Nonsense Thread

[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.

[2mAn]

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

Buncha VAGs over there...

[roguetoaster]

Seems like an aftermarket opportunity to retrofit functional thermostats.

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.

[MrBurgundy]

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

[Northern]

I don't like electric cars, but whether I'd entertain owning one varies.

I think with manufacturers other than tesla producing electric cars now, it's possible to get one that isn't a shitbox with a huge price tag, but nobody can do the range that tesla can, probably for the same reason.

Maybe a small/cheap/electric shitbox makes sense for commuting if the range works, but only if it directly replaces another vehicle.
For me, that means the mini or the e30, which isn't happening.

I'd only be interested in some sort of massive cushy family SUV thing, but the range/$/vehicle doesn't exist.
PHEVs are kind of cool if you buy new, but hard to predict reliability/life expectancy, and new interest rates aren't what they used to be.

Used car values seem to be starting to soften, which hopefully dominoes into the new car market as well.

[2mAn]

Honestly, if you want a commuter to save money with.. Get a 2006 Jetta TDI... Park it on the street, go to WaWa and get super tech gallons of oil for 4 dollars and put 500k miles on it.

I'm not about all the tech, I can drive my own car and put a Bluetooth head unit in and save myself 35k..

[MrBurgundy]

Def makes sense to get as a throw away commuter for some, but I can see why not being able to charge at home kinda ruins it all...

My neighbor bought a model 3 in 2020 and now has a little one on the way, so he inquired about trading his 3 in for Y and Tesla offered 15k for a car with 35k on the clock LOL

They sell for WAY more than that on the used market, but I think it's hilarious that Tesla lowballed that hard.

Honestly, if you want a commuter to save money with.. Get a 2003 camry... Park it on the street, go to walmart and get super tech gallons of oil for 4 dollars and put 500k miles on it.

I'm not about all the tech, I can drive my own car and put a Bluetooth head unit in and save myself 35k..

Honestly, buying anything new for a commuter IMO is just stupid.. Spend money on something you'll actually enjoy.

[McGyver]

Honestly, I like the idea of EVs. I've driven several Tesla Model 3 and Polestar 2 rentals. I've also driven the rest of the standard rental fleet (Turbo4 Mustang and Camaro, C300, various Volvos, Toyota, Chevy, Kia, Honda, Subaru). The EVs were on par with the rest, maybe even had some better tech for long highway drives. My only gripe is with the charging network. I really like Tesla fast chargers, I get really annoyed at slow non-tesla Level 3 chargers. It's also annoying that I'm limited to Tesla or Everything Else for charging.

I don't drive that often, but I could see getting an EV for daily driving or road trips so the e30 is saved for fun stuff. The only issue for me is that I live in a city and my single car garage is reserved for the e30 or car work, so I wouldn't be able to charge at home and I don't like the idea of having to take the car to get charged (even though its about the same time as stopping for gas).