/orange in color and has a structure made up of tiny honeycomb. It resembles the honeycomb used in aircraft flight surfaces.
That stuff is amazingly strong, lightweight, and with paint on it one could never tell the difference between it and steel or plastic.
The only question I would have would be the characteristics of it as it ages. Would it start to disentegrate and body panels go flying off at 70 MPH or rodents deciding to chow down on it.
Somewhere there’s a picture of someone swinging an axe at the trunk lid of a Ford while Henry himself looked on. The lid was made of soybeans.
My father in law was a chemical engineer and spent a little time in his youth working at the Ford soybean labs before he switched over to making solid rocket fuel for the Sidewinder.
I don’t know, but I’d guess that they use the stalk fibers from the soybean plant. There are countless agricultural byproduct fibers that have surprising tensile strength, sufficient to make very strong materials with extremely light weight. Bamboo is probably the best known example.
When I was overseas one of my favorite snacks was a freshly fallen coconut, but I had to learn to husk them first. The fibers in that lightweight protective covering were incredibly tough.
Oh absolutely there are a lot of Chinese made tires in the US as well as Korean. You can tell what plant a tire was made in by the code on it and I prefer having tires made in a US plant.
I knew you were joking about the Rice of course. However I am literally afraid of Tires that are made in China! I don’t care what they are made of…if they come from China…Be Afraid…be very afraid…
^
Yes, you should be afraid of tires from China, although there does seem to be a substantial difference between tires that are merely manufactured in China (by legitimate “Western” manufacturers) and tires that are designed and manufactured by Chinese companies.
In other words, a Michelin tire made in China is most likely not going to be a problem, while a Ling Long tire most likely is a dangerous product. However, some of the Chinese tires are hiding behind westernized names (Telluride is one example), so they are not all as obvious as…Ling Long.
For everyone’s edification, here are some relevant news articles:
Edited to add: While I knew that my Michelin Defenders were made in The US, a reading of the DOT codes tells me that they were made in Michelin’s Oklahoma factory, in March 2013. Since I bought them (from Costco) in July 2013, I now know that they were factory-fresh.
Most of here are old enough to remember the cheap junk Japan made in their post-war years.
Times change.
Twenty, fifty years from now China’s reputation here in the US might be vastly different.
"Were they ever as Junky as China? If so, what products?"
My brother had the misfortune to own a 1967 (?) Datsun SPL-311, and I have mentioned the incredible problems he had with that bomb several times previously. Do you want me to list them for you?
No of course not… LOL I guess its the same with any developing nation who is producing things…there is a learning curve. I heard the Japanese used to clone a lot of things we had…akin to the Chinese way of Rampant patent infringement. Yeah I wasn’t privy to the early stuff from Japan i.e. the 50’s n 60’s stuff, but I believe you guys. My exposure began with the products from the 70’s mostly.
Maybe that is where China is in a weird sort of way… I mean they do produce some pretty high tech stuff in some areas…I think this is true. But in the mechanical / car / motorcycle world…they are like Japan in the 50’s n 60’s maybe. A lot of China product faults…in my eyes can be directly traced to inferior material usage…the cheap metals used I don’t know if its by cheapness/choice or if they don’t have access to the proper metals…Maybe they think it doesn’t matter? Ugh… I have stories of Chinese metal choices I can tell you that.
Yup! Although, at first, they began by cloning British designs.
The Datsun SPL-310 and 311 were essentially clones of the MG–albeit with much less reliability, a propensity to rust so fast that you could almost see the progression of corrosion by the day, and some truly bizarre design defects.
My…favorite…part of that car’s design was that in order to change the air filter on the twin side-draft carbs, you had to unbolt the carbs from the intake manifold. There was so little clearance with the inner fender that it was impossible to fully unscrew the wing nut holding the cover onto the filter housing.
There was also something…unique…about the disc brakes that had our mechanic pulling his hair out, but I don’t recall those exact details. Suffice it to say that the car was a total piece of crap, the dealership was given their franchise despite not even having a service department, and Datsun (Nissan) was of no help whatsoever in trying to resolve problems with the POS that they designed and built.
Well I remember the junk from Japan but I’m certainly not in a position to judge exactly why. I believe even today you need to be very careful with some Japanese items, for example fasteners. Its been told that they aren’t hardened according to spec because that has the tendency to wear the machine tools out faster. So its buyer beware and you can’t always test everything or even know where it originated. But use the steel and fasteners in a bridge and it might not show up for 20-30 years.
I think China may be a different case though. Many products are made according to US specs but then many products are just knock off look alikes with substandard materials used. The skill used in these products suggests more fraud than an inability to produce the quality products. The same plant might produce for a US contract and then turn around and produce junk look alikes to fill out the rest of their production capacity. Even our military is suffering from getting electronic systems that won’t work when they are needed but can’t be tested ahead of time.
I just don’t think its accurate to just say in another 20 years they won’t be interested in fraud any more and will take pride in their products. On the other hand, I’m sure the Buicks and Lincolns being sold and produced there will have some of their parts in them which should be interesting to watch when they fail.
I think most problem fasteners I’ve seen are from China. Chinese oil pumping units have flooded the US market, and the operators I talked to had to replace all the nuts and bolts (we’re talking BIG nuts and bolts) because they weren’t made to grade, and would fail without warning.
If the shop has put the car on a lift and say everything in the suspension is ok, I’d be inclined to believe them. If anything, they would be biased toward finding something wrong, as that’s how the shop generates income. So the fact they say the suspension (and presumably the wheel bearings) is a-ok means those probably aren’t the cause of the cupping.
So that leaves:
something about these tires made them sensitive to infrequent wheel rotating
the tires were out of round
the tires were out of balance
I guess the first thing to learn going forward with new replacement tires, rotate them more often. Out of roundness can be tested, so consider to have that test done on the old tires. I see wheel weights which have been thrown from the tires and are now laying in the ditch along side the road all the time. I collect them, and now have two coffee cans full. So lost wheel weights should definitely be considered a possibility.
I had a 73 (i think) Toyota Corolla that only lasted 2 years. Started rusting from the inside, two bad differentials, no compression on 2 cylinders, alternator shot.
“Were they ever as Junky as China? If so, what products?”
My memory goes back to the mid '60’s and transistor radios.
Flimsy cases & knobs. The 9V clips we’re still plagued with.
My Dad got me one for my birthday and boasted that it had a couple more transistors than the one he got my older brother the year before.
The number of transistors was often shown prominently on the front of the case.
