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

Interesting...computerized engine management units are not lazy living, but electronic fridge management units and digital furnace management units are. I'm afraid I don't see the obvious differences, other than Mex likes one but not the other.

For what it's worth, the digital thermostat I installed in my RV works much better and more reliably than the analog one it replaced. It doesn't short cycle, it maintains the temperature more precisely, and it's easier to read what it's set to and harder to knock off whatever setting you want. The electronic fridge controls have given me not one hint of trouble; when turned on, it keeps the temperature of the fridge and freezer correct, whether I have 120V power or not. The electronic ignition on the water heater has likewise been trouble-free for me. The power entrance step has needed some cleaning as it tends to get mucked up with crud from time to time, but at least it's stable even if the ground underneath isn't perfectly flat.

I wonder if perhaps some here are comparing cheap, poorly designed and constructed electronics with well-designed and well-built non-electronic equivalents. The difference isn't in the electronic vs. non-electronic nature; it's in the cheap vs. not cheap nature. There are a lot of crummy electronic gizmos out there to be sure.

Yes DrewE that is exactly the point. When I built the BORG I had to muck my way through hundreds of points. I insisted on reliability. Therefore incandescent and fluorescent pilot lamps were chucked in favor of LED.

Wind up Intermatic Timers are found in gas station bathrooms because of their reliability. Thousands of cycles are shrugged off. A cam over mil spec snap action selector switch will last three lifetimes. Same with the premium rotary 10 turn potentiometers.

Finally inside the Megawatts upgrading to Panasonic capacitors and 80 ampere 200 volt Schottky diodes over 20-amp 100 volt originals makes all the durability difference in the world. Improving fan flow by 200% is the final kicker. PROOF? Seven years 24/7 flawless operation.

When my thirteen hundred dollar Norcold cost me more than a thousand dollars just to access warranty repairs and a Norcold factory tech spent more than a week scratching his A$S trying to figure out why the unit and two new cooling units had intermittent plus continuous other continuous problems -- it was the end of the line. The Danforth compressors have been flawless for 26 years. I tend to get cranky when a 1957 Servel refrigerator operated flawlessly for six years but a 1992 Norcold was a failure. The Servel definitely needed air circulation enhancement inside the Vestfrosts do not.

The Atwood 10 gallon MANUAL hot water heater has never failed to light with a match. Heaters are sort of exempt as I do not have a basement and all the plumbing I have is buried deep in insulation. I chickened out of cold weather.

20 years. no heater, no AC, no refrigerator, no hot water control malfunctions. Because everything is manual. ZERO repair cost, zero driving to a repair warranty station, no lost days, no lost hours -- ever since I wised up to the zoo of automatic system control.

Like I mentioned, look at the list of forum topics. I meet travelers who chuckle and reveal they too have chosen to retrograde to the land of arising from the recliner and getting the job done manually. You should see the failure rate of some of that electronic hoo-hah down here after rough roads and Mexican campground power gets through with it.

Some things should not be, for example, using a Ford spec'ed window lift motor normally found in an enclosed space that is designed to remain dry in all sorts of weather in a space that is inherently wet just from it's location.

My wife's 2002 Ford Explorer XLT was driven over 265000 miles with out a window lift motor failure,the super dooper electronic blend door mechanism in both the front and rear HVAC systems failed, repair for the front at a reliable shop $1500, the rear failed after less than 5 years and was $625 to repair(there are only three screws to R&R and one wire connector). I have never had a mechanical blend door failure in a vehicle with an armored steel wire control cable operated from the dash. Stuck once in awhile but a little oil and they would work for another five years.

Technology is great and I'm sure provides great savings just by existing. But look at a receipt for dinner at your favorite restaurant, 6 or 8 inches long just to total 4 or 5 numbers. How big were they when they were hand written? And when I use a credit card, I get three of them, one to sign, one to keep and one that is the itemized list of our order.

K.I.S.S. is still a great business plan.

Had the same blend door problem on my 2001 f150. Proper fix is to remove the dash to get at it. I ended up just carving a wooden dowel to the "D" shaped shaft that moves the door to hot or cold. Put a spring on it and in summer spring holds to cold side. Winter the spring is reattached to hold in hot position, been working that way for more than 12 years.

I got a 1996 Cadillac two years ago (always wanted a Cadillac!--like Buck Owens and his "49 Cadillac") The trunk would not close. Turns out it has this electric pull down motor gizmo so you can't just slam it down like with a real car :)

I had to remove the electric gizmo and find the right screw down height for the pull down gearing (took me hours!) to get it so I could just slam down the trunk lid.

Luckily, the electric trunk release still works. Hate to imagine what they have done lately to make closing the trunk even more impossible.

Also the only way to get in it when locked, is to first go to the passenger door and unlock that, push the unlock doors button, and then go around to the driver's side and open the door. If you are silly enough to unlock the driver's door first, and open it, the horn starts blasting and alarms sound. No way to turn all that off! Then you run around to the passenger front door and unlock that, which gets the car calmed down.

It seems all these things can be fixed if you spend more than the car cost "used". Gottaluvit. :)

free radical wrote:

BB_TX wrote:
Yeah, like cars and trucks. In “the old days” if your car developed a miss you spent a few dollars and an hour changing the points and plugs. And you could sit on the fender with your feet inside the engine compartment while doing it.
Now you need a computerized diagnostic analyzer to quiz the vehicle computer for idas about what might be the problem and what might be the fix. And when you open the hood you might be able to see part of the actual engine.

Still new cars are better..
My 08 Silverado starts at -30 on first click without even using block heater.
And 100 $ code reader tells you exactly whats wrong if anything..
My biggest repair in all these years was 150$ air bag sensor..

Concerning a $100 code reader telling exactly what's wrong if anything: Our daily driver sedan has now been in our well known and respected dealer's shop for around 10 days because the engine check light came on. They haven't been able (yet) to tell what caused it so as to repair what caused the light to come on.

P.S. The Joe Blow auto repair facility I take my good old 1995 GMC truck to has no trouble diagnosing and fixing anything on it in a day ... or at most two days if they're really busy. So much for "still new cars are better".

I can't believe you all have forgotten how crappy the old cars from the 50's, 60's, and 70's really were. You were good if you got to 50,000 miles without at least a upper end teardown, and 100,000 miles on the original engine was pretty much unheard of. Poor running condition in the winter months when the carbs worked poorly was very common, and everyone pretty much carried jumper cables so you could either start your car, or help someone else start theirs.

Sorry, there's no way I'd give up my 2013 for any of those POS's. Granted I don't have a car with all the electronic gizmos, but I'll take fuel injection over a carb any day. You guys really need to check the prescription on all those rose-colored glasses you're wearing.

I remember well the old American cars that needed front end parts every 20k miles, new clutch every 30k, and so forth. Those were longevity/reliability issues, and I think the tide finally turned when the Japanese cars started "beating the pants" off the Detroit cars in these respects. The rant of this thread is the increased complexity, reduced usability, and service cost/complexity of newer things with electronic controls. I already ranted about that. I should have added that it can be done better. For example I've got about a half dozen "tear your hair out to set" clocks. Then there's the one in the Advantium oven that's very fast and easy to set. It uses a rotary encoder (i.e. a knob). Yes, that increases the cost, and that's the main driver of the bad designs. Many years ago I worked in an outfit that manufactured modem boards. For cost reduction, management ordered a couple of status LEDs off the boards over the engineers objections. It saved a nickle a board in manufacturing cost. You might have heard on the news of voters in Texas complaining that the electronic machines changed their vote. The manufacturer is saying the machine is working correctly and the votes are changed due to mistakes by the voters. This is typical high-tech "blame the user" mentality. Make the user conform to what the designers think is the way it should be done. Change the person to conform to the machine. That's the kind of thing that's making the newer cars a bunch of high tech junk.

road-runner wrote:
I remember well the old American cars that needed front end parts every 20k miles, new clutch every 30k, and so forth. Those were longevity/reliability issues, and I think the tide finally turned when the Japanese cars started "beating the pants" off the Detroit cars in these respects. The rant of this thread is the increased complexity, reduced usability, and service cost/complexity of newer things with electronic controls. I already ranted about that. I should have added that it can be done better. For example I've got about a half dozen "tear your hair out to set" clocks. Then there's the one in the Advantium oven that's very fast and easy to set. It uses a rotary encoder (i.e. a knob). Yes, that increases the cost, and that's the main driver of the bad designs. Many years ago I worked in an outfit that manufactured modem boards. For cost reduction, management ordered a couple of status LEDs off the boards over the engineers objections. It saved a nickle a board in manufacturing cost. You might have heard on the news of voters in Texas complaining that the electronic machines changed their vote. The manufacturer is saying the machine is working correctly and the votes are changed due to mistakes by the voters. This is typical high-tech "blame the user" mentality. Make the user conform to what the designers think is the way it should be done. Change the person to conform to the machine. That's the kind of thing that's making the newer cars a bunch of high tech junk.

Well said indeed ... and right on!

My 1967 Mustang went well over a 130K miles with very little maintenance - and when it needed it I could do it. The same thing with my 1972 Dodge van ... which got around 18 MPG with it's 318 V8 and that I could work on.

I don't mind what "extra reliability" the new gizmo vehicles may or not have. I wish the designers, engineers, bean counters, and marketing types would leave it at that. What I do mind is all the garbage tech stuff they carry around in an attempt to out think us "dumb" drivers ... that can break and does at any time.

By the way, if today's new high tech vehicles are so good .... why is it that so many of them on the roads around me are less then 5 years old? If they're so good, why are folks trading them in for new ones so often? Boredom?