Just one example of why I plan to keep my old cars going for as long as I can...

[twostick]

With that negative attitude life sucks.
Try and find a positive in something will ya?

The only time the $$$ "worth" of a vehicle should enter into one of these scenarios is if the repair is more than the replacement cost of said vehicle and then you still need to calculate the odds of the replacement vehicle having the same failure on the way home from buying it.

The actual "worth" is the job it does, transportation, not the $$$ unless you are in the used car business.

Kevin

 

[70bigblockdodge]

With that negative attitude life sucks.
Try and find a positive in something will ya?

I think Bob's Red-eye is the cat's meow, I would not buy one, but I love hearing about it.
I think the technology is great. Some of it is misguided (in my head which may or may not be worth a damn).
The bright side is it keeps people alive and me out of the courtroom when Suzy twenty something is staring at Facebook and her car is not driving under my trailer no help from her. It is nice not having to have to listen to the radio or satallite with mouthy DJs and some a-hole picking out audio gems. Just plug in my tunes and go.
One last thought for all the new car owners 2016 and later the new A/C refrigerant is environmentally friendly (not) it just uses less. So DuPont who owns the patent on this cash cow and has since the mid 30s does not want to make less money on freon, it is now sold by the ounce, as in a couple hundred bucks per ounce. Make sure that extended warranty covers A/C till 100k/10 years. Cause it's going to hurt.
R 12 is looking cheap.

I'm digging my new to me truck, shame I can't buy a brand new one.

 

[Fratzog]

Nothing beats the KISS philosophy when it comes to vehicles. With my 2wd bare bones 16 Ram I need a key to lock and unlock it. Kinda funny in the parking lot when people stare at me as I'm walking around to unlock the passenger door for my wife.

 

[Mntac]

I wish I paid for the extended warranty when new on my 2014 Ram. A roller lifter in the Hemi seized after 130k miles making a chirp at idle that sounded exactly like a bad tensioner pulley. Religious oil changes mean nothing! In the shop getting new lifters and Cam this week. Common problem the mechanic says...

 

[70bigblockdodge]

The only time the $$$ "worth" of a vehicle should enter into one of these scenarios is if the repair is more than the replacement cost of said vehicle and then you still need to calculate the odds of the replacement vehicle having the same failure on the way home from buying it.

The actual "worth" is the job it does, transportation, not the $$$ unless you are in the used car business.

Kevin

That's a good theory for a big truck, but passenger vehicles/transportation it does not work past the first payoff. The moment it breaks it stops doing its job of transporting you. 4k for a trans or 5 k for a engine in a vehicle with a value of maybe 50% more than those figures, it's pretty easy to justify trade it and just get another, cut the losses. Plus 4k for a transmission that is now going to outlast the floorpan before the rust claims it better be a pretty special vehicle.
All that being said if I did not live in the rust belt I would bought a car and drive it till I could not get parts.

 

[Mike66Chryslers]

I found this on the internet:

The vehicles covered by the recall include Model S sedans built between 2012 and 2018 and Model X vehicles made between 2016 and 2018. The affected vehicles are equipped with Nvidia Tegra 3 computing platforms and an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory device.

It's the 8GB flash memory which is failing. This chip is acting as the hard drive for the computer. It could actually be "failing" in that part of the memory becomes corrupted and inaccessible. The operating system should have been written to detect that and work around it.

However, the article that @WissaMan quoted said the problem is because it is "running out of storage capacity". If that's accurate and not them just dumbing-it-down, this is not a failure of the chip itself, that could mean that the system is simply not periodically deleting old files.

Either way this is sloppy software design for the application IMO, or they didn't use a flash part which was rated for extended temperature range.

 

[stubs300]

View attachment 435877

Exactly! The whole premise of the American economy is based on waste!!!

 

[WissaMan]

I found this on the internet:

It's the 8GB flash memory which is failing. This chip is acting as the hard drive for the computer. It could actually be "failing" in that part of the memory becomes corrupted and inaccessible. The operating system should have been written to detect that and work around it.

However, the article that @WissaMan quoted said the problem is because it is "running out of storage capacity". If that's accurate and not them just dumbing-it-down, this is not a failure of the chip itself, that could mean that the system is simply not periodically deleting old files.

Either way this is sloppy software design for the application IMO, or they didn't use a flash part which was rated for extended temperature range.

I think the ability to detect and work around corrupted memory is probably pretty standard in the controllers by now as flash RAM can only be written to (and read?) a finite number of times. So as more of the flash memory fails, it eventually runs out of space. We had this happen in certain models of copiers (my business) and the temporary solution was to pop the SD card into a computer, move all the files on the card to a new directory (which doesn't move them from their memory locations) and make new copies in the root directory. Thus the bad memory locations stayed in use by the original files and the new files which the copier would access were in previously unused areas. The better solution was to get a new SD card, but the problem was it used a proprietary format and the manufacturer did not provide us dealers with a utility to perform that format. But by then those copiers were 5+ years old and they weren't very motivated to do so.

When you think about all the hand-wringing about the environment, in my mind the elephant in the room is planned obsolescence, yet I don't hear any voices of authority even mentioning it. But I don't see why we couldn't begin shifting over to a repair economy rather than a replace economy. There'd still be plenty of work to go around, if not more so!

 

[WissaMan]

And yeah, new things (vehicles, appliances, etc. etc.) are more energy efficient, produce less pollution, and so forth. But how much pollution and energy is required to MAKE the new item, transport it across the ocean in many cases, AND recycle or dispose of the old item? Especially large and complicated things like cars. No don't think about that part of it!

At least a lot of the old copiers that get traded in when 3-5 yrs old get shipped to third world countries where they get a second life. The full size office copiers, that is. The plasticy desktop personal MFP's people buy from Staples and the like go right into the landfill as soon as something breaks because it's cheaper to buy a new one than repair it...

 

[67newport]

my 2016 accord is probably the newest will own. 2018 and up never. big screen in the middle of the dash that i have no idea how to operate, mostly all auto trans no manual in the base models. small eng 1.5l turbo do not see how that will last long. my 16 has a screen in the upper dash with a backup camera that i rarely use, i can still turn my head and look backwards. do not touch any other buttons that might change the display screen that i might not be able to get out of and my clock always stays on daylight savings time do not want to get the big book out twice a year to rest it. i special ordered it with a 6speed manual trans a lot more reliable. no electronics or shift sensors to go bad that might mite have to go back to the stealership for reprograming with a hefty price of course. my niece has a 2019 jeep compass with auto stop and start that she uses all the time. i can just see problems coming with that.

 

[WissaMan]

My newest is a 2011 Highlander V-6 AWD I bought in 2017. I settled on the Highlander after reading lots of forums on various SUVs from that era, in particular, doing searches on common problems. I learned my lesson of not heeding these warning signs with my 00 Odyssey. Before I bought it (in 05) I had read about problems with the transmissions, but I was so enamored with the vehicle otherwise I was willing to risk it. But sure enough, the trans did fail a couple years later resulting in a $3500 repair bill for a Jasper.

So many models in my short-list seemed to have at least one achillies heal that had a good chance of resulting in an expensive repair bill -- failed transfer case on the Mazda's, stretched timing chain on the GM DOHC v-8s, valve-train issues on the Honda V-6 Pilot that featured the ability to turn off cylidners, carboned up valves on the engines with DI, failed CVT on Nissans, etc. My wife's 06 Dakota had the transfer case fail that same year (which we barely use the 4wd) so that soured me on the Mopars. The Toyota Highlander was the only vehicle that did not appear to have any weak links and I have to say, so far so good. 105k on it and no problems whatsoever.

I can't say I'm totally satisfied with every aspect of it -- absolutely hate the drive-by-wire for one thing, but overall I'm happy with it. No nav system or any of that crap. I plan to make it last as long as absolutely possible. I already did one undercarrage Cosmoline treatment and I plan to do it at least every other year. With proper maintenance I'm hoping it'll last me a couple decades.

 

[Mike66Chryslers]

I think the ability to detect and work around corrupted memory is probably pretty standard in the controllers by now as flash RAM can only be written to (and read?) a finite number of times. So as more of the flash memory fails, it eventually runs out of space. We had this happen in certain models of copiers (my business) and the temporary solution was to pop the SD card into a computer, move all the files on the card to a new directory (which doesn't move them from their memory locations) and make new copies in the root directory. Thus the bad memory locations stayed in use by the original files and the new files which the copier would access were in previously unused areas. The better solution was to get a new SD card, but the problem was it used a proprietary format and the manufacturer did not provide us dealers with a utility to perform that format. But by then those copiers were 5+ years old and they weren't very motivated to do so.

That is a good workaround you found for the dying SD cards. As I said, it wasn't clear whether the Tesla flash memory cells were dying or they were just filling-up. Either of these is a possible cause. Many computers will fail to boot if their hard drive fills-up entirely. The system SHOULD be designed to accommodate aging flash with wear-levelling algorithms, bad block management, and error detection and correction schemes. Perhaps it wasn't, or they wrote excessively to the flash, or they used flash parts with poor specs. If the latter is the problem, it may not have been Tesla's fault; there are lots of bootleg flash chips sold by unscrupulous wholesalers, and difficult to know if you got a shipment of those until they start to fail.

These vehicles aren't even that old, the repairs would be prohibitively expensive for customers to pay for, and the manufacturer didn't provide alternative controls for safety-critical systems, hence the NHTSA is coming down on them with a recall. Regardless of the root cause, a hard lesson to Tesla on why some controls are still separate knobs on the dashboard.

When you think about all the hand-wringing about the environment, in my mind the elephant in the room is planned obsolescence, yet I don't hear any voices of authority even mentioning it. But I don't see why we couldn't begin shifting over to a repair economy rather than a replace economy. There'd still be plenty of work to go around, if not more so!

That's a larger conversation which unfortunately delves deep into politics, so no simple answer. In a completely free market economy, corporations are allowed to make their own choices as to how to design their products to maximize profit. Labour in North America has gotten more expensive over time, while most consumers look for low initial purchase price. The result is more automated manufacturing or offshoring.

At the same time, technology has evolved from mechanical systems to custom solid-state electronic systems to software systems using generic commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics. These are faster/cheaper to manufacture but more difficult to repair. Repair requires specialized skills and equipment, and parts which may not even be commercially available! COTS electronics running software systems are also a boon to manufacturers since software breaks the traditional relationship between cost of labour vs profit from goods sold: You can write software once but can sell it many times.

These systems are also largely unrepairable by the DIYer, hence contribute to planned obsolescence. On the upside, this level of technology is how companies such as Holley can afford to design and profitably sell things like bolt-on EFI kits for our old engines.

Here's where it gets political (sorry!): Government can try to shape aspects of manufacturing with various kinds of regulations (there are many, but RoHS is one example), and fees paid either by the manufacturer or the consumer to cover the cost of their eventual recycling. These may encourage manufacturers to design things that are more repairable. Some people have problems with these regulations and "taxes", sometimes the same people who would rather be able to fix their stuff than replace it. Government can't outright enforce a "repair economy" because that would imply a planned economy, not a market economy.

 

[commando1]

Not me never.

But you turn over your cars. Then you don't need to.
My next car will be a 3 yr. lease.

 

[Polara_500]

But you turn over your cars. Then you don't need to.
My next car will be a 3 yr. lease.

Gonna get ya one of those new hyper caddies with a stick shift?

 

[patrick66]

I look at it this way. My wife has a very nice '08 Buick Enclave with 178K miles on it. I bought this for her with 149K two years ago. The dreaded transmission self-destruct occurred about four months after purchasing the car. The car was $6,900 then. The replacement GM trans was $4,300. Screw it, I had the trans replaced. Nice 3/36 warranty on the trans. We'll run out of time before it hits 36K miles, so at that point, I'll probably sell it and find her a nice 2011 - 2014 Enclave replacement. She loves that '08, and so does our dog. A new Enclave is over $55K optioned out as her '08 is. Pure economics.

My '14 VW Passat Diesel is a fun and comfortable car for a full-sized sedan! I wish it had a true manual transmission, but the unit in it is manually shiftable. And 40 mpg at 80 mph just can't be beat! With less than 70K on it currently, I'll be very happy to hang onto it for at least another 50K miles, or for me, about three more years (purchased with 53K in Oct '19). When necessary, I've taken it to the VW dealer for a couple of minor things to fix, and they have been superb. Never pushy, plus they provide a 15% military discount for parts/service. I can live with that!

Now, my older son's FIAT 500 Sport...42K miles and now on its THIRD set of tires! I've driven that twice to Dallas, and it is a fun little ride. For what little he drives, it works great for him. But since there is no FIAT dealer network in the US anymore, I'm hoping he'll look to sell or trade that off in the near future. It's almost paid for - he bought it as a one-year-old lease return with 10K on the odo. Might be cheaper to keep it when it gets paid off. His car, he can do what he pleases with it.

My younger son was the smart one. After his '15 Passat got totaled when a drunk broad hit him from behind at a light, he then lost his job because he got hurt pretty bad and couldn't work, and his old boss is a complete *******. Her insurance paid the VW off (he had the car 28 days!). We found a 1999 Dodge Stratus he bought from a friend of mine about 8 months back. Paid $1,400 cash. Just 102K miles! Plus, parts are still fairly easy to come by, and there are always a couple at the local pull-a-apart yard to pick stuff off of.

Another reason I'm keeping my Passat, is that my son's Passat showed us how tough it is! The broad that hit him, hit his car at over 50 mph square in the rear. He was stopped at a red light, and got shoved 60' across a four-lane intersection. The collision totaled the Nissan Juke that hit him. She went to jail for the wreck (she blew a .24 and could barely stand up) and an outstanding drunk driving/hit-n-run warrant from a previous accident she had and never showed for her court date. His back glass didn't even break! The rear bumper got shoved forward a foot, and collapsed the trunk somewhat (the spare took the brunt). Jacked my son's neck and lower back up in a big way, though. Nearly a year in PT helped him considerably. My son was able to drive it home. Couldn't believe it! Hopefully, his coming settlement will help him a LOT.

 

[tallhair]

I hope your son fully heals, and he gets a huge settlement for pain and suffering for her bullshit. May she rot.

 

[WissaMan]

Here's where it gets political (sorry!): Government can try to shape aspects of manufacturing with various kinds of regulations (there are many, but RoHS is one example), and fees paid either by the manufacturer or the consumer to cover the cost of their eventual recycling. These may encourage manufacturers to design things that are more repairable. Some people have problems with these regulations and "taxes", sometimes the same people who would rather be able to fix their stuff than replace it. Government can't outright enforce a "repair economy" because that would imply a planned economy, not a market economy.

Exactly...I'm sure we all remember "cash for clunkers". That paid people to not just trade in, but destroy their old cars so they couldn't even be parted out. Talk about a waste!

 

[tallhair]

Also drove up used car prices didn’t it?

 

[patrick66]

The cash-for-clunkers scam, er, program was so that car and trucks could be, and most were, parted out. The dealers poured a silicone silicate compound into the engines, and ran them until the engine seized up, so they could not be re-used, but the rest of the vehicle could be parted to the last bolt. Several local yards were plum full of them.

 

[commando1]

Gonna get ya one of those new hyper caddies with a stick shift?

I'm not in that stratosphere.
I'm down here with the rest of you guys putting the Challenger under the microscope.