Originally Posted By: sciphi
Originally Posted By: supton
chevyboy, they are moving towards integrating the cat into the exhaust manifold. This raises the price. Throw in labor charge at the dealer, and the price can be quite high.
When the exhaust manifold cracked on our Civic it was over $1k to replace, mostly because the cat was in it. Brilliant!
To replace the turbo in my Cruze needs the whole exhaust manifold replaced. And if the turbo took a dump, likely the cat needs to be replaced since it's immediately after the turbo, and is now oil-soaked. Don't forget to drain the cooling system and give it an oil change while doing that since the turbo is both water and oil-cooled. Great for slapping it together in the factory, not so great to service.
Things like this are common, and only getting more so.
Now, what about electric cars? Those have many fewer moving components, and should in theory be easier to service than IC cars.
While everyone loves to bash the mfgrs for the few cars that do have catastrophic repairs the overwhelming majority of them last longer than ever. Warranties are longer than ever, too.
So the fact that parts are being integrated more closely yielding better performance, longevity, and cheaper costs is now a bad thing?
I remember when 100k miles was a real milestone and was usually celebrated. Nowadays it's quite ordinary for cars to last far longer.