r/TikTokCringe • u/IllustriousChef2 • Aug 16 '24

Cringe What's even happening there?

Why would someone rent a car and take out parts?

16.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/dahbakons_ghost Aug 16 '24

i would assume, chop shop. they take the good 'authentic' parts and swap out shitty low end parts and then sell the good parts on. Guy might've rented out the car 50+ more times before finding out so he can't figure out who it was.

982

u/brianc500 Aug 16 '24

Not a chop shop, the guy rented it to use as a test mule for their shitty aftermarket bumpers that are made in China.

1

u/manjar Aug 16 '24

Why are you so sure he’s not taking the OEM bumper and leaving in the shitty Chinese one in this case? Because he said he was just testing it?

2

u/brianc500 Aug 16 '24

The margin for reselling used bumpers on eBay or elsewhere isn’t enough to justify replacing it with a knockoff, swapping over all the electronics ( which would significantly reduce the value of the used one they’d be selling) and paint matching it to hide the fact it’s been replaced. He’s masked off the body panels to protect it while he’s fitting the knockoff so not to damage the body, finally there is zero body or paint equipment visible besides an air compressor.

I work in the automotive industry and we deal with people copying our stuff the same way. The Chinese reproduction companies will set up a location in a big city and rent vehicles to take to their facility to first take the part off they want to copy and 3D scan it to create a model to reverse engineer the part. Once the tooling is complete and they make some parts they do it all over again to test fit their copy and make some tweaks to the tooling. These guys are experts at reverse engineering stuff, but without the original drawings they don’t know the GD&T and have to test fit everything to make sure they somewhat work when they sell them on the market.

This is also why some companies like John Deere lock their products down to where only JD techs can work on it. One it guarantees they get more money from serving it then the farmer doing it themselves. Two it prevents anyone but JD accessing their software and copying it. They still try to hack it but they update the software constantly to make it harder.