In a previous thread there were some gloomy prognostications of the premature demise of modern vehicles due to failure of irreparable or unobtainable electronic bits.
It came to me in the night that 16 year old Celica Supra, which has gone to another good home, has quite a bit of electronic gubbins, even to a digital dash display; it all works.
Of course, it was all made in Japan and that helps, but perhaps there is room for optimism.
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What about the BMW 7 series? The price of a small house brand new, you see E reg ones for £1500 nowadays (I bet a Pug 205 GTI would fetch more than that). Mate of mine had one about that age as a "laugh" for a couple of months between cars - Of all the hundreds of electric/electronic gizmos on it about a third of them worked and there was a problem with the engine management between first starting and fully hot where the car would not run above idle. As soon as something serious does go wrong (like on the Celica for example, which although undoubtedly extremely reliable and well made would happen one day) it'll be some complicated electronic fault that you'll need a new ECU and hours of fault finding for and it'll be a 2 grand job to put right. Compare say, to an E reg Sierra etc - carb engine, all v simple to work on for someone who wants to motor on a budget. Problem is, when cars being made today are that old, they'll have countless possibilities for ludicrously expensive things to go wrong in all these ECU's/expensive emission control areas that is starting to happen with the first of the cat cars now.
A manufacturer's dream methinks as we'll all have to keep getting replacement cars instead of repairing an old car!
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You can get aftermarket re-programable ECUs for about £500. Add in fitting and a rolling road session you'll probably end up with more power for about £800. I'm not sure how much manufacturers charge for theirs but I can't see it being much cheaper than this.
Then when everything else breaks remove the ECU and sell it to someone modding an engine for a couple of hundred.
Piers
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That's only because your house goes up in value. If it dropped to about the price of a new VCR you would sell it and get a new one.
I guess it's getting more of a throw away society as far as cars are concerned, At least, that's what the manufacturers would like.
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Of course there's room for optimism. Lets face it, TV's, videos, CD players etc rarely go wrong. But no-one remebers all the electronic bits that don't fail. They're just shocked that when a failure does occur, it's usually hard and expensive to diagnose.
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It's true that TVs, videos etc don't go wrong much, but how many people keep them for ten years, leave them out in the rain and snow, heat them up, cool them down and so on? Also, when your video breaks down you don't have to buy a new house.
Chris
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Electronic part diagnosis and replacement forms a big part in our business.
The market for exchange ECU's is huge; getting the old worn core stock back is a huge problem. (No worn core = no exchange units available)
We replace an engine management ECU almost daily - we are lucky to hold a stock of 'good' ECU's for diagnostic purposes. Even some of the ECU re-manufacturers have been known to get it wrong - we have had to fit new ECU's to cars to prove the recon ECU is still faulty.
I can see it getting far worse in the future - the Rover 75 is an example - there are upward of 6 ECU's on this car - what a potential nightmare!
David
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I've just read in 'Car' magazine that Fiat's new 'Stilo' is crammed to the teeth with electrickery of an advanced nature....... FIAT? ELECTRICS? Why does that fill me with horror?
Could it be the many friends who have sworn never to buy another Fiat because the central locking only worked when there was a 'P' in the month? Or the wipers which would blow fuses ever few weeks? Or the electric windows/mirrors/lights/de-misters that had a life of their own?
Blimey, the mind boggles!
Andy.
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Have you noticed that Citroen are actually using the fact that the C5 has 'seventeen on board computers' as a marketing hook in their latest telly ad. It all looks wonderful with automatic wipers, lights, ride control etc, probably makes a cup of tea every Shrove Tuesday as well, but just think, seventeen ECU's to go wrong!!! A few years down the road I can imagine cars being scrapped because the wipers don't work!!!!
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You would have thought Citroen would have learned something from the XM fiasco. I admire their bloody-minded determination to master the art of car electrics, but fully expect C5s to become as common a sight dumped in laybys as XMs are now.
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