Very true.
The unexpected consequence of the changes to the vehicle taxation system is that in changing to a new car in a more environmentally friendly tax class, the emissions in manufacturing the new car far outweigh what would be emitted by keeping the old car running for another five years.
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Saw the title of the thread and thought, 'yes that's me!' Then to find you've quoted my words as well, my face is shining pink!
'The unexpected consequence of the changes to the vehicle taxation system...' No, the absolutely expected consequence. But politicians have to pay lip-service to Kyoto-type initiatives, and that's an easy way to do it. '3 million polluting vehicles scrapped' is a good headline, only weirdos like you and me will see the other side of the coin.
Now, I'm not a luddite. Not at all. But my new Audi (100 '92)has a super-duper electronic gizmo that checks the car before you set out to make sure everything is in the right place. Except it doesn't always work. So on my '83 Polo, if you were running short of petrol or oil pressure, a light would come on. On the Audi you've no idea whether you might be on your last pint of petrol or if your oil pressure is dropping to the floor.
Fix: Polo - new lightbulb easily fitted. Audi, £££££. Second hand units aren't much good, as this is a common problem - and the car's not quite old enough to have been widely scrapped.
Is this progress? Not for me.
And then ignition timing. With the Polo a visiting card & screwdriver would indeed set the points, and an allen key the valves. Canny gadget father had in back of cupboard that cost £3 99 and a 1/2p would set timing. Audi: hydraulic tappets set themselves... or require a new one; set timing by plugging hugely complicated computer into car's hugely complicated computer. Progress? Not for me it's not.
Polo: timing belt - DIY. Audi requires 420 ft pounds on your torque wrench. I think not! Cost to have it done, including tensioner & pump £350 (Main dealer wanted £400 excluding tensioner!). Not worth doing, I'm afraid. Car can run until it collapses, when I can have a second hand engine put in for no more than that.
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Polo: timing belt - DIY. Audi requires 420 ft pounds on your torque wrench.
If we can find a way to link the flywheel of my Alfa to the bolt in question, we may just have a DIY fix.
420lbft of torque? You'd turn the car over!
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Hilarious, isn't it. Haynes just says tighten to specified torque. Front of chapter says 420 lb-ft (iirc - do not try this at home without checking first).
A website I found suggested: If you do not have a torque wrench that can be set this high, use an extension on a breaker bar and do the math with your body weight at a specific moment arm.
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To be fair, this is not entirely the fault of the motoring manufacturers. Rightly they have embraced the benefits that the electronics industry can bring to running cars. However many years ago that same electronics industry moved to a short product lifetime, replace/update but no component fix, business model and this has been forced onto the automive industry.
This will become even worse in the future. Cars will contain more and more software for all functions. The software industry
support lifetimes are even worse.
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Also own two motorbikes:
BMW GS80. Can take it apart and out it back together with a bent spoon.
Triumph Tiger (2001 model). Dealer only!
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Heaven forbid Microsoft get involved in writing software for cars ;-)
Having talked to a guy from a Citroen dealership saying that all the electronics on a C5 were matched to an individual car and couldn't be swapped between cars then it makes diagnosis even more tricky. They had a car in there that French engineers that designed the thing couldn't work out what had gone wrong with it and this car was months old!
Mechanics are going to cease to exist and the only people that will understand cars are electronics engineers. Now where have all the electronics courses gone? How many electronics departments have disappeared? I reckon in 5-10 years times electronics engineers are going to be the new plumbers/plasterers.
teabelly
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Heaven forbid Microsoft get involved in writing software for cars ;-)
Too late Mr Belly
the new BMW 5 and 7 run on Microsoft Windows CE automotive v2.
Already owners report problems where the only cure is to stop, turn off and restart. All new cars will shortly appears with Alt/ctrl/delete keys.
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So when this technology reaches the small hatchback market, will each car come with a stylus and a hole to put it in? If it really doesn't want to play, will you have to do this whilst pressing all three pedals and simultaneously opening the glovebox and the NSR door?
Owners of any pocketPC will know where I'm coming from....
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simple answer is to close/open (the)windows!
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Not when the window control panel is blue you cant!
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Modern trains certainly have to be stopped and rebooted. I made a habit of the Cambridge to London commute for a while. Not infrequently the driver would pull into a convenient platform somewhere like Finsbury Park and say 'excuse me ladies and gentlemen, but I'm going to have to reboot the train.' All lights would dutifully go out, and train would go dead. Wait requisite 2 minutes, restart, wait 5 minutes and then be able to do 90 mph, instead of 30.
If cars start to do this too...
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Dont laugh, but I have had this experience on a plane, not sure what it was but we were waiting to roll back from the terminal when the pilot came on the PA, 'sorry folks but we are unable to get all the instrument readings we require, we will be powering down the entire plane for a few seconds to restart the computers...glad they didnt do that in the air!
Ian L.
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RF said:
Already owners report problems where the only cure is to stop, turn off and restart. All new cars will shortly appears with Alt/ctrl/delete keys.
Nope, they'll come with a sledgehammer....
www.thaivisa.com/index.php?514&backPID=10&tt_news=...5
Kevin...
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Heaven forbid Microsoft get involved in writing software for cars ;-)
Funny you should say that. On a similar note:-
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=74...6
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'embraced the benefits that the electronics industry'
I wonder what RF does for a living... :)
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Well lets face it. Anyone who thinks Citroen can make anything electronic and last for 12 years is .. well misguided. The XM is only 6 or so years old:-)
But buy a 12 year old BMW or Mercedes or Ford and the electronics work well. The electronic ignition on my son's 1993 Fiesta and my other's 1996 Peugeot 106 are untouched for 3 years.. Try that with the rubbish fitted to British cars of the 60s ( or Jags of the 80s)..
As long as it is well sited, not exposed to rain/water or vibration and well built (no dry solder) modern electronics are great..
I remember Minis with a shudder and 1100s and Cortinas .. and Triumph 2000s. Absolute rubbish by modern standards...
Of course if you buy a Citroen.. but what can you expect..or a Rover 800 (electric windows anyone)?
madf
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I don't think it's the electronics as such that cause the majority of problems; more to do with all sorts of subtly different electronics hardware having to operate with all sorts of subtly different software builds; the whole lot being subject to a wide range of user / sensor inputs; which can only be partially tested.
Personally I think the situation has now reached the point where some of the more subtle faults are probably unfixable by even experienced main dealers.
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Cue to ACME Elctronics Inc, design meeting room no1.
"Ok guys, we here to design an electronic control system for cars. Firstly the brakes. I want sensors sited sited next to the road wheels, where we are going to throw stones mud and sand at them at 70 miles per hour, and i hear there is a place in Europe where it rains 50% of the time, so we are going to throw 500 gallons of salty water at them every month. They need to last 15-20 years."
"Cant be done Boss." "What is this sensor driving?"
"Ok come to that later. Now the engine. We need to make a sensor that listens to the noise of the engine, a sensor that measures the speed of things going round, a sensor that measures the wetness (oh that could be salty wetness by the way) and temperature of air going in, and a sensor that we are going to stick into hot gas at about 500 degrees C"
Muttering from audience
"oh and they have to last 15 years 100% reliably and cost 0.00001 cents to make"
"You what boss?" "Whats this sensor driving Boss"
"Come to that later. Now all these sensors need to connect to a central CPU that needs to cost less than 1 buck to make, The sensors and the wiring all need to work from -50c to 100c, in dry and in damp, controlling valves that hold 2000 bar of pressure, switch hundreds of thousands of volts. All this lot needs work 100% reliably all of the time for 15 years."
Serious muttering from audience
"Oh and if it does go wrong, a 16 year old boy with dirty overalls who cant sit the right way on a toilet seat needs to be able to fix it"
Titters from audience.
"Boss?"
"Yes engineer no1"
"What *is* running this central CPU"
"Ah yes - why its Microsoft Windows, and it needs to run 100% reliably for 15 years........."
Half the engineers walk out in disgust - the other half collapse in mirth
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I sat in my Audi the other day, making broom broom noises to pass the time. I pressed the alarm button on the key fob without realising it. Doors not unlockable, windows not openable (electric), sunroof likewise. So, if stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the battery failed on the key fob... I know, ring the AA 'hello, I'm stuck in my car...'
My sympathies are with the Thai Finance minister.
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"Oh and guys before you go, its all going to be put together by the French on friday afternoon just before the August Holiday, and it needs to............."
"yes we know - work 100% reliably for 15 years"
Gales of laughter.
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Cracking RF - If this ever becomes a sitcom I'll put my order in
now for full set DVD.
Seriously, it does make you wonder how automotive reliability is
as good as it is.
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But is it Malcolm? Have you never seen a dealer scratch his head and suggest a whole new ECU at ££££££££££?
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Cue to Acme Electronics meeting room no1 two months later.
"Boss"
"Yes guys"
"We have a solution"
"Hit me guys"
"Well its like this. We can't do all you want. We can't make it 100% fault free for 15 years, its the French you see."
"well guys?"
"We have designed a system to go with it, to be used at all garages. It connects to the central CPU, can exercise all the sensors as hard and for as long as you like, control the engine in all modes, Connect to the internet in real time back to our labs, we can update anything we like. It will work in a cold draughty garage covered in oil, and is smart enough to be used by the 16 year old."
"Thats fabulous guys how much is it"
"$50k"
"dump it, make up some flashy cds for a cheap laptop"
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Brilliant RF. We want more!
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Wow! Pleased with the response. Luddism still prevails.
But if it's impossible to produce electronics that can do the jobs as so beautifully and humorously outlined above, how come we get them and they generally work? Why DO I see fewer cars broken down. Why do I suffer fewer breakdowns (there's tempting fate for you)?
This is another of those areas where everything seems to happen to a friend of a friend. It's always a case of, "I know a bloke who was charged [insert ludicrous sum here] for an ECU".
My argument is that if you add up all the hours spent repairing and bodging cars in the past and attached a cost to it, it was probably a damned sight more than the cost of the occasional real big problem nowadays. And let's not forget, there were big cost problems in the past as well. I hear a lot less about blown engines than I used to.
Anyone know how rare ECU failure really is? I don't, but I suspect it's pretty rare, as they are non-moving-part electronic components. Now if they are exposed to the elements....
V
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Noooo The question is "how many ECUs are changed in ignorance, error, desperation"
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It comes down to financial circumstances.
On average, we have, as a nation, become financially better off over the last 20 years. (I stress the "on average" - this hasn't happened across the board.)
This has meant that an increasing number of people are happy with a car that works 99%+ of the time and goes to a garage when it doesn't. They can afford to pay a mechanic for his time and prefer to spend their own time doing something else.
Hence, car companies make relaible but complicated cars.
Unfortunately, this business model is bad news for people who are less well off, or prefer to spend there money on other stuff. This group would prefer to spend their own time reparing a car, as they lack the disposable income to spend on a mechanic (in any case, the repair cost may exceed the car's value).
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But is it Malcolm? Have you never seen a dealer scratch his head and suggest a whole new ECU at ££££££££££?
Have you? Really seen it, I mean, not heard about it?
V
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Cartographer,
I got striped up on the first car I bought (Renault 16 from my father!), the wet liners failed and I ended up replacing the engine.
The next car had a selector fork break which left me in reverse only, 7 miles from home (I had a stiff neck for 3 weeks after that - ever tried reversing 7 miles).
I now do 23-25k a year and haven't broken down in 6 years, despite having ABS/ASR/a/c and various other bits of electrickery.
I thankfully haven't had a fault which hasn't been properly diagnosed although VW have tried hard (I suspect because it was
warranty work).
I'm not saying that it's all good news - the points about total
environmental cost are extremely valid. However the whole process is customer driven and Joe public wants what he wants and will pay to get it (Ask any member of parliament).
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I'm coming at this from the well-used car end of the market. For my few thousand miles a year driven at weekends, and wanting a large estate car as it's useful, I'm afraid that the Company Passat or MG that they'd let me have (they're very stingy) is just a waste of money. It also amuses me to run a car on a shoestring rather than Optimax, so I run old unattractive cars that don't matter if they are dinged in the street in London SE1 whilst unattended from Saturday evening to Saturday morning (or longer), and won't get stolen(!). At that age, I don't want super duper ECUs and onboard computers as I don't understand how to fix them, they do go wrong (my Audi 100 onboard computer is dodgy as described above, so less useful than the fuel warning light on my ex-Polo) and when they go wrong it is a scrapping job. i.e. send the car to the scrap yard.
I'm not sure Joanne Public really wants automatic switching on headlights on her Megane. We've motored for 103 years without them, why do we suddently need them? Some bright spark thinks of it, some electronics or computer engineer says I can do it dead cheaply, so builds sensors etc. etc. etc. and there's something else to go wrong.
It's a matter of increasing the number of things that could go wrong. I've just pulled my old Polo to pieces for a bit of gentle entertainment, and how many useful moving parts are there? Maybe a couple of dozen? Whereas on that new Megane (hired one the other week) it's just packed full of gadgets. So many more things to go wrong, the law of probability means that it's more likely that something will go wrong.
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Don't knock 1100s, madf. When I was young and green I was trusting enough to buy a used 1100 in the Canadian prairies - its previous owner had 'rallied' it. I put 35K miles on it in 1964-67 including the most god-awful roads in the Rockies and the Arizona desert. The only failures I can remember were a clutch release bearing and those typically BL rubber U-joints, which started knocking in Utah. Its Achilles heel was the electric fuel pump mounted under the tank - I learnt to change those in 15 minutes and travelled with a spare. I changed that pump in the middle of Washington DC and in bear country 50 miles from any garage, never mind one that had ever seen a transverse engine. So as far as I was concerned 1100s were OK.
And I suppose I am a bit of a Luddite.
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The impact of this is already being seen in some areas of the car market. For example, for many years well-used but servicable Mercedes cars were exported from Europe to serve in developing countries, Middle East and Africa, where they often gave another 10-20 years of service. This trade is dwindling. Mercedes made from the early 1990's onwards have electronic engine management and these systems cannot be economically repaired by 'technicians' in the developing world - so the cars are scrapped.
Or they get replacements from the Mercs stolen in(mainly) Europe and stripped down for spares. A growth industry!
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I hear there may be a market soon for old Audi 100's
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Cue to RF electronics (a subsiduary of Renault family inc) meeting room no1, year 2010.
"ok guys we ready to go to market?"
"yes boss"
"Run it pass me one more time"
"well boss its like this The car is equiped with a WiFi module. Everytime the owner drives near his house, the wifi connects with our central service over the owners broadband wireless router. The contents of the car CPU are dumped to our central servers before the engine is switched off. We analyse the data and check everything is ok. Every month while the car is parked outside its given a serious electronic workout controlled by us.
We check the levels of the software, and upload the latest levels to the car. If we notify anything wrong we can order the parts, the correct parts because we know the build level of the car from its unique ID and our links to the maker."
"We send the owner an email asking him when its convenient for our 17 year old youth in the van to come round and plug in the new part. We log onto the car afterwards to check the spotty youths work, and monitor it for a week."
"ok guys and the cost"
"15 quid a month boss, plus any call out fee"
"and it works in France?"
"yes boss"
"Yehaaw Lets go to market"
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Great idea, but I think you'll find that either R-R or A-M have already done something similar.
IIRC, the link was achieved using WAP technology so the owner could download the relevant fault codes which were subsequently diagnosed.
Not quite as elegant as your proposal but enough to start a small patent war.
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Did not McLaren have something like that on their supercar ?
(Mind you the gold leaf on the exhausts probably cost more than a new Fiesta!)
madf
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I bow to your superior memory - yes, it was McLaren.
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Just reading the \'reprogramming Avensis keys\' thread on the Technical board. I don\'t know whether I would fancy sitting in a car performing black magic (insert key in ignition, do not turn it. Open door, remove key. shut door, reinsert key in ignition, open door shut door and wait for doors to lock & then unlock automatically). I\'d be scared stiff that they wouldn\'t reopen!
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Missed that earlier post, sorry RF.
If there's as much truth in that as there is in the rest of your postings today, I shall be sleeping more easily in my bed in the back of my car. Have sold the house and am living in the car so it won't get stolen.
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As I understand it the Idrive system by Bosch in the latest BMW7 series and Mercedes requires a lot of complicated instructions just to change the time on the clock...
madf
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My mother bought a clock radio alarm from Aldi, and it's so complicated she gave it to me. I've lost the instructions, so it's now just a clock, and only for 6 months of the year (the other 6 months of the year it's an hour out). The point being, punters don't really want the complication that they claim to want. Like any opinion poll, it's all in how you ask the question (I'll focus on the Megane's headlights as they're the most unbelievably useless gadget I've ever seen):
'Would you like headlamps that turn themselves on?' 'Of course'
or
'Would you like 6 pages of instructions on how to operate your headlights?' 'No, a simple switch will do, thanks!'
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Our sierra has all the electrics, which is really nice. Until you forget to close the sunroof or a window, then you have to turn the ignition back on to close them.
On the peugeot, its all manual, so you simply flick the catch or wind the handle, with no need to have the ignition on.
I don't think I'm a luddite, but guess which I find more convenient?
I've also had three failures of the electric windows on the sierra, extremely inconvenient when they stick open, and pig of a job to repair.
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To AS
If you put your key in the drivers door lock,turn it anti clockwise and hold it there you will find any windows sun roof etc will close without having to re-enter the car and switch on the ignition.
ndbw
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Reference an earlier remark about Citroens, we have a ten year old Xantia and, apart from the rev counter packing up recently, the rest of the electrics are all original and working.
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By the way, I've just recalled a useful bit of trivia for rule of thumb calculations:
Apparently, we tend to know well around 150 people on average. They in turn typically know the same. So, if an incident happens to someone and you hear it direct from them, it's going to be about a 1 in 150 chance. Hear it from two people and it's 2 in 150, etc. Similarly, hear it from none and you can assume that it's probably pretty unlikely (if you count less than 1 in 150 to be rare). Something you hear of that happens to one friend of a friend is likely to be in the region of 1 in 22,500.
So, in my sample, I don't have a mate who has ever had to reaplce an ECU (who has told me). therefore, if I assume even a cost of £750 for an ECU, I can logically conclude that from my sample of 150, the total cost of ECU failures has been less (possibly much less) than a fiver per car.
This is the point I'm trying to make; the story we hear (always a mate of a mate, so doubtful) is of expensive failures of new-fangled technology. I argue that they are far cheaper overall than the sum of failures of cheap bits on older cars.
Thus, I conclude that we are making progress.
V
PS. I know the statistical liberties I have taken, but they OK as a rule of thumb.
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Agree with Vin - all this talk about modern cars being too complicated is all very well but mention of other cars (minis, 1100s, Rover 2000 etc) seems to suggest that the Luddites are of a certain age (like me?). No doubt your Rover 2000 was considered too complicated by the previous generation and therefore probably deemed "unreliable" and difficult to repair. Compared to my first car it was - I had a 20 year old Sunbeam Talbot in the late '60s - no heater, radio, one speed wipers, no rear demist, no power steering. Yes the timing was easy to adjust and a good job too 'cos it needed doing every week. Forgotten how I did it, and wouldn't have a clue how to do it on a modern car but then in the last 20 years I can't recall having to have the timing adjusted on any of my cars. How much simpler it would be without all these modern electrics - lets go back to the starting handle, how about acetylene (sp?) lights. Starting handle would be easy to repair or the local blacksmith could make another.
Oh, and keep the comments about Citroen electrics coming 'cos they are interesting news - I've owned Cits for the last 18 years and had a few bad electrical incident - a couple of headlight, brake light and number plate bulbs to replace, oh and one ABS sensor on a Xantia. Now that's unreliable.
Phil
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As I mentioned earlier, I've been working in automotive electronics for the best part of 20 years.
Over the past few decades manufacturing quality has improved enormously. Posters mention cars of the 60's breaking down frequently. Many of those breakdowns were the result of poor materials and manufacturing processes.
Modern cars are much more complex, and they do break down quite frequently. I have seen data on breakdowns for certain manufacturers and for some models (I won't mention which manfrs!) more than 10% break down and have to be recovered in the first year of warranty. Electrical failure, of some description, is usually the most common reason for breakdown.
I have data of ECU failure rates from a major ECU manufacturer. They use the FIT (Failures In Time - failed units per billion hours of operation) methodology. To cut short a long story, for this particular engine management ECU, after 5 years approx. 1% of ECU's will have failed - that's a lot of ECU's. Having worked in the industry, however, I know that the burning question is 'will is get through warranty?', if the answer is yes then people don't ask too many more questions.
Another issue is component quality. Toyota accept about 5ppm defect parts from their suppliers - Ford are just coming down to 70ppm (from above 100). Goodness knows what Renault are working at - they are known for having the lowest supplier costs in the industry (a Megane costs considerably less to manufacture than a Focus for this reason).
As for BMW/MB/Ford producing electronics that work reliably for 12 years (mentioned above), this is simply not the case. BMWs of this age are bedevilled with electrical faults. In the fact the E32/E34 series were an electrical nightmare and the quality of some of the electronics was very poor.
I remember an amusing incident a couple of years back when we had a car for some technical evaluation work. It was froma well know prestige manfr (I won't mention which). It was a standard car off the line - but wouldn't run right (emissions were too high). We checked sensors, looked for fault codes etc. manfr. told us to take it to a dealer and they would sort it. Anyway, it still wouldn't run right - and we were being paid £3000+ per day hanging around waiting for it to be fixed. Manfr. then sends one of their top men from the factory, along with a truck full of parts. He couldn't fix it. Eventually they took it back to the factory and gave us another car!
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Ah, that explains why toyotas don't go wrong so much!
I'd love to see that data :-) Shame you can't accidentally on purpose drop it in HJ's direction and hopefully he will let us know some of the juicier bits!
teabelly
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I think that there are a lot of people in the industry who know what the figures are. After all, there are only so many suppliers and lots of people 'move around'.
Let's just say that if you want a car that is going to be as reliable as modern automotive technology will allow, then choose a Japanese car. The quality of their electronics is second to none (honed in the consumer electronics market) and they seem to go in for less of this ECU 'coding' than the Europeans - i.e. you can take systems apart, put them back together, and it all works. Do that with a European design and the ECUs take a lot of persuading to 'talk' to each other - the electronic Diesels are a real pain for that - try swapping a pump over!.
The downside of Japanese ownership is that its all so reliable that when things do go wrong no one has the experience to fix it and there is not much of a parallel market in non-service spares because they are so seldom needed.
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"To cut short a long story, for this particular engine management ECU, after 5 years approx. 1% of ECU's will have failed"
The figure I've been waiting for:
SO, let's take an ECU at £750 (reasonable or excessive?). Thus, if 100 people drive the car with that ECU, the cost per car is £7.50, or £1.50 per year.
This, I feel proves one of the points of my argument, that despite having a big headline cost, it's cheaper overall than all of those hundred people having to reset their timing every couple of months [weeks/days depending on vehicle].
No doubt the luddites will say "But what if it's *your* ECU that goes?" True, but what if I'm in the 99% of people who WON'T suffer the problem? Should we go back to the point where everyone suffers minor hassle rather than the odd person suffering major hassle? Also, bear in mind that the minor hassle suffered by people in the past included horrors like being stranded in Stoke. Do you know what that's like?
V
PS. I must also ask what proportion of ECU failures come from people like my Father-in-law who was determined to steam clean his engine bay as it was "a bit grimy". The only thing that stopped him was when I pointed out it could cost him £500 if he damaged the ECU.
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Vin {p} said "Also, bear in mind that the minor hassle suffered by people in the past included horrors like being stranded in Stoke. Do you know what that's like?"
err yes: I've lived in Biddulph (as north of Stoke as you can get.. altho on edge of contryside:-) for past 20 years....
lol
Personally I think the British in particular are very resistant to change.. and like to look back with fond memories forgetting all the bad ones..
Today a car is expected to do 100k miles in 3 years , burn no oil and then be good for another 50k at least before any major repairs.
My Motor handbook of 1938 talked about decarbonising engines after 10,000 miles..
My Car Mechanics magazines in the 1960s and 1979s gaily talked of rebuilding engines, repairing rust etc on cars 5-8 years old.
Whilst I recognise cars are built down to a cost, they are for most people a fashion accessory (lifestyle, status) and sold after 2-3 years.
The good news is for those who don't care you can buy a 5 year old car with under 40k miles, a fsh, in immaculate condition for under 30% of the new price. Yes.. it takes some finding but it can be done with search engines..
and it will last another 10 years.
That is progress.. (and PS look at 1980s fuel consumption and emissions versus today's cars).
BUT avoid complex overdesigned poorly built cars.. eg BMW 7 series,
madf
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Madf, you know a chappie called Ade (Adrian)? Dreadlocks when I last saw him (ten years ago) rode a CBX1000 streetfighter with no silencers. He still alive and running if you do recognise him? Last I knew he lived in Manchester and Biddulph equally.
V
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"(and PS look at 1980s fuel consumption and emissions versus today's cars)". OK:
1962 1100 mentioned above, touring round Western US in '64: 44mpg.
1993 Pug 205 1.4: 44mpg, not many short or very long trips.
2000 Clio 1.6 16v, admittedly used for shopping in between occasional long runs: 42-43mpg overall.
So although not a fully equal comparison, most of the advances in engine design to reduce consumption have been cancelled out by making cars heavier and adding lots of power-consuming gizmos. The main plus is the improved emissions - I can always smell a 1980s car when it passes!
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