Too Simple To Figure Out Dept...!?!

Dave, your comments above about your MG Midget remind me of the Morris Minor I had during early college and the MGA I had later in college.

Those wonderful vehicles defined Fix Or Repair Daily well beyond what any Ford model ever did ... but boy-o-boy were they ever a hoot!

(Our current Lexus daily driver is boring, but also a modern day wonder.)

Even as an engineer, I'd have to say newer is not always better. My 1977 MG Midget wasn't a reliable car in its day by any measure. It also needed lots of routine maintenance that would never have to be done on a modern car. However, it's easy to work on, and the factory service manual is a tiny book compared to a modern car.

Modern cars aren't tremendously better though. I had to offload a 2010 Traverse at 170,000 miles. Why? Timing chains had worn to the point where it was throwing check engine lights, a common problem on this model no matter how well you maintain it. It would have cost thousands to repair it because in a masterpiece of poor design, the entire engine has to come out to replace the THREE timing chains and all the timing gears, and the engine comes out through the bottom of the car by dropping the entire front frame. That means disconnecting brake lines, the steering shaft, the air conditioning lines, transmission cooler lines, propeller shaft, and a whole lot of wires and hoses. I couldn't renew it with the check engine light on, and I wasn't going to spend $3000+ on something that was only worth about $1500 in trade-in.

Give me my MG any day, except in winter :D. Ironically, the Lucas electrical system on my MG, despite being notoriously unreliable, was actually much more reliable than the Traverse's electrical system. That thing had radio speakers failing, dashboard lights going out, electrical connectors corroding, and the odometer display couldn't be read anymore because it had failed.

fj12ryder wrote:
LOL You guys are a hoot. Maybe you could call Warren Buffet and tell him how he could do a better job than the way he does it now. I'm sure he'd be very interested...or maybe not.

I see you are just a young fellow at 69, but Grasshopper, that is old enough to know that you should respect your elders. As a mere Baby Boomer, you should listen carefully to those of us that are older than that, and are thus greater in achieved wisdom.

To use an American expression, TINS.

Yep ... we all make mistakes don't we: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-known-failures-of-Warren-Buffett

LOL You guys are a hoot. Maybe you could call Warren Buffet and tell him how he could do a better job than the way he does it now. I'm sure he'd be very interested...or maybe not.

Substitute ignorance...Boon Docker

Wow, arrogance is alive and well.

Did I experience the 60's and 70's? Well, I'm 69 now, so with your advanced degrees you should be able to figure it out.

But you old guys just go on and on about how great everything was back then and what a wonderful life it was. And occasionally stop and get some more cheese to go with all that whine. Amazing how you guys can solve the world's problems, gosh you'd think it was easy to hear you talk about it. Oh, that's right no one else is as smart as you all. Riiiiiight.

How many people carry a tool kit in the trunk now? Almost nobody because they aren't needed like they used to be

Did you, yourself experience the sixties and seventies? Today's ratio of tow trucks to automobiles is multiple percentage points greater.

But I digress. The factual points should be these

Percentage of time spent out-of-service for warranty. Cost of repairs over a given lifetime with relation to purchase price.

It is inevitable, the more components a device has, proportionately the great the risk of malfunction and loss of service.

fj12ryder wrote:
Heck, maybe we could get rid of all these pesky transistors and go back to vacuum tubes while we're getting rid of all this high tech unneeded stuff.

I spent the bulk of my career live-testing large rocket engines and pre-shipment testing of raw transistors and integrated circuits.

Guess what ... chemistry based stuff and electricity based stuff does indeed fail. The more of those type things we have around us, statistically the more often are we going to experience the consequences when they fail.

K.I.S.S. is about erring on the low side when it comes to the quantity and/or complexity of the man-made stuff in our lives.