Do-it-yourself warranties or " Your new South Bend is screwed"

[sshire]

Simon
Don't mention China to the "new SB" owners. They prefer "Taiwan"

[zeeprogrammer]

I believe that in the German auto industry, nothing is repaired in the US. Everything is removed as a unit and replaced, while the problem unit is shipped back to Germany for repair and appropriate execution of the offending original assembler.

Touches a small point with me. Had a couple of Beetles, a Rabbit, and now a Passat. (Well...T has the Passat.)
Burns me that they seem to have gone the way of other car manufacturers...

Gotta spend $1000 in labor just to remove/replace a bunch of stuff just to get at the offending $5 part.

The answer we got was...they never expected that part to go bad.
Are you kidding? If you never heard of Murphy...you're not an engineer or a technician.

No matter how low the risk is...it happens. And too often people think...oh...it'll only affect 0.1% of the sales.
0.1% of 1million is 1000 upset customers. (1000? Is that right?)

All numbers are for illustrative purposes only and entirely made up. 
Rant...such as it is...is probably over. 

[mark rand]

The South Bend 8K model is being sold at $2,064 by Grizzly ($3,250 list). Compare that with £13,000==$20,000 for the last lathes Myford made in the UK and you can see that it isn't a premium priced product. There's sod all profit margin in that lathe.

I'd be happy if the manufacturer/distributor sent me the repair parts FOC and was prepared to trust me to install them, rather than subjecting me to the cost of an 'engineer' to drive/fly out and do the same.

[Jo]

That sounds too cheap to be a real South Bend, where was it made

I have the original receipt for my Colchester Master somewhere at home, I think it was £21K ($32K) in 1979. I have been told that if I need to replace the Gamet headstock bearings that they will cost me  £7K today, you could buy three of those lathes for that price 

Jo

[Alan Haisley]

It looks like the 8K is made in China while the bigger lathes are made in Taiwan.

[Mosey]

Remember when cheap imported junk came from Japan? Obviously, they have overcome that reputation by producing some very fine precision goods. So, if you wait long enough, the Chinese will decide to make quality goods also.
I believe that some of the original South Bend lathes were made in Korea, but they always were of high quality. I'd rather buy an old, well made machine than a new piece of you know what and re-manufacture it myself. In fact, I did, an old 10K with flame-hardened bed.
Mosey   

[Maryak]

SB was also copied in Oz and known as Hercus. Just about every school, TAFE college, Uni workshop had many of them, older imperial, newer metric. They are a very nice small machine but IMHO way overpriced like Myfords. A bit like cars before the Japanese forced the Western manufacturers to provide things like floor carpet, radios, heaters etc as standard in the base models. Or again like cars you go broke.

Best Regards
Bob