I drove a 2002 diesel Jetta for a few years. $80 for all four glow plugs. It’s a no brainer to do them all. This was probably ~2015, it was old when it was written off.
This year, the cheapest I could find one (yes, just one) for my 2013 was $135 online. Thich was cheaper online than a mechanic friend of mine could get it through any of his sources.
There is a compression sensor in there now adding cost, apparently.
But I looked it up and for the benefit of anyone else who's never worked on diesel, it's part of the diesel ignition cycle it seems. TIL!
Diesel being injected into the engine isn't ignited by a spark, but spontaneously by compression. This can't happen if the temperature in the cylinder is too low.
Having your fuel being ignited by the engine running, as opposed to something like a spark plug, has interesting side effects like dieseling and runaway.
And in all this useless things that they put in a car, they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...
It’s required because it’s a safety issue. I think that’s the intent behind almost all mandatory sensors. That’s why the post put “useless” in quotes. I’m highlighting just that it may be required because it’s needed for safety.
However, many motorcycles have ABS as optional equipment and many people (non-stunters) don’t opt in for it. Meaning, many people don’t recognize (or don’t care enough to pay) the safety aspect.
Looking up some data, it was about 75% of cars and rising in 2007, so not as high as I expected but still pretty high. There's some circularity but I'd say it's mostly not circular.
Yes you did.
How can I make it clearer that I disagree.
> That is a circular rationale because it’s still pointing to a legally mandated sensor.
It's circular if the legal mandate is why those sensors are installed. If they'd be installed anyway then it's not circular.
Ie there wouldn’t be a legal reason if it weren’t for the safety reason. So pointing to the safety is why it’s a circular argument.
It’s like disagreeing that smoke detectors are because they are legally required in homes because people want them anyway for safety reasons. Both can be true at the same time because they both are related to the same risk mitigation.
In any event, the OP was that some people don’t want those sensors, my point is they aren’t optional.
You're confusing me. How about I explain my understanding of what makes things circular.
Generic hypothetical: Regulation requires a part. Cars put the part in because of regulation. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is there from regulation, it's to a strong extent regulation justifying itself, and it's circular.
Does your understanding of circularity differ from that?
Now, consider a variant: Regulation requires a part. But it doesn't matter because cars have that part anyway. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is not there from regulation, it's not regulation justifying itself, and it's not circular.
Does that make sense? You could imagine the part is "wheels" for the variant. Regulations that imply wheels are not using circular arguments when they say 'cars have wheels anyway, that's not a cost of this regulation'.
“I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.
Now much of what you bring up is tangential. But one thing I think we think differently about is that each of the premises you laid out starts with regulation. I differ because i see regulation as a response to a prior underlying risk. In other words, the risk exists before the regulation. So I don’t view regulation as a “self-licking ice cream cone”, or excusing for its own sake, but rather a risk mitigation. That’s why an ABS sensor can be used for monitoring pressure: it’s not the sensor that matters but whether the risk os appropriately mitigated.
In this case there's a risk. By my argument applies to regulations that involve risk and it also applies to regulations that don't involve risk.
> “I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.
I almost agree, but I think the motivation matters.
"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already to follow regulations" is a circular argument.
"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already for reasons unrelated to regulations" is not a circular argument. If no regulations existed already, it's not circular. If they did exist but they didn't change your behavior then it's not circular.
Which are those? Because so far, this conversation has been about TPMS and ABS regulation. I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.
Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist. I believe they exist to mitigate risk. Sometimes they can be poorly executed, and sometimes they can be for a risk you aren’t acutely aware of or one you don’t care about, but that doesn’t mean the risk is non-existent.
Well like I mentioned earlier, there's a regulation that cars have wheels, right? That's not a risk thing.
> I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.
No, it's just explaining my logic. Using a more abstract example makes it easier to focus on the logic.
> Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation
No it's not.
> and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist.
I never said that's why regulations exist.
I never said anything about why regulations exist.
I'm so confused.
I'm just talking about whether a certain kind of rule is circular or not...
It's not a very important point, to be fair. But you seem to think I'm making some wildly different points from what I intend, and I'm not sure why there's such a communication breakdown.
I thankfully was wearing riding gloves, helmet, and boots; the pavement wore through several layers of the leather, my hands would have been shredded like my knee, or worse.
I do not agree with your point. I do understand it, don't agree.
In theory, we could use a dipstick in our fuel tank but most of us prefer an automated gage.
I had a rental Mercedes with a leak in a tire recently... a tire was at something like 15psi but looked visually the same as the other tires. I absolutely do a walk around on all of my rentals and take pictures, but I would have had no clue if it weren't for TPMS. I would have driven it until it failed.
A sensor you were paired to disappears. Now a new sensor is showing up, and it sticks with you for an entire hour.
Sounds pretty easy for a computer to figure that puzzle out.
Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it. Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system. It's a little better that it is deterministic, and follows an explicit pairing process.
How big is the range on one of these?
> Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it.
Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.
Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.
> Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system.
"Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?
As always with RF propagation, it depends. They're frequently in the 315Mhz band, so should be roughly similar to garage door openers, remote controls, etc.
> Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.
There's no handshake -- TPMS sensors are generally unencrypted broadcast devices. A car will see a lot of sensors. (and you can set up an antenna and track cars driving down your street) The "pairing" is simply the vehicle remembering which ones is theirs.
> Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.
It could. Now add the complication of: spare tires. And also, some but not all vehicles store the positionality of the sensor, so they can tell you which tire is low.
But if you're going to give the system so much hysteresis, you might as well just save the money and use the ABS-sensor based system that other vehicles use. These don't require any additional sensors or programming, but they are slower to react and don't provide pressure readings. The reason automakers use direct sensor systems is to provide a more direct and immediate reading.
> "Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?
It is a big enough deal that the reason many cars have them is to comply with the legal requirement that they have them. Before the light (and better cars have textual warnings), you'd have to manually check your tire pressure to identify an underinflated tire, leading to many people driving on them for extended periods of time and experiencing rapid unscheduled failures.
... Or you could just have the manufacturer spend $30 to embed this into the car's dash.
For similar reasons, your car also comes with a fuel gauge, and doesn't require hand-cranking to start.
If you really want car prices to come down, have the manufacturers fire most of their workers and replace them with robots (I'm not sure if the robots will make for a good consumer base, but that's someone else' problem.)
Look at a BYD car factory versus any one ran by the American auto dinosaurs, and that's where you'll find the price delta.
What does increase safety is better driver training. This has be ubiquitously proven BTW.
Where is the ubiquitously proven support for the assertion that backup cameras don't increase safety?
I've read several of your replies towards me and I can tell that you either unable or unwilling see my point of view. So there is no point in having a discussion with you.
I guess they shouldn't have assumed you were speaking from experience, but I don't think that's a big deal. That's not forcing you to accept any conclusion. If it happens "often" you should have examples and/or data. If you don't then maybe you should reconsider if it actually is "often".
And they directly asked for data that it doesn't increase safety.
That's not unwillingness to see your point of view. If you provide quality evidence, you can win them over.
Not being snarky, just pointing out we’re often guilty of picking and choosing rather than applying first principles.
I am specifically talking about things that take over control of the vehicle.
I've had lane assist fight me when trying to move lanes. I apparently wasn't turning the wheel enough and it thought I was drifting (I wasn't).
I've had another hire car refuse to move backwards without me putting it into reverse. It had anti-rollback measures. I didn't know what was going on. All my other cars would rollback (I drive manuals). Now I know technically you shouldn't coast backwards but it was maybe a foot.
You're telling on yourself here. Use your turn signal and lane assist won't fight you.
Sure it does. You can tune it to get better performance or fuel economy. (Tbf, you can do the same by fuel mapping your injectors, but it would probably void any warranty).
What you seem to be alluding to is that the automated features give you different performance than what you were expecting and you have little recourse. The same could be said for your fuel injectors.
Save perhaps rarely if ever used seating positions (middle rear of the super stripped down V6 Mustang they make like 10 of so they can advertise a starting MSRP or some other comparable niche) I don't think seatbelts are going away anywhere they matter.
Ditto with headlights and tail lights, drivers find them useful. Perhaps we'd see a delete option used by fleet buyers who intend to equip the vehicles with alternative lighting.
Oh, wait. That’s what regulators are for :-)
Do you blindly assume that regulators are right 100% of the time? If they aren't , then by virtue of regulation being never removed in the long run, you will end up with inflated regulation for which some of it is done for no good reason.
Is there a particular regulation you would prefer to remove? If you list something specific, let's talk about other alternatives to removing the regulation that could cause better outcomes without reducing supply in that market.
There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.
There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly. Motivations for this vary.
> There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.
Two things can be true at once.
It isn't unheard of that business will collude with government to "pull the ladder up behind them". I've worked in companies where that has been their stated strategy.
if i am a hardcore environmentalist, i throw regulations at homebuilding to make housebuilding excruciating. homeowner voters are thrilled by the ensuing valuations
see: california
I agree. It is also frustrating when people don't recognize or cry foul when their personal beliefs are restated within homotopy equivalence, perhaps (I speculate) because they think it weakens an already weak argument. Perhaps even moreso for those stating the equivalence because there is not argumentative advantage to be gained by expressing said frustration regarding said response.
Or at least it could be. I'm actually feeling indifferent on the topic.
> There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly.
Words are cheap, words and rallys and activist productions moreso, show the policy that impacts national and international production.
How does this square with your theory that cars are becoming 'more disposable'? They seem to be running longer than ever before.
Repairability becomes somewhat less relevant when reliability is better out-of-the-box.
[1] A decade ago it was 11 years.
Also, unlike with money and wealth and other metrics where averages aren't very useful, the distribution of car ages does not have a tail of incredible outliers. There aren't a lot of billion-year-old cars driving that average away from the median.
Look, it's entirely possible that 'this time it'll be different', and we'll regress on this metric, but at the moment the data does not support it.
I agree with having simpler SKUs, but rearview camera is not where to start
> When averaged between the 2 automakers, effects were significantly larger for drivers 70 and older (38% reduction) than for drivers younger than 70 (1% increase); effects were significant for older but not younger drivers.
A big SUV is probably an exacerbating factor, though.
Also, for any kind of car, rear cameras and sensors decrease impacts while parallel parking. I see far fewer damaged bumpers on newer cars these days.
Front visibility is famously poor on SUVs and trucks, and even aside from pedestrians, I suspect there are a lot of small but very expensive bumper taps because you mis-judged the distance to the crap at the back wall of your garage.
There was a woman who backed over her own kid in the driveway. For some reason, she was not imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. So instead of not being in prison, she spent the next half decade lobbying congress to make backup cameras mandatory. And it happened. So now everyone's car costs $3k more.
It would have been cheaper to put her imprison than impose a $3k cost per every car sold in America since 2018.
Lots more people need to be imprisoned for manslaughter, and lots of people need their license taken away for "backing crashes".
> A 2012 Harris poll suggests that the public agress with the mandate despite the technology’s costs. NHTSA says adding a backup camera to a car without an existing display screen will cost around $159 to $203 per vehicle, shrinking to between $58 and $88 for vehicles that already use display screens. The Harris poll found that consumers care more about safety features like backup cameras than they do about multimedia systems.
I'm not sure where you're getting your $3k backup cameras from; the camera is a $30 part, and pretty much every new car has a screen in it already.
$3000 for a backup camera, okay.
There's no reason for the screen other than the camera, therefore the camera is $3k
And taking away licenses is acting too late.
Besides backup cameras have use beyond just making sure a child is not behind you, such as assisting with parking, or seeing if there is oncoming traffic when there is a larger vehicle parked next to you.
However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.
If the US weren't so obsessed with enormous cars with terrible visibility, I think this would be a different conversation.
Unless you really struggle with object permanence, a child somehow ending up in front of you without you seeing them is not a frequent occurrence, compared to one ending up behind you.
But yes, American cars are stupid big and should be smaller.
I can see quite a lot in my backup cam that is in a visual blind spot in both of my cars.
- Gas mileage (pollution)
- Tire wear (pollution)
- Handling (safety)
Which is the work product of the 2000s era of "legislate to make cars better" advocacy.
90s SUVs rolled a lot, so they changed the rules to require them be strong, Strong made them hard to see out of in reverse so they added cameras. Now because both are regulatory required, at substantial cost, you can't even make a small vehicle that doesn't have both.
It's not like the Subarus and Volvo wagons of the 00s were lacking in rollover strength or rear visibility, but now that you have to have the features by law and when all the dust of engineering tradeoffs settles the modern analogues wind up just as bad to see out of as everything else, because why wouldn't you if you're required to have the mitigation technology. No reason for 2020s Subaru shove that stupid steel bar in the pillar (at great expense) to keep it sleek and skinny when they have to have the fat pillar mitigation tech installed by law.
How many times we gonna run laps of this feedback loop before we decide the problem is systemic?
I go to South America a lot to visit family and for business and the cars by and large are much more maneuverable, small and nimble, and you can actually see most things around you.
But then every time I get back on my first car ride I'm greeted with an absolute monstrosity of a vehicle. Even the average sedan feels gargantuan. Due to this people can't realistically see very well behind them. Never mind the fact that most cars the rear windshield isn't even that large anymore, and in some vehicles head checks don't even work well because the columns are right in your view.
I understand some of this is in the name of "safety", but realistically it feels like it trading one safety measure - safety for the people inside the vehicle - at the expense of another - those outside the vehicle.
The reason this law exists is because small children (e.g 3ft tall) were getting run over.
Seriously, go put a large suitcase immediately behind your rear bumper and try to see it without a camera. You can't.
Typically when you are reversing and there is likely to be something sat behind your vehicle (like a child or a pet). You are parked. You can you know look before you get in the car.
If you have parking sensors it will alert you to something walking behind you anyway.
The point being made is there are way to deal with this without the need for a rear camera.
This is why we have seat belts instead of telling people "you idiot you should have used the brakes!"
The point being made is that many of these things can be mitigated by better driver training or driver aids which are much simpler & cheaper (I am likely to fit parking sensors in my older cars, kits are cheap).
Oh, well, if it's that easy! Just retrain 1.2 billion people, some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably.
They have been mandating that in most UK countries for decades and it is definitely one of the reasons why roads are safer now.
> Some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably
Your true colours finally show. All the people are too stupid to learn how to do anything. BTW this is called the "Bigotry of low expectations".
All? No. Some? Absolutely. Five minutes on the road demonstrates it.
If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)
Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.
So you accept that better driving training would be better.
> If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)
As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they.
If you implement better driver training. Then newer driver have to do that training. So over the overall minimum standard improves.
A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard. It is a band-aid over a bigger problem.
> Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.
Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.
Oh, certainly! But it needn't be exclusive. (And "teach people better" is a lot harder than running a wire to a $30 camera.)
> As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they.
They drive far, far too long on average. I'd love to see an annual requirement to pass a driving test over 60, but… old people vote.
> A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard.
Sure. It improves the "backing up" bit only.
> Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.
Both are safety mitigations, for different aspects of driving.
I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.
But earlier you were pretending that it was the case. Interesting.
Do you not remember?
> I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.
Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera, but won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law in other vehicles?
I am not sure what to make of this statement.
Hardly. Just that "teach people" is tough, expensive, and time consuming. "Install a $30 device" is not. (In your now flagged last-last-last reply to me, you advocated for PSAs. As we all know, they worked great to stop texting while driving!)
> Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera and the hummer won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law.
I'm saying I'm glad the Hummers now have backup cameras, because they sure as shit can't see me with the windows/mirrors.
This remains entirely true. That's part of why it's tough, expensive, and time consuming. People do dumb things. Much of safety is figuring out ways to lessen opportunities to do so, and mitigating damage when they manage it.
See, for example, aviation/medical safety, which take the approach that individuals making mistakes is an indictment of the system that permitted that mistake to occur. We engineer them away, as much as possible, with pretty great success overall.
> I knew that. I thought I deliberately misinterpret the sentence so you would be forced to clarify. You did to me several times in the other thread.
No, I still wanna know how you stop time between checking behind your car and getting in, starting it up, and backing out, so no kid/pet/whatever can run behind it in those 10-15 seconds.
You can.
And then the kid/pet moves. They do that.
Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!
Yes, like a backup camera.
> Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!
The number who will is well above zero.
(This critique also applies to your proposed mitigations, yes?)
Well you've just twisted what I said because you are getting angry. So we will leave it there.
Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?
> you are getting angry
If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.
You knew I was referring to other methods mitigation the risk and decided to get a quick jab in at me. That was disingenuous. I don't appreciate it.
> Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?
Driver awareness can be done through other means than re-training.
> If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.
I never said that and obviously don't believe that. Funny how at the start of this reply you were pretending you weren't engaging in that behaviour. I wouldn't bother replying, you won't get another one.
Yes, I do. And I'm wondering why this one doesn't count.
> Driver awareness can be done through other means that re-training.
Such as?
(Ironically, the serious answer to this is "stuff like backup cameras". Which improve driver awareness when backing.)
> I never said that and obviously don't believe that.
You: "However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head."
How do you use those two techniques to see things in the blind spot behind the bumper without its being transparent?
Solve the problem completely or else admit that it's just for twits who can't parallel park.
That's just simply not how safety engineering works. Safety features mitigate risk, none of them solve it.
Yes, I will force you to have automatic emergency breaking in your Model T hotrod. Yes, you will be mad. Yes, the road will be a lot safer. No I don't care about your boomer rage about technology. No you don't want to live with India tier road laws/standards - even if - and especially if - you think you do!
I love my camera but I've noticed that I tend to look around less, which is bad because a camera doesn't cover everything.
ABS is a no brainer. So is ASR.
TPMS is awesome coz face it, I have never and will never regularly check my tire pressure. Remember how they taught you to check the oil regularly? Who ever did that?
I want real knobs so I don't have to look away from the road and do climate controls and radio by feel on the side. Much safer.
But automatic braking is another one of those two edged swords. I almost had a car behind me crash into me recently because the car in front of me decided to abruptly slow down and turn left. I reacted and went slightly to the right to get around and the car in front of me was turning further away as well. But then the dang emergency breaking system hit the brakes and startled me. For a second I couldn't do anything then I hit the brakes too until a second later I realized it was BS and the car behind me was getting awfully close real fast and I instead hit the gas.
These systems are still quite bad in judging objects that go left-right or opposite. The cruise control slows down immensely for a car on front of me taking an exit for no reason. And on the other hand it reacts way too late if another car suddenly switches into your lane when you're about to overtake them. And that's for different cars from different manufacturers and different model years so I doubt it's a unique experience.
It's insane how normalized terrible driving is. I don't even mean following the law at this point. It's much more basic than that and applies to every vehicle in every context. You must drive in such a way to be able to stop in time if the vehicle in front of you decides to apply max braking. This is dictated by the laws of the universe we exist in, not by some rule arbitrarily decided by humans.
Believe it or not, there were a lot of good arguments against seatbelts. And they were genuinely believed. And they were popular. And, they are now well past extinct.
I would rather live with India tier roads than <wherever you're from> tier opinions.
Even consumers voted with their pocketbooks in favor of this towards the end given the failure of the Nissa Versa and the Toyota Yaris in the American and Canadian market.
Also, there's a reason those $15K Toyotas are sold in Thailand and India, and not in Japan - they don't even meet safety standards in Toyota's home country.
Automotive companies like Toyota create different platforms based on the kind of market. All emerging markets use the IMV [0] platform except China, which has it's own separate platform because of China's JV and ToT requirement.
Ofc, HN skews towards gearheads and people who seem to have been born in the 1960s-80s, so it won't have great reception.
Fantasy cope, you can't even force emissions testing in most counties.
Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights.
All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.
>I can put it one that is better than the factory one for a cheaper price
As someone who used to be involved in the car audio competition scene, those days are long gone. Modern sounds systems are great, and tightly integrated into the A/V system.
>the sensor that tells you if you have a flat tire
The sensor will tell you when there's a rapid drop in pressure. You won't notice the flat until you're near driving on the rim.
>the emergency call button (while everyone has a mobile phone these days), automatic regulating seats (pulling a lever is too much difficult), dual zone clima control (it's the same space in the same car, why I would want to set 2 different temperatures?)
Old man yells at great features.
>they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...
Yeah, they provide roadside assistance. Because changing your tire on the side of the road is dangerous (as is driving on the donut).
Plenty of used jalopies out there for you.
As is waiting on the side of the highway for an hour (possibly in the winter, possibly in the dark) until AAA arrives. Also, allowing you to pay for roadside assistance isn't the same as "providing" it.
I recently pulled out of a business and the "low tire pressure light" turned on right away. "Hmm?" My next stop was 1/4 mile away, and it still felt okay. At the next parking lot I checked all the tires with my gauge and found one was 10psi low. On closer inspection the nail was right on top. Sure enough I'd picked up a little nail. It was a slow leak, and I wouldn't have heard the hiss. If not for the sensor I might not have noticed I'd gotten a flat until I got on the freeway.
PSA: Check your spare's air pressure. Mine was supposed to be 60psi. It had 40psi, which was good enough to get me to the tire store. I checked the spare when I got home - the tire repair crew had bumped it up to 55psi.
My dad was leaving on a trip recently. Because 'spare tire psi' was on my mind I checked his spare - it was only 25psi.
Everything else is super basic. There's a reason some of the earliest vehicles were EVs.
What should it do when the throttle pedal goes from 0 to 99 percent? That's likely an electrical issue, not a driver command to plow through the school zone. I could probably think of a dozen such scenarios, and the true number is probably in the hundreds. They all have to be proofed mathematically. With redundancy.
Out of eye, out of mind.
> What should it do when the throttle pedal goes from 0 to 99 percent?
How fast? 0->99% in 1 second is likely the user gunning it. 0 to 99 percent in a millisecond is likely a fault. In either case, the simplest solution is a capacitor in-between the signal and throttle. Doesn't need to be particularly beefy to get the job done.
The problem is you are thinking about this as a software problem when it's an electrical problem. There are a lot of electrical components that have instantaneous response times, well known curves, and perform exactly the jobs you'd want faster than what you can do with software.
You want to minimize the amount of software between the accelerator and the motor precisely because you want to make the car as responsive as possible. Putting software in the middle creates delays and needs for very complex real time software and more expensive components.
The gas pedal on an EV isn't connected to a passive rheostat gating the entire power output of the vehicle.
It's a low-voltage sensor. A capacitor can swallow a transient of a 0.1v signal bursting to 5v for ten milliseconds, and then software converts it into whatever "sport mode acceleration curve" the marketing department calls for.
I can't find the actual circuitry, but I'd not be surprised if that was what the EV1 did in the 90s.
Software adds flexibility, it isn't a necessity.
> There is fundamentally no difference between a golf car and an electric car other than a higher top speed and more powerful motor.
What's the fundamentally different principle that the battery operates on?
Rather than just say "nuh uh". Educate me and other commenters on where the differences lay.
Because honestly, I think you're the ignorant one. You think because they are a different shape they have different operating principles.
There are differences, obviously, a golf carts doesn't need airbags, HVAC, or crumple zones. However, when it comes to the drive train, about the only fundamental difference is that BEVs have bigger motors and bigger batteries.
There's a reason average people have been able to convert their ICE vehicles into BEVs. It's that the most complex part is storing the batteries and attaching the motor.
But, my argument is that EVs aren't complex. I could even grant your 2x number for safety measure and you'd still end up with a much simpler device than you can pull off with a comparable ICE engine.
I'd also point out that a lot of the parts are already "off the shelf".
There's a reason we saw a slew of pop-up BEV manufacturers all at once. It's because the manufacturing complexity is simply a lot lower than it is for an ICE line. There are far fewer parts, far less complex parts, and the parts are more readily available.
I do have some beef with the prices of these electronic gadgets in the car. 300€ price for a new sensor or something similar? Sensor costs are usually a single digit or below. Somehow vendors found a way to inflate that price and this is destroying the repairability.
To save you all the trouble of all I went through, it was fun debugging mechanical stuff, but ultimately there is no "self-reliant car owner"
It all comes down to tools and parts. You need easy access to a lot of both or else you are limited to extremely ugly temporary fixes which amount to super gluing your engine back together.
On our overland trip, when we had an issue, it turned out impossible to fix without a massive lift and air tools, so all my years prep was essentially reduced to having a few extra words I could tell the actual mechanic capable of performing the fix.
That is valuable as well, in some places car mechanics could be eager to let's say make repairs more costly than needed
I imagine a car is x100 worse
My current toolbox for the car is:
- Socket set (£50 halfords)
- Spanners (I already had these I guess £20-30)
- Allen Keys (£5)
- Several different types of Cir-clip pliers (£20-40)
- A battery powered soldering iron (£50-100). I have no mains power where I work on the vehicle.
- A lighter (£1)
- Mole-grips (£10-15)
- Axel Stands (£50)
- A Jack. (£100)
- Fuse Pullers (£3)
- Tub of Grease / Copper Grease (£15)
- Toolbox (£10)
- Stubby Screwdrivers (£10)
Changing any of the bearings
Tuning the spokes on the wheels
Changing the cog
All require special tools that cost more than 45 pounds
Only the several wrenches, Allen keys (because none are the same size), chain break and tire-changing plungers cost less
Every nut and every screw has a different size. It's madness
We are rare, but we exist. Prior to moving on from it due to an unrelated injury, for the decade prior I did all my own work including numerous engine swaps on my vehicles.
However, this is because as noted, I had the tools and parts. I had all the spanners and sockets I needed, easy access to parts via wreckers and parts networks, and had my own engine crane and stands. My vehicle of choice for most of that time was 2x 1987 Toyota MR2 AW11's.
I mostly got into it because it was my "non computing" hobby for the most part. And for the time I spent engaged in it, I really enjoyed it.
With a lot of swearing and heaps of scrap metal to find the right sized scrap you can will power it out I promise.
All you really need is the internet. China tools via Amazon are "fine".
I needed safety wire pliers to assemble some brake rotors. The metal in the ones I got on Amazon was softer than the metal wire they came with such that the cutting edges got little wire-sized dents in them and increasingly useless the farther I got along in the job.
Returned those afterward. Junk.
But there’s other stuff I’ve gotten from RANDOMLETTERS Amazon that’s actually holding up “ok.”
Also, Harbor Freight is a better source of ok/fine tools where you don’t need quotes around those words.
-replace cabin air filter -check for even tread wear -top up the wiper fluid -replace the windshield wipers -take off a wheel and look for tears in rubber bushings or grease leaking from seals. -replace anything broken like switches, trim pieces, etc.
Assuming it’s a gas car: -replace engine air filter -inspect spark plugs -check fluid levels: brake fluid, engine oil, coolant -check 12V battery voltage with the engine off and also running -change the oil
I'm an early(ish) Millennial woman from the suburbs, from a family with no meaningful mechanical knowledge or training of any kind, and I've done most of these things.
I would have considered myself pretty ignorant about cars prior to reading your comment. Thanks for shifting my perspective to seeing myself as having at least a useful basic familiarity with things!
ICE's are conceptually pretty simple. Anyone who has built a computer should be able to do basic car maintenance if they want to. The electronics is what makes newer cars more complicated, and I assume EVs even more so.
A lot of Americans become very low IQ in the context of any car related financial decisions. Off loading their vehicles is one of the classic examples of this. Do NOT sell to your dealer. Carvana is the only exception and only because you can easily offload messed up cars to them without disclosing it.
The other thing is that it's not always low IQ, but many people value simplicity. Do I want to show a car, deal with cashiers check fraud, flakey people, etc... or do I want money literally right now? I've sold cars to CarMax and I've sold cars and boats privately. The private price I think I can get has to be considerably more than what I can get with zero hassle.
It’s ridiculously easy to look up a part number, order it online from wherever is most convenient, and follow the steps in the manual to replace it.
Most parts could only come from Tesla, including the Bilstein struts (a part number Bilstein refuses to sell to anyone but Tesla). $900 per corner.
USB port between the console? $400. I found a used one on eBay, fortunately.
When the wheel rotation sensor receiver went bad, it cost $2500 for them to install and reprogram the replacement, because they "upgraded" to a different mfr. When that one started to go bad (water ingress, which wasn't cured by the new part), I sold the car and said good riddance.
Your friend is right IMO. Do something simple first. Like a broken piece of trim, replace a light bulb, change the wiper blades yourself and build yourself up. I had repaired bicycles/motorcycles before hand.
Past that. I literally go on YouTube and watch someone do the task I intend on doing. I have the service manual downloaded for the car (people dump scans of the manuals online as PDFs) and a Haynes Manual (about £20).
Over the last 6 months. I've gone from barely being able to change the wiper blades to replacing a turbo.
I bought an older vehicle(s) that have a good aftermarket parts market and are known to be easy to work on. The simpler / less refined the car is the easier it is to work on.
The YT video for changing my cars' front light bulbs was less than two minutes. After half an hour and a lot of scratches / bruises, I thought I got it done. Started the car, checked the light goes on and off. Scrub hands from dust and dirt, be happy.
Mandatory inspection two months later found out that it was pointing so badly off that their targeting device could not even get a reading. In other words, I had been blinding oncoming traffic. Car didn't pass inspection, I was defeated, and took it to the mechanic.
He also spent twenty to thirty minutes on readjusting the bulb, before it was done and up to spec. It costed only 15 euro, though, as they also expected it to be a 30 second operation.
I guess my point is, don't get discouraged when things don't work immediately, or don't work exactly like a manual / video makes you think. Often it's a learning experience, and while those can be fun, they also sometimes are very much not.
(I'm also a complete novice, and not particularly enjoying the experience, just not affluent enough to pay for all of the maintenance work.)
The main problem I ran into was
- Parts that were marked as compatible that were absolute rubbish. You would there is little difference between one brand of wiper arm and another. Apparently not!
- It takes 2 days to order a part from the internet. The nearest part supplier is a 30-40 mile drive. So if you forget to order a part you are either waiting another 2 days or you have a 2 hour drive.
As a result. I ended up rebuying all the parts about 2 times and I should have gone to a local parts dealer where they give you either Genuine, OEM or quality aftermarket. The thing is that I compared the genuine parts that did work with the ones I bought from ebay and visually there is little difference. So now I only buy Genuine, OEM or quality aftermarket.
It is all part of the learning experience. Even though at the time it was frustrating.
Most modern cars blind oncoming traffic anyway. Either that or 20%+ of morons riding around with high beams and blue/purple LED retrofits.
You may have been defeated by the inspection, but the battle for headlight brightness/alignment was lost years ago.
Or maybe their "alignment" tool was a scam you got robbed of 15 euros?
With any DIY car repair, you always run the risk of things like this, where you don't-know-what-you-don't-know. But it's still worth the ride and the lesson, imo.
When I was first driving I went through how to change a wheel with my dad and also brake blocks, oil changes that kind of thing. Even my dad who has rebuilt engines from scratch normally goes to the mechanic for everything now.
YouTube is kind of shit for diagnosis, though. Most of the videos just gloss over it. “Hey guys! So, my fuel pump is dead, so here’s a video on how to replace it!” Ok, thanks, but how did you figure out it was the fuel pump? Not a lot of YouTube content along those lines.
Their videos are between 20-60 minutes and run through the general process of going from no-crank-no-start to running, which is basically the same for all gas-powered cars. Diesels are a little different.
and add an LS drivetrain.
> All Caterham models are imported as rolling chassis. They are street legal in the U.S. under EPA kit-car regulations and can be registered through processes specific to individual states.
source https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2015-caterham-seven-360-sta...
I wonder if there's a market for building something purely utilitarian, like a little hatchback or something, as a kit vehicle - with the express purpose of learning a lot of automotive principles along the way.
Repairing a car these days is not the same as it used to be but I would start with the basics: maintenance items. As you mentioned, changing a tire is a good first step as it will teach you how to secure and jack up a car *safely*. You should also get familiar with tire pressure, acceptable tread wear and tire rotation. Once the tire is off you'll see the brakes and the suspension components. Disc brake pads are simple to change and a good next step: two bolts, caliper slides off, pop out pads, compress piston, insert new pads, slide and bolt back on, done. Under the hood, there are a few educational and simple maintenance items like checking and changing your: air filter, oil and oil filter, brake fluid reservoir, coolant level, and power steering fluid. The above items are like 90%+ of all garage visits.
These items are all part of various subsystems which make up a car so as you work your way through you will get a feel of what things do. With experience you'll be comfortable with popping the hood and getting your hands greasy. I also want to mention that you can and will get hurt, scrapes, small cuts and bruises are not uncommon, it's rough work at times. Take your time, be safe, wear ppe, and work with someone if you can.
Get to understand the internals and then dive into specifics...
Scanning for codes is useful too, every manufacturer has their own scan tool. For example BMW has ISTA+, Ford has Forscan.
I think that as right to repair laws become more prevalent, there will be more information generally available.
You might not know about Harbor Freight jackstands being far overrated and thus kill yourself by assuming that they will hold their rated load.
You almost certainly cannot find more than some youtube videos about how to do things on your post 2015 vehicle. Haines and other repair manual companies don't exist or on life support and haven't made a new guide since 2020 at the latest.
The average entry level talent, i.e. the folks at Jiffy Lube/Vavoline, are often doing things so wrong that it'd be better to never try to "learn" in an environment where they will impact and strip your oil plug, up-sell grandmas with fake dirty filters and "blinker fluid" stories, etc.
If you don't have an actual experienced mechanic to learn from (i.e. someone who can strip and put back together an engine and it runs perfectly) - don't even bother! I'm not joking and I'm exactly like you in that I want to learn to work on cars! But I've learned that the tactics that allow you to get to making 300K a year in tech without much of being taught by other people do NOT work with cars. You WILL need to socialize with a master mechanic. There's no other way.
oh btw - most of the stuff like oil and car related gunk that will touch you when you work on cars is TOXIC AS HELL. Same with what you will breathe (most people don't mask when they should in a garage and they often don't ventilate too).
Aside from that, get a clunker or, even better, a motorcycle to work on (if they float your boat, of course). Motorcycles are wonderful because everything is easy to reach, light and usually kinda sexy for the year and price.
Again, don't worry too much. You can rebuild an engine if you have the tools and follow the manual. It's all just following steps. Just don't get clever if you're lacking a tool or something. Take a break, get what you need, don't start doing "clever" things because you feel like it's life and death to finish something right this moment, and you'll be good.
Edit: Oh yeah, and a welding course is probably a good idea down the road. I keep delaying it, but it'd be useful, and it'll also surely be kind of fun.
After that, look up your maintenance schedule, pick a job, then go figure out if you can.
When you get into bigger jobs, have a tow company and shop ready in case you run into problems. Mobile mechanics may also be an option.
I've been lusting over the ioniq 5 for a couple of years but I'm just thinking, in 10 years time I'll be knee deep in your last paragraph ... I like long lasting cars
All the newer cars feel like iPods with wheels and the driving experience is horrible. I am not interested in them.
Here's my more recent fixes:
-----------------------------------
1. The fuel pipe saga.
Fuel pipe from pump (tank) to engine is a single, molded, hard-plastic and inflexible pipe. Connecting it to new quick release attachments on either end requires a heat gun. At the factory they can heat-shrink the connectors onto the pipes as there is no fuel in the car.
When my quick-release snapped off[1] while I was replacing the fuel pump, dealer quoted my ZAR17,500 for a replacement pipe. To actually install it would require removing everything under the car because it is inflexible and molded to the shape of the car.
Older cars had less efficient (i.e. thicker OD pipes with the same ID) fuel pipes, but they were flexible and easy to route. They used standard clamps which are available for cents right now. The advantage of the newer pipes is that:
a) Cheaper to install (done by robots), and
b) With the quick release joiner, easy for a robot to snap on the connections on either end.
With the older, cheaper and repairable flexible pipes, the manufacturing process required a human. The more expensive pipes result in a cheaper-to-assemble car, even if the BOM is higher.
-----------------------------------
2. Heater blower motor refusing to come on. The AC units (including heater and blower motor) are controlled by low-current signals. This lets the unit have a rotary encoder when the human wants to adjust blower speed manually while still allowing the microcontroller to adjust blower speed when the user simply sets a target temperature.
This requires an additional current-splitter to limit the current to the blower motor (controlling the speed) while maintaining the voltage. When the blower is spinning at a low speed current is dumped into a heat sink and the blower gets very little current. At high speed no current needs to be dumped and the blower can spin at full speed.
My current limiter melted. This required a manufacturer-only replacement, as the digital signals controlling it are completely opaque to the technician (me) fixing the car.[2] Older cars without the rotary encoder had physical switches that switched the blower motor between one of 5 output speeds. Anything in the older system that broke can be replaced by standard switches and relays.
Anything, even the smallest component, in the newer HVAC system that breaks means you have to hope like hell that the manufacturer is still making parts for the car.
In this scenario, a 1995 mid-range car is going to outlive a 2025 mid-range sedan.
-----------------------------------
3. Engine and transmissions!
This is the big one: a 2015 car that, after 20 years, has a worn out slushbox, might have to be thrown away! Why? Because if you are unable to replace the clutches and springs and other parts inside the slushbox due to lack of parts availability, you can't simply swap in a new one, or replace it with a manual - the car is going to throw up a dozen diagnostic codes and probably won't even start.
That 1995 mid-range car? The engine and transmission are not coded to work with each other only. Swap in a Toyota v6 engine+transmission into a broke-ass Ford? Sure, why not?
Same with the radio. In older cars the radio was a swappable unit with standard sizes. In new cars the infotainment system is rarely a regular shape, and in those cars where it is nothing but a screen, it's still hooked into the CAN bus to deliver warnings!
You can upgrade your 1995 mid-range car to use the latest in infotainment technology (maps, voice commands, etc) by simply buying a head unit off Amazon. You cannot upgrade your top-off-the-range Range Rover, Mercedes Benz or Audi just 4 years after purchase!
-----------------------------------
My point is this: the older cars can, with simple mechanical and electro-mechanical non-manufacturer parts, effectively run until humanity just doesn't have fuel anymore. The newer cars will, once the manufacturer stops producing parts for them, have to be scrapped.
There is little incentive for the manufacturer to continue producing parts for a 10-year old car, and that gets even smaller as the car ages.
In fact, I completely expect, as time goes on, that manufacturers would (if they haven't started already) code each component to the VIN or secret key so that parts from a breakers yard won't run in any other car even if it's the same model.
Their preference is: When the radio breaks, it's time to buy a new car or live without a radio.
--------------------
[1] Plastic that over time got brittle.
[2] With a lot of work and lugging my ancient 'scope to the car, I could have worked out what signals were being sent (if digital; analogue would have been easier of course, requiring only a multimeter), designed a circuit around a MOSFET or similar and used a tiny microcontroller to read the signals and control the current.
I think a large part of the problem is that a sort of very scientific "modify a single variable at a time" type of engineering culture permeated academia a couple decades ago and now we're reaping what we sow.
The sort of practical "I snipped this corner so now they pack neatly four to a box from the supplier and I altered that curve so now there's clearance for more types of wrenches around the bolt head and I smoothed out the rib shape for die longevity and in doing all that I reduced the mass by 6.5%" type stuff that engineering culture used to look up to has been replaced with KPI chasing "You told me to reduce mass by 6% and I reduced mass by 7%, 2nd and 3rd order consequences be damned" engineering culture that used to be fairly confined to the rich half of a certain continent is now what is worshipped.
And likewise you get spiraling complexity because the only thing holding it back is the bean counters (when doing so is a priority) whereas before there was kind of natural restraint keeping it back on both sides. So as they go around updating platforms and models and sub-assemblies as whatnot the compliance ratchets up, unless the mandate at the time is to reduce it.
If you were to take an older, simple to understand car, and add all of the modern features through aftermarket addons, you would end up with a car that is no longer simple to understand. They were simple to understand, because the feature set was simple compared to a modern car. (And I miss them dearly - can't wait to retire to find the time to find that love again!)
But it's worth noting that modern traction-control makes life wildly safer for the average driver up north. I was driving an icy Vermont ski road with winter tires, but (because I hadn't yet fixed the sensor) no traction control. There were 2 pretty terrifying moments and I'm an experienced driver. Your average American can't even drive manual, there's no way they're compensating for low-traction winter mountain roads properly in all cases. I'd rank it more critical than any of the backup camera, TPMS or FCW features, and maybe on par with ABS for those of us in cold areas.
Now if I lived in LA, I'd just hold down the "DTC" button to disable traction control on bootup and forget about it.
It's really easy to have a sensor failure that indicates a major repair is needed, when the actual issue is the $1 sensor.
The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand.
e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what you would find in a door bell and finding faults is normally just tracing wires and using a multi-meter. I had issues with the brake lights / reverse lights not working, the issue turned out that the spade like connector in the fuse box was pushed through and was making partial contact. Price to fix this was £0.
EDIT: Just remembered this isn't accurate. I had to buy a new reverse light. The entire reverse light assembly was ~£20. So the price to fix was about £20. The light assembly itself was like a big bicycle light.
My newer car needs a OB-II scanner to diagnose anything with a phone app. While this is arguably quicker it can be misleading. Sometimes it will be telling you that something is malfunctioning but it is really the sensor itself. These sensors are £200-£300 a piece. Replacing 4 glow plug sensors cost me £800. I was paying essentially to make the "you must service your engine" light to go away. There was nothing wrong with engine itself.