Nonsense Thread

[rturbo 930]

My Jetta is a 2014, so looks like I'm good. My Mom's 2021 GLI not so much. Guess we'll see if it becomes an issue.

I think I've pretty much decided I'm done with new cars. My Jetta has been pretty solid, but the few things that it's needed have been a pain in the ass. Even something as simple as a headlight bulb is a pain in the ass to change. And everything is plastic. I think even the oil pans on the new VWs are plastic now. And plastic is of course known for its durability and longevity, right? I'm sure this will end well.

I don't know what I'll get when the Jetta needs to be replaced. Maybe something from the late 90s or early 2000s, but by that point cars had quite a bit of plastic in them, so I'm not sure that'd be such a good idea. I'm tempted to just get a bulletproof older MB, like a W114 or W123, but the diesels are insanely slow, and the gas engines get horrible fuel economy and aren't much faster.

[2mAn]

Have you seen how many coolers are in the new Turbo BMWs?

[MrBurgundy]

So VWs Audis and yes, Porsches with the 1.8T or 2.0T utilized this style of water pump after 2015

The past generation of TFSI engines from VW are actually.... *sighs* not bad engines. It uses the same belt driven water pump under the intake. Uses a tradition thermostat. This new one is stupid as fuck.

The cooling system is terrible on theses new turbo 4s from VAG. Hard plastic lines everywhere.. We all know what happens to those after so many heat cycles.

Were in an era of the gay version of HP wars..

Everyone is chasing that high MPG number while trying to pump up their HP numbers... That's why everything is turbo-ed

The new Mercedes cars that end with 300 use their new turbo 4 that uses air to water intercoolers... the intercooler is right in front of the drive belt, also a totally separate cooling system, so you got two pumps, two tanks ect ect

We're fucked

[varg]

and this is exactly why they are all going this way...

Matt Farah talked about this most recently on one of his Bentley (or was it a Roller) review. Basically when you get the ultra rich level all the analog controls come back.

Aww great now people are going to think I listen to farah I bring up the "screens are cheaper" thing, that guy annoys me. I've been saying this is a cost thing since the first teslas hit the market and really polarized people with their giant screens.

[2mAn]

As a side note, it's amazing how cheap electronic displays are compared to robust analog gauges.

and this is exactly why they are all going this way...

Matt Farah talked about this most recently on one of his Bentley (or was it a Roller) review. Basically when you get the ultra rich level all the analog controls come back.

[rturbo 930]

Well can't we just.. only spend money on the good brands? The ones that still work long term?

What brand would that be? Every modern car is so loaded up with plastic and electronics that pretty much all of them are going to be unrealistic cars to own long term (15+ years). There are no cars made today that are as durable as something like a Mercedes W123, or older BMWs.

[Panici]

Enthusiasts are such a small sliver of the buying public and a majority of car buyers do next to no research before buying new cars, I don't think there's any possible avenue we could take that would affect positive changes like making people want to get rid of electronic parking brakes, ridiculous electromechanical thermostats, bizarre engineering decisions like putting TTY hardware on wheel spindles. And then there's the ones that are present everywhere like actuators of all sorts having weak plastic gears and functional controls and gauges being replaced with touchscreens. The manufacturers love that last one, the screens. It's so incredibly cost advantageous to replace the cluster and controls with a screen and the general public (dumb) eats it up because it's "modern". Mr general public, when you see that gauge cluster and set of controls get replaced by a screen in your new luxury car, that wasn't a luxurious modern feature, that set of screens and mounts cost the manufacturer a fraction of what making a nice looking and reliable gauge cluster and set of physical controls would have cost them. They're laughing their way to the bank with that one.

Hit the nail on the head with this entire post.


As a side note, it's amazing how cheap electronic displays are compared to robust analog gauges.

I bought an entire Windows 10 tablet to run Tunerstudio for less then the cost of 2 analog VDO gauges.
Not only can I display everything from my standalone ecu, but also tune without needing a laptop.

The key point here is that I have full control of what is displayed, and I can (and often do) leave the tablet stored and run without it leaving me with the OEM gauges only. I HATE modern car screens that can't be turned off (or at least down to a very minimum brightness for night use)

It also looks like absolute shit in a modern classic interior, but I deemed it acceptable for my rough-around-the-edges Miata.

[varg]

Enthusiasts are such a small sliver of the buying public and a majority of car buyers do next to no research before buying new cars, I don't think there's any possible avenue we could take that would affect positive changes like making people want to get rid of electronic parking brakes, ridiculous electromechanical thermostats, bizarre engineering decisions like putting TTY hardware on wheel spindles. And then there's the ones that are present everywhere like actuators of all sorts having weak plastic gears and functional controls and gauges being replaced with touchscreens. The manufacturers love that last one, the screens. It's so incredibly cost advantageous to replace the cluster and controls with a screen and the general public (dumb) eats it up because it's "modern". Mr general public, when you see that gauge cluster and set of controls get replaced by a screen in your new luxury car, that wasn't a luxurious modern feature, that set of screens and mounts cost the manufacturer a fraction of what making a nice looking and reliable gauge cluster and set of physical controls would have cost them. They're laughing their way to the bank with that one.

[Chilezen]

Well can't we just.. only spend money on the good brands? The ones that still work long term?

[roguetoaster]

If only enthusiasts could rapidly pass on information to more general consumers about why these systems are bad and will cost them (and us in other ways) long term so that they wouldn't buy that product from day one.

Frankly, we are making our hobby more expensive, and how dare we.

[varg]

I have yet to see a single component design on any VAG product where I thought "nice," or "clever," or "well thought out." Generally it's only WTF were they thinking.

My only instance of "nice" with VAG was finding out just how tunable my friend's B8.5 S4 was with an overdriven supercharger using electronic boost control. Easy to make it pretty quick. However, the same car was burning out its parking brake actuators because of a bad module (WTF were they thinking), uses TTY hardware on the spindles just so that replacing the wheel bearing is harder (WTF were they thinking), is prone to pulley separation with the supercharger being driven by the rubber isolated part of the harmonic balancer (WTF were they thinking, hey wait BMW did this shit too driving accessories off the balancer), oh and the quick disconnects were a bitch as always when upgrading the intercooler system's heat exchanger. I'll never own a VAG car, not a single one of their cars interests me, aside from the ones I'll never be able to afford (the fast 911s and 4.0 cayman).

[rturbo 930]

What year A3 and when did they start using those thermostats?

Seeing failures like that only reinforces my distaste for new cars.

[MrBurgundy]

For real lol

Her car may have caught on fire if she didn't bring it in when she did.. 40k miles *insert skull emoji*

[Northern]

[khiobrien2]

So I had an A3 come in that was basically about to catch on fire.. It was smoking from under the intake and starting to overheat while running.

Audi/VW new thermostat tech uses a gear driven system to flow water, opposed to the standard thermo spring style that works lol.

So what we're seeing happen is the water starts to leak into the sealed off section where the control board resides and controls the servo motor. When the water enters there it shorts it out and keeps the gear closed and starts to generate tons of heat. By the time I got the intake off the therm was 300 degrees LOL

Untitled by Omar Mountain, on Flickr

Untitled by Omar Mountain, on Flickr

I am not even surprised.. modern VAG products are questionable at best. My mom had an new RS7 that she got rid of after 6 months because it had to be sent in for random electrical issues seven times in the first five months.