Nonsense Thread

[rturbo 930]

It's stuff like that that makes me want nothing whatsoever to do with new cars. The regulations are negatively impacting the design of the cars, they're too complicated, and increasingly too delicate, and also seemingly of a lower build quality, despite being overall more refined than cars of 30 years ago.

[varg]

It's a combination of things. Car companies don't care about longevity past warranty or serviceability, or how much time it takes you to replace the electromechanical thermostat. BMW financial services, toyota financial services, etc, that's the cash cow, new sales and the financing of those sales. The other thing is cost cutting/optimization. I deliberately steered clear of the automotive industry when starting my engineering career because I knew that a majority of the work now is just optimizing for production/cost cutting on boring normal cars I'd never want to drive. They're constantly optimizing designs and material choices for cost savings, getting as close as possible to the minimum cost part that lasts the warranty period. They aren't making oil pans and oil pump parts out of plastic, powering oil pumps with belts, and replacing controls and gauges with flat screens because those things are better.

My industry isn't perfect but at least I'm not working to actively ruin a hobby of mine.

[JasonWilson48]

I deliberately steered clear of the automotive industry when starting my engineering career because I knew that a majority of the work now is just optimizing for production/cost cutting on boring normal cars I'd never want to drive. They're constantly optimizing designs and material choices for cost savings, getting as close as possible to the minimum cost part that lasts the warranty period. They aren't making oil pans and oil pump parts out of plastic, powering oil pumps with belts, and replacing controls and gauges with flat screens because those things are better.

My industry isn't perfect but at least I'm not working to actively ruin a hobby of mine.

I had the same thought when I was younger and considered applying to be a salesman at a car dealership. I would be not be good at selling these cars because I wouldn't actually believe in the product I was selling them. I would have been trying to save the customer as much money as I could, and talked them out of the predatory financing and payment mentality. Probably would push all the old used cars as much as I could. Anyway, I became an engineer instead and my job is also not perfect, but not ruining my car hobby as well. Make enough money elsewhere to supplement what actually brings me joy.

[Northern]

I deliberately steered clear of the automotive industry when starting my engineering career because I knew that a majority of the work now is just optimizing for production/cost cutting on boring normal cars I'd never want to drive. They're constantly optimizing designs and material choices for cost savings, getting as close as possible to the minimum cost part that lasts the warranty period. They aren't making oil pans and oil pump parts out of plastic, powering oil pumps with belts, and replacing controls and gauges with flat screens because those things are better.

My industry isn't perfect but at least I'm not working to actively ruin a hobby of mine.

Same gurl.
Not that there's any Automotive sector work around here anyway, but when I did FSAE, some of the old Pittsburg team members were working for Ford and talking about how they basically designed christmas tree clips and were paid fuck all. They made it sound like when you got your P.Eng, your entire job became signing off on all the jank designs. The whole thing sounded fucking awful.

Happy to steer as clear of that shit as possible.

[MrBurgundy]

Something has to give with these new cars and how they're designed.

Even the reliable Japanese cars are becoming increasingly complex like their German counterparts.

Almost everything is turboed now. Even trucks... You can get a full-size truck with a turbo 4.

They're simping for EPA numbers. They will do anything for an extra .5 mpg.

At the same time they're adding all this extra weight via gay features and to compensate they're shaving weight from the engine by making everything out of plastic.

I had a 2017 Mercedes come in with a bad vacuum actuator for the waste gate. Mercedes doesn't sell it separately... 4k turbo and 1.5k install.

If it were sold separately the whole job probably would have been sub 400 bucks.

It's genuinely a shame

[econti]

I don't think it will. Firstly, emissions laws and the pursuit of economy are never ending.
But the bad reliability is in a sense self-serving. My low-tier conspiracy is that all the OEMs don't care about complexity and intentionally only sell stupid expensive components because they either make money on the parts if someone is dumb enough to pay for them, or it scares people off vehicles out of warranty so that they just buy a new one.
It's known that the vast majority of new cars are terribly unreliable, so people will only keep them for the warranty period. Oh, you don't want to pay for these outrageously expensive replacement items, but the car was great to drive? Perfect, let's just sell you a new one, roll that loan into a brand new something, and now you don't have to worry about it any more.

[MrBurgundy]

I don't think it will. Firstly, emissions laws and the pursuit of economy are never ending.
But the bad reliability is in a sense self-serving. My low-tier conspiracy is that all the OEMs don't care about complexity and intentionally only sell stupid expensive components because they either make money on the parts if someone is dumb enough to pay for them, or it scares people off vehicles out of warranty so that they just buy a new one.
It's known that the vast majority of new cars are terribly unreliable, so people will only keep them for the warranty period. Oh, you don't want to pay for these outrageously expensive replacement items, but the car was great to drive? Perfect, let's just sell you a new one, roll that loan into a brand new something, and now you don't have to worry about it any more.

Dealers now will quote people out the door thru service into the sales department.

New tactic I'm hearing about.

Don't want to foot the 5k bill? just put 5k down on a new car and that's it.

Payments for life. Will go well with your new 50 year mortgage

[McGyver]

I don't know, are new cars really less reliable?

I've got a 2014 335i and its been pretty much trouble-free. The 2nd gear syncro is dying, but that's not any different from the g260 in early e28s getting switched to a g265 for a year or two while Getrag beefed up the cheaper g260. Shit, didn't the e30 have a longer time limit on the timing belt until they started snapping and it was reduced?

[MrBurgundy]

I don't know, are new cars really less reliable?

I've got a 2014 335i and its been pretty much trouble-free. The 2nd gear syncro is dying, but that's not any different from the g260 in early e28s getting switched to a g265 for a year or two while Getrag beefed up the cheaper g260. Shit, didn't the e30 have a longer time limit on the timing belt until they started snapping and it was reduced?

Most costly problem we see here are the new electronic wastegate actuators, miles of hard line plastic cooling hoses, plastic engine covers (valve, timing oil, ect ect)

Now all these turbo cars have air to water intercoolers too, so you basically have two cooling systems to maintain.

The N55 in your BMW is IMO the last great engine BMW produced.

The n55 was developed in like 2008 or 9. Crazy to think that engine is essentially 17 years old

[McGyver]

Most costly problem we see here are the new electronic wastegate actuators, miles of hard line plastic cooling hoses, plastic engine covers (valve, timing oil, ect ect)

Now all these turbo cars have air to water intercoolers too, so you basically have two cooling systems to maintain.

The N55 in your BMW is IMO the last great engine BMW produced.

The n55 was developed in like 2008 or 9. Crazy to think that engine is essentially 17 years old

Yeah, the increased use of plastics really is a pain in the ass. I was shocked when the shop I worked for would replace m5x valve covers instead of just the gasket because the plastic warps. Then you have the coolant pipe under the intake on m5x engines that turns into a tootsie roll and blows out.

I would assume old cars are overengineered because that was the only way to ensure it would last to the end of the warranty. Modern computing allows us to value-engineer everything to the lowest cost for the warranty period. I'd say that most things hold up, but it's still interesting that cars don't lose more value out of warranty. If that happened, i would expect the initial price to be lower too.

All that being said, I have been pleasantly surprised with my f30. It's been a comfortable, quiet, and quick car for commuting and road trips. I've had to replace most/all of the cooling system, but I think that's fair for a 10 year old car with all original parts. I have minor oil seeping that all straight six's have, and of course coils and plugs at 100k miles.

[varg]

I don't know, are new cars really less reliable?

I don't think they're necessarily less reliable in the short term, I think many are likely to reach the point of beyond economical repair earlier than they used to. Like when the submerged oil pump belt fails and the engine seizes, the screen that controls everything in the car dies and they are NLA new and unobtanium used, the plastic tanked air to water intercooler leaks and rusts the bores or hydrolocks the engine, the CVT inevitably craps out, the turbo on the now depreciated car fails and parts+labor are as much as the car is worth, a sunroof leak kills a cluster of modules, a chunk of intake port carbon from neglected DI engine cleaning breaks off and causes valve to meet piston, that sort of thing. There are also the issues with modern car paint which seems to be as bad as it ever was and more expensive than ever to get re-done.

[McGyver]

varg, Yeah, that's kind of my point. It seems like new car warranties are longer than ever. New fit/finish is better than ever. Everything seems to just work out of the box. There is the potential for a single part to total the whole car, but I also feel like we got used to cars lasting longer and maybe that's just shortening again. I feel like 80s and 90s cars were common in the mid 2000s (~20ish years old), but there weren't many cars being daily driven from the 70s (~30 years old). It seems like 90s cars are still on the road (~30 years old), but cars from the 2000s and 2010s might get scrapped for some small failed part. To me, the longevity of 80s and 90s cars seems more like an outlier than the 10-20 year life of more modern cars.

[rturbo 930]

I don't think they're necessarily less reliable in the short term, I think many are likely to reach the point of beyond economical repair earlier than they used to. Like when the submerged oil pump belt fails and the engine seizes, the screen that controls everything in the car dies and they are NLA new and unobtanium used, the plastic tanked air to water intercooler leaks and rusts the bores or hydrolocks the engine, the CVT inevitably craps out, the turbo on the now depreciated car fails and parts+labor are as much as the car is worth, a sunroof leak kills a cluster of modules, a chunk of intake port carbon from neglected DI engine cleaning breaks off and causes valve to meet piston, that sort of thing. There are also the issues with modern car paint which seems to be as bad as it ever was and more expensive than ever to get re-done.

I imagine the energy that goes into building these cars is higher than ever, only to have a car with a shortened lifespan due to its complexity and non-repairable design. But at least it gets 30mpg to save the planet, right?

varg, Yeah, that's kind of my point. It seems like new car warranties are longer than ever. New fit/finish is better than ever. Everything seems to just work out of the box. There is the potential for a single part to total the whole car, but I also feel like we got used to cars lasting longer and maybe that's just shortening again. I feel like 80s and 90s cars were common in the mid 2000s (~20ish years old), but there weren't many cars being daily driven from the 70s (~30 years old). It seems like 90s cars are still on the road (~30 years old), but cars from the 2000s and 2010s might get scrapped for some small failed part. To me, the longevity of 80s and 90s cars seems more like an outlier than the 10-20 year life of more modern cars.

The difference is that before the 80s, we didn't know how to make a car that lasts. Now we do, we simply choose not to. And we could probably refine those 80s and 90s cars to last even longer with today's tech.