Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
The linked news article said it's a three-cylinder; is that true ?
"The 1.5L will turn itself into an even more economical three-cylinder giving you a rough ride, insane blow by, and a bad headache. It will take some time for GM to perfect the 1.5L but for the mean time, I would stay away from an engine that will deem your new car inoperable."
The engine they're talking about is the LFV, that's a straight 4. They're talking about what happens when one of the pistons fails and welds itself to the cylinder, now you have a straight 3.
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So far , at 38,000 miles , our Sonic has had no problem with electric power steering .
I heard the feel is awful and on some cars they can have issues where they'll get an EPS light on the dashboard and suddenly lose all power steering. It just seems bad to me because I've owned four cars with power steering and some of these cars were over 100,000 miles and sixteen years old or older, none of them had any issues with power steering (especially a complete failure) even without fluid changes.
Yet there are newer cars with EPS where some electric gizmo or motor has a fault and suddenly the EPS stops working entirely.
I see the EPS situation as being in the same bed as the turbo situation. The root of the decisions is to eke out every last bit of fuel economy. They wanted another belt-driven pump removed for fuel economy (and maybe what, 5HP?). That's where I think the government kind of failed, I get why the government wants to do it and I think it's a good thing for them to say cars should become more efficient, but I think if the end result is that car companies are making stuff like this where steering suddenly fails or any of the myriad DI and turbo issues, then maybe that's not where we should be headed.
They also probably want EPS to make it possible for software to control the steering for the future.