Car Have Become Too Complex!

[brianl703]

Originally Posted By: KLowD9x

So....no. They don't have wiring problems. Usually the module at the end of the wire. Rarely you will get the bad connector, but that's about it.


The connectors today are much improved over the garbage that they used just 25 years ago. Saw a Datsun pickup with corroded tailight connectors--not even sealed, just open to the elements. No wonder it corroded.

 

[brianl703]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d

Is your car subject to the same emissions tests as new cars?


On a Federal level, the EPA emissions requirements for new cars are more stringent.

On a state level, the emissions test cut points are higher for older cars, so older cars are allowed to put out more HCs, NOx, and CO than a newer car.

 

[brianl703]

The quality of the service information varies widely, too.

The shop manual for my Saab 93 appears to have been written by engineers for technicians.

Some other shop manuals I've seen appear to have been written by morons for morons.

 

[Steve S]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
Originally Posted By: KLowD9x

So....no. They don't have wiring problems. Usually the module at the end of the wire. Rarely you will get the bad connector, but that's about it.


The connectors today are much improved over the garbage that they used just 25 years ago. Saw a Datsun pickup with corroded tailight connectors--not even sealed, just open to the elements. No wonder it corroded.
Cars are build as cheap as possible and most of the improvements are due to government regulation, safety and epa requirements.

 

[brianl703]

There might also be a desire to keep the wiring harnesses from rotting out during the warranty period.

 

[Liquid_Turbo]

Originally Posted By: mstrjon32
Originally Posted By: Liquid_Turbo
-Variable Valve Timing: I'm glad it exists. Better emissions, better powerband, and better fuel economy. Honda has never EVER had a single VTEC malfunction since they patented it. So I don't agree that it is needlessly complex.


You sure about that? I know a guy who had to have his VTEC system worked on in his Accord, something about the engine refusing to rev above where it would have engaged and misfiring instead. Sure sounds like a failure to me.


Certain CELs will disable VTEC so engine doesn't get damaged, ie. alter the 'redline' to something low such as 4000rpm. It's referred to as "limp" mode.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: johnd
When computer operated engines came out, I figured that the days of the home mechanic were pretty much over except for maybe brakes and tire rotation. What I didn't anticipate was the emergence of reasonably priced aftermarket diagnostic equipment. I pretty much do all my own work now and other that the cost of the laptop, the software to access the car computer was $90. Made it back on the first repair.


What do you use?

 

[MGregoir]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: MGregoir
We need a car that's a:

- diesel, to eliminate the ignition system with mechanical direct injection

Disagree (emissions).

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
- iron block and head
- body on frame

Disagree strongly. Holy heavy, Batman!

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
- live axle/leaf spring rear end
- simple multi-link IFS

Iffy on live axle. Too heavy. Heartily agree on suspension, though.


The purpose of the vehicle would be purely for simplicity, longevity and easy repairability.

If designed with that in mind, reasonable fuel economy, and the main concern for emissions being avoiding spewing black smoke and running close to stoich, you could make a simple and reliable vehicle. If made of correctly selected materials and properly designed would a 30-50 year lifespan and easily achieve 1,000,000+ miles with nothing but wear parts replaced.

That would be impressive.

 

[d00df00d]

Compared to a unibody, a body-on-frame structure is going to be weaker, heavier, or both. Weaker means less safety, and it's hard to put a price on that; heavier means more frequent brake and tire changes and higher fuel consumption, which you gotta factor into cost of ownership.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Compared to a unibody, a body-on-frame structure is going to be weaker, heavier, or both. Weaker means less safety, and it's hard to put a price on that; heavier means more frequent brake and tire changes and higher fuel consumption, which you gotta factor into cost of ownership.


Then why are trucks body on frame? I posted pics of Super Duty trucks vs a huge host of vehicles about a year back. The results were anything but "less safe" for the driver of the truck..... The occupants of the cars that were hit all had something in common: Most of them were dead.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: MGregoir
We need a car that's a:

- diesel, to eliminate the ignition system with mechanical direct injection

Disagree (emissions).

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
- iron block and head
- body on frame

Disagree strongly. Holy heavy, Batman!

Originally Posted By: MGregoir
- live axle/leaf spring rear end
- simple multi-link IFS

Iffy on live axle. Too heavy. Heartily agree on suspension, though.


The purpose of the vehicle would be purely for simplicity, longevity and easy repairability.

If designed with that in mind, reasonable fuel economy, and the main concern for emissions being avoiding spewing black smoke and running close to stoich, you could make a simple and reliable vehicle. If made of correctly selected materials and properly designed would a 30-50 year lifespan and easily achieve 1,000,000+ miles with nothing but wear parts replaced.

That would be impressive.


Sounds kinda like you are describing the Crown Vic........

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Then why are trucks body on frame?

Cost.

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
I posted pics of Super Duty trucks vs a huge host of vehicles about a year back. The results were anything but "less safe" for the driver of the truck..... The occupants of the cars that were hit all had something in common: Most of them were dead.

Well as an aside, if it saves the driver from injury but costs someone else a life, I don't consider it particularly safe.

But either way, I bet those Super Duties weighed a darn sight more than the cars whose occupants they killed....

 

[KrisZ]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Compared to a unibody, a body-on-frame structure is going to be weaker, heavier, or both. Weaker means less safety, and it's hard to put a price on that; heavier means more frequent brake and tire changes and higher fuel consumption, which you gotta factor into cost of ownership.


Then why are trucks body on frame? I posted pics of Super Duty trucks vs a huge host of vehicles about a year back. The results were anything but "less safe" for the driver of the truck..... The occupants of the cars that were hit all had something in common: Most of them were dead.


And let's see how these super duties would perform against a semi? Because basically it's the same comparison.


Semi agains a pick up

Here is another one, note the semi was hardly damaged

another semi vs pick up

another one

semi vs pick up 02

So should we drive semis?

 

[The_Jeff]

Body on frame? Maybe in Arizona. Up here it's twice the pockets and folds and crevices that lead to rot. All the crossmembers and body mounts make lovely places for salt to hide; a unibody floorpan neatly drips free and clear if designed right. (Some aren't.)

My Grand Marquis has a beautiful frame, still paint on most of it, but the little hidey hole for the jack had mega rust.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Compared to a unibody, a body-on-frame structure is going to be weaker, heavier, or both. Weaker means less safety, and it's hard to put a price on that; heavier means more frequent brake and tire changes and higher fuel consumption, which you gotta factor into cost of ownership.


Then why are trucks body on frame? I posted pics of Super Duty trucks vs a huge host of vehicles about a year back. The results were anything but "less safe" for the driver of the truck..... The occupants of the cars that were hit all had something in common: Most of them were dead.


And let's see how these super duties would perform against a semi? Because basically it's the same comparison.


Semi agains a pick up

Here is another one, note the semi was hardly damaged

another semi vs pick up

another one

semi vs pick up 02

So should we drive semis?


No, we should all drive tanks. And then when somebody cuts us off, we can blow them up.

A large pick-up will weigh anywhere from 5-7,000lbs depending on equipment. There are cars topping the scale at well over 4,000lbs, look at the Camaro and the Charger or Challenger for example. That's a 1-3,000lb weight difference depending on the car.

In contrast, a Peterbilt 359 weighs in at 16,345 lbs. That is more than 10,000lbs more!!!!! Or like running into THREE Super Duty trucks.

And that's JUST the truck.

Add a load, and you are over 70,000lbs. SEVENTY THOUSAND POUNDS.

Now, explain to me, how a truck, hitting a car, that it might, WORST CASE SCENARIO, weigh twice as much as (and I'm talking Saturn S-series vs F-350 here) can be compared to a Transport, that weighs 10x more if its loaded, or 10,000lbs more if its bob-tailing, be viewed as fair comparison?

Perhaps we can compare the damage between a 30-30 and a 44 Magnum, then compare the Magnum to a Nuclear Bomb.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Then why are trucks body on frame?

Cost.


I really doubt that.

If you were to fit a diesel making 600lb-ft of torque into a Ridgeline, it would probably rip it in half. A unit-body is too rigid to handle that kind of power without massive reinforcement. If you've ever owned a modified unit-body car making any sort of decent power, you know what I mean. The amassment of aftermarket chassis stiffening and reinforcment stuff available is a very keen indicator of what happens when you start to step it up.

Sub-frame connectors, ladder-bars, strut-tower braces, shock tower braces, even roll-cages are added to cars to allow the chassis to properly transmit the power to the road without excessive body twist, which can cause fractures and cracks in the unit-body.

In contrast a truck frame is designed to flex somewhat. The rubber body mounts allow for some frame twist while reducing body flex.

A unit-body is definitely more rigid however, which translates into better handling.

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
I posted pics of Super Duty trucks vs a huge host of vehicles about a year back. The results were anything but "less safe" for the driver of the truck..... The occupants of the cars that were hit all had something in common: Most of them were dead.

Well as an aside, if it saves the driver from injury but costs someone else a life, I don't consider it particularly safe.

But either way, I bet those Super Duties weighed a darn sight more than the cars whose occupants they killed.... [/quote]

In the pics I posted, the difference would have been 2-4,000lbs, with the biggest weight difference being an F-250 vs a Neon.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ


So should we drive semis?


And just to reply to this remark specifically:

I have always felt that transport trucks should have their own highway system. They are far too large to be sharing high-speed roadways like the 401 with passenger cars. At speed, their sheer mass makes a potential collision with one almost an absolute fatality.

In-town, where speeds are substantially lower, and collisions with large trucks are FAR fewer, it isn't really an issue.

 

[KrisZ]

The examples I gave you were not meant to be a direct comparison to your examples, I just wanted to use them as a perspective to your assertions that body on frame is safer than unibody, and giving, as an example, a super duty and a small compact car, which simply is not true, because the weight, height, lack of crumple zones and shear size difference between vehicles plays a huge factor here, which you deliberately omitted to make your point.

Why do you think manufacturers went to unibody construction for passenger cars? That’s because unibody has the best strength to weight ratio. They also discovered that making the body as strong as possible is not safe either as all the loads are transferred to the passenger, that's why we have crumple zones. A body on frame even though it can flex, is very rigid to compression (like in a head on collision) and will simply slice through a unibody, that doesn't mean it's safer.

The only reason frame is used in trucks and semis, is because it can flex when pulling heavy loads, where a unibody construction will simply crack. Engineers know the shortcomings of the frame, but you have to use it in these applications and they know the height and weight of the truck will make up for the lack of strength of the cabin that sits on the frame.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
If you were to fit a diesel making 600lb-ft of torque...

Sounds like you don't need me to tell you why trucks are body-on-frame, then.


Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
A unit-body is definitely more rigid however, which translates into better handling.

...and is much lighter for a given level of strength.

Sounds like you also don't need me to tell you why cars are unibody.


Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
In the pics I posted, the difference would have been 2-4,000lbs, with the biggest weight difference being an F-250 vs a Neon.

Sounds like you also don't need me to tell you why those trucks killed the occupants of the cars they hit.


Glad to see we're on the same page.

 

[Pop_Rivit]

Originally Posted By: parimento1
Being an owner of an older car, I know what a constant hassle it is dealing with things that go wrong in our increasingly complex cars. There are systems upon systems and sensors upon sensors that will fail eventually and when they do are sometimes hard to pinpoint, expensive to replace, and usually serve some menial function. For example, all this emissions equipment! EVAP, EGR, PCV, catalysts, are all band-aids on what are inherently dirty machines. These bandaids are becoming more complex to meet increasinlgy stringent emissions standards. Transmissions now usually contain a minimum of 6 gears and are so complex with torque converter lockup at different times and electronic controls so complex, you'd think it was from a martian spaceship! Anything that is so complex is bound to fail, what do you guys think. People make fun of electric cars, but they would be much simpler to execute once they get the range up a little bit.


I've heard the same complaint from shadetree mechanics in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and now the 2000's. It's funny how it never changes.

If you're trying to apply a 20 or 30 year old skillset to any modern piece of technology you'll be out of your league. Vehicles are no exception-they have always gotten more complicated and require that you constantly improve your mechanical skillset to keep up with the new innovations.

Or, on the very rare occasions that a repair is needed that's beyond the skill of the average shadetree mechanic simply take it to a professional mechanic. I can't speak for the vehicles that you purchase, but the ones that I've purchased in the last 20 years have been vastly more reliable than any time before that.