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

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
There were a lot of 1-star vehicles back then and people with good memories and bad judgement love to paint all cars with the same color.

Car stalls on the shoulder of a road back then, grab the tool kit in the trunk. Car stalls on the shoulder of a road today grab the KY Jelly from the glove compartment.

How many people carry a tool kit in the trunk now? Almost nobody because they aren't needed like they used to be. Back then you carried a tool kit because it was an often needed accessory, like a spare tire. Cars broke down back then...a lot. Frequent maintenance was the order of the day. Yes, you can't repair a new car on the road like you had to 40 years ago, but on the flip side, you rarely need to.

40-50 years ago no one considered buying a vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it. Now it's common practice to see lots of cars/trucks with over 100,000 miles for sale, and with relatively high prices.

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.

Is there unneeded high tech stuff on new cars? Absolutely, the need for a mobile hotspot in your car is pretty silly. Bluetooth in your new car? Also pretty silly. Lots of touch screens? Again, pretty silly. But Madison Avenue is trying to make you buy new cars and if they don't come up with new and different "features" who will buy new? Who would buy a new car if the only difference is the color?

Simple doens't necessarily mean better. Lada's and Yugo's are simple.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
An invalid topic ID or forum ID was passed in.

Wow, that seems appropriate. :)

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
There were a lot of 1-star vehicles back then and people with good memories and bad judgement love to paint all cars with the same color.

Car stalls on the shoulder of a road back then, grab the tool kit in the trunk. Car stalls on the shoulder of a road today grab the KY Jelly from the glove compartment.

LMAO :)

There were a lot of 1-star vehicles back then and people with good memories and bad judgement love to paint all cars with the same color.

Car stalls on the shoulder of a road back then, grab the tool kit in the trunk. Car stalls on the shoulder of a road today grab the KY Jelly from the glove compartment.

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?

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.

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.

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 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. :)