Buying Keestar Sewing Machine 441 Directly From China..

[korokan]

This is a 441 clone sewing machine directly from China and is $1000 less than the ones sold in the US. Planning on buying it directly ffrom China. Any suggestions will be welcome. Many thanks.

[Joon1911]

I'm a novice at this game, so my input is limited. I just purchased a Cobra Class 4 from Steve about 3 weeks ago and am getting it squared away. The biggest thing I could think of as worth the price differential is whether the machine will be set up and timed from the factory or whether you will have to do these things yourself? Also do you have the knowledge and skill base to do all the maintenance without any real outside support?

If you are experienced and can answer yes to those questions I could see the Keestar being a good deal. That being said, for someone like me, I value the after purchase service enough to pay the premium price. It gives me peace of mind that a year from now if I need help figuring out something that I can call Steve up and ask the question. That's also why I didn't buy a machine on the secondary markets like eBay and the trade channels here on the forum.

Hope that is helpful.

[sheathmaker]

I will second JohnOK's post word for word. If you have the mechanical knowledge and expertise to set it up for your type sewing then it could be a good deal , albeit potential warranty issues could be a major pain should any arise. These are not tuned up to your specs at the factory. Steve and David at Cobra are my choice.

Paul

[CowboyBob]

I'm almost certain that shipping will be from $7-900 on top of this price you will be very close to getting one here that is tested & ready to go.Also does this include a servo motor & speed reducer?

[Constabulary]

Nice price and worth to think about it

BUT - on top of the above mentioned expect to pay shipping + import tax + vat + traveling to the next harbor if they ship it by vessel and not by air.

[Wizcrafts]

Expect to spend a day going over the machine, tightening screws, adjusting the hook position and timing, setting the needle bar, adjusting the ratio and position of the presser feet, adjusting the feed dog, oiling it, setting it up on a table, connecting parts, belts and chains. This assumes it ships with the motor, reducer, belts and table and work light.

Also, if you are getting a motor, make sure it is a 120 volt motor.

One other thing to look into is whether you would be getting a standard 441 blanket presser foot set, which has teeth on the bottom and is huge, or if it ships with what we use here and call Harness feet. If you have to purchase them, add another $100 or so, and more if you want left toe and right toe feet. The harness feet are not compatible with the blanket feet that normally ship on 441 machines from China.

[amuckart]

I bought a machine direct from China. It was a Hightex brand, which is what Cowboy machines are called outside of the US.

The short version is this: If you are buying this for use in a business, buy one from a local well-respected shop who will set it up and support & service it. Buying direct from China is a Bad Idea if you need the machine up, running, and making money in a specific timeframe.

For me, as a reasonably mechanically competent amateur who has torn down and re-built other machines, it was worthwhile. The cost was around half of what it would have cost me to get a machine from Cowboy or Cobra shipped to New Zealand, but if I were in the USA it is not something I would consider.

I bought via a reseller here, so as a private individual not a business I had the benefit of NZ's strong consumer protection laws if it went wrong, but even so It was almost 5 months before I had all the parts I needed. Because of screw-ups with the shipping I didn't get the correct motor and speed reducer with the machine and it took ages for them to arrive.

It took me a full day to clean the shipping grease off, assemble the stand and table and get the machine mounted and oiled. There were no instructions at all, and the assembly of the table was non-obvious (which is to say that the holes drilled in it matched neither the machine nor the stand, and I ended up building a new table).

After that it took me many hours to get the machine timed, feeding properly, sewing in the same holes in reverse that it did forwards, and so on.

I was lucky, my machine wasn't missing any bits, came with all the feet I needed, and didn't require a total teardown and rebuild like the Hightex 441 another NZer on this forum bought.

Even without any major things going wrong with my machine mechanically, I would have been completely screwed without the Juki 441 engineer's manual. Even with that it was tricky getting the machine set up because the timing marks the Juki manual references don't exist on my machine.

If you're comfortable with tearing down and re-building walking foot sewing machines and you know how to time them from scratch and you have the time and tools to do so, then getting a machine direct from China can work, but it's a gamble. You can't count on getting any kind of support from the factory, and as Wiz has pointed out getting the additional harness feet is expensive and they aren't guaranteed to fit the specific machine you end up with.

[Kevin]

I'll just add this, I bought a counterfeit guitar directly from China and my computer hasn't been right ever since. I have Norton 360 and I've run dozens of scans and not found anything.

[Wizcrafts]

Is the guitar playing Asian scales instead of Western? That would 'splain it Kevin. Your 'puter acquired the Asian Scale Trojan, via an interstitial proximity coinferrence between the cracked guitar (counterfeit, from hack-haven China) and the dial-up modem lingering deep within the motherboard chipsets.

[billybopp]

If you think that's bad Kevin. Your computer is now infected with a virus will cause your computer to hack some secured networks sending the info back to China. You can expect the FBI to knock at your door any day now.