do you guys ever bother to read?
"they can operate for over 1000 hours, at the highest temperature the engine can produce, with 99.9999% probability that they will remain within spec."
that's not 1000 hours of plodding around town, that's 1000 hours of fully loaded w.o.t.
and 1000 hours is 2:45 hours per day, every day, no vacations, no days off. or at 50mph, that's 50,000 miles. a surprisingly large amount of driving for a single year, whichever way you slice it.
absolutely.
the "solution" would be driver ed. and that's a HUGE waste of time for most people.
you don't need to know what the pressure is, only whether it's outside spec.
Probably, but so is much of the rest of the car.
I strongly recommend reading Cyril Kornbluth's story _The Marching Morons_.
--scott
The original claim was that most people can't maintain their cars halfway decently.
And yet, the sales of cars seems to be through the roof--even high end cars.
Are you saying that, for example, Lexus cars are a complete waste of money? 'Cuz, those same people who aren't maintaining their cars are buying Lexus cars hand over fist.
No absolutely not.
The whole basis of your arguments is flawed. Your premise is that the maintenance people at dealerships don't know how to interpret the readings on a gauge and they are tearing engines apart that don't need it because of their inability to properly interpret a gauge.
The fact is that when the idiot light comes on for low oil pressure, It is almost always the case that this was preceded by a period of time when the oil pressure was lower than normal. Might even be a long time. The guy who has an oil related failure at 70K miles has a good case for a warranty claim if he has registered complaints that his gauge has been reading low since 30K miles. The guy who has an idiot light is just SOL. So yes it is about avoiding warranty claims, but its not about avoiding false claims its about avoiding legitimate warranty claims. The same is true of temp gauge. A gauge (that works correctly) will give you warning long long before there is a real problem.
Warranty claims and facing them head on is what strengthens a car manufacturer product reliability. Devising ways to avoid warranty claims is a failed strategy. It may produce short term gains but the feed back from a strong warranty system is what makes cars more reliable in the long run. A car company that thinks the engineering solution to having fluctuating oil pressure is to get rid of the gauge or engineer the gauge to not give a true reading is a car company that has a long term survivability problem.
-jim
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Yes, if you're not going to maintain it properly. A properly maintained car that isn't a complete POS to begin with can easily be used daily for
20 years or more.nate
I don't get it. It still reads the same no matter how many times you repeat. I seriously doubt that statement is anything more than a made up statistic. But even if it were true, the basic maintenance for an electric cooling fan consists of keeping an eye on the temp gauge if you have one. If you don't have a gauge then obviously that maintenance tool is not available and you aren't as likely to detect a problem as early.
You claim that cars are so reliable that accurate gauges have become obsolete. I think some car manufacturers would like the public to believe that. Obviously they already have some people convinced.
-jim
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That depends on how the idiot light is programmed.
Done well, the "check engine" light is just that--"check engine". Not "replace engine, it's way too late".
OK, so it's not the car in and of itself that's a waste of money. It's not maintaining a car, any car, that wastes money.
That comes down to the individual, not the car.
Yes, but it is more difficult to "properly maintain" a car without gauges, as gauges give the aware driver earlier warning of impending issues that need attention. Two examples already given are cooling fan problems and main/rod bearing wear; easy enough to fix when caught early but letting it go can result in a full engine rebuild, at which point it may no longer be economical to maintain the car any longer.
nate
yes, absolutely. clearly, you don't understand.
you don't understand - the gauges in a car are doctored so they deliberately don't tell you much. the temp gauge on a honda for instance goes like this:
same for fuel gauges. have you ever driven a car whose fuel gauge rises and falls as the gas slops around as you go every single bump? it's a HUGE pita and makes it almost impossible to know anything other than whether the tank's full or empty.
so what? if it's "low", what are you going to do? there's no magic bullet for low oil pressure. unless its something dumb like a blocked oil filter, but that's neglect and the owner deserves what they get in that case. if it's just age, keep running it until it fails.
but an idiot taking their car in to the dealer all the time because they don't understand what a "real" gauge is telling them is an even more failed strategy. auto makers have been there, done that, and it's utterly stupid how some customers behave about that stuff.
it's not a warranty claim, it's a waste of time!
dude, oil pressure /will/ fluctuate over time. all the engine needs is sufficient pressure to ensure hydrodynamic separation of the journal bearings. and that's not a high pressure. it's well over the minimum necessary when the motor is new, and it approaches minimum towards the end. that's not foul play, that's just a fact of life. again, so what if the pressure is low? what are you going to do about it? pay for a strip-down earlier than you need to? because that's what you're asking for. it makes no economic [or engineering] sense.
rubbish!!! the gauges actually in cars don't give you detailed info. and the gauges you /could/ fit to a car need to be interpreted. without baseline research data, they're useless.
but fans are unnecessary when the vehicle is moving. and you can hear whether they're working if it's not. that's not too hard is it?
which is curable only by stripdown!!! again, there's damn-all use doing that prematurely because the customer doesn't know that just because pressure is lower than it used to be, the oil and bearings are still performing just fine.
so how exactly do /you/ propose to fix lower oil pressure??? i want details of what you think it involves.
but you "maintain" a 944 - if ever a vehicle were uneconomic, that is it. otoh, i can get a whole new engine for my honda for ~$300. less if i buy locally. for that money, i can throw in a whole new motor every year if i want to. "no longer be economical" my ass.
this may be true. However, that doesn't negate the usefulness of proper, calibrated gauges.
False. If a user is at least scanning the gauges regularly, even if he has no clue what the hell they mean, he can tell if, say, the hot idle oil pressure used to be 20 PSI and now it's 12 PSI, or it has recently started dropping by 10 PSI every time he sticks his foot in it, etc. All better than not being aware of a problem until the car starts making odd noises.
Yes, and cars are ALWAYS moving when they're operating.
But how do you know if they're *supposed* to be running without a temp. gauge? Otherwise you'll have to wait for the smell of hot glycol or the idiot light to come on.
If you don't mind quick and dirty repairs, it's quite possible to change simply the rod and main bearing shells on many cars without significant disassembly other than removal of the oil pan and pump. If the crank journals are in good shape this can let you get many more miles out of an engine.
See above.
Balls. You may be able to get a *different* engine for your Honda for $300, but it ain't new.
nate
Exactly. The gauges that the engineer types want are useless to the 16 year old girl (for example) in her new Rabbit convertible. She has no clue, doesn't want a clue, and will never have a clue what those gauges mean. And she's the typical car owner nowadays.
I know it hurts, engineer types, but you are NOT typical in any way, shape, or form.
It's far more accurate to program in sets of parameters that trigger the "check engine" light. That way, the 16yo girl drops it off at the shope where the hardcore type who knows what he's doing (that's my mechanic) or the guy who knows how to look in the factory manual (most of the rest of them) will know what the problem is.
If the programming is any good, it catches things before they become catastrophes.
And let's face it: the computer can do a MUCH better job of watching ALL the parameters ("virtual gauges") simultaneously and integrating their values into a program that has been carefully crafted to see things that a human with three or four gauges on the dashboard won't see.
See my comment elsewhere in this thread. A properly crafted computer program can do a much better job watching a MUCH wider range of measurements and integrate those measurements into a program that knows what to look out for.
It is doing more things faster than the human could do.
come on elmo, these guys are letting their hurt feelings get in the way of their ability to understand at this stage. don't try to point out reality - spare them the pain.
Ummmmmmm.....and you expect your grandmother to know what this means or remember it?
You expect the ditzy 16yo girl in her new Rabbit convertible full of friends to know this, to remember it, and to be scanning the dashboard full of gauges--remember what each one is, knowing what it means, knowing what the rules are for each one, adn so on--instead of gabbing with her friends or on the cell phone???
You are SO out of reality, it's not funny.
YOU want a dashboard that looks like a 747 full of gauges, when the reality is that the buying public wouldn't and couldn't use them, and would not spend the money for them on that basis.
If the computer is properly programmed to understand a VERY WIDE range of parameters and how to interpret them, and to know that this sudden pressure is abnormal, yes.
it's far easier for the programmers to come up with a program one time than to try to hold a "internal combustion engine principles of operation" class to train your grandmother and your neighbor's ditzy
16yo girl to know what each of those gauges means and any rules of thumb regarding them.
It's tough.
I'm not sure how often this is done. I know that VW used to have a "dynamic oil pressure monitoring system" which used a little circuit in the instrument panel to switch between two oil pressure switches based on engine speed. It generally caused more false alarms than anything else.
I trust my eyes more than I trust someone to actually take the time to do that properly. And if I see a simple open/closed oil pressure switch, I *know* that that hasn't been done.
nate
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