No wonder we prefer old cars.

It's even worse. That EFI is a piece of cake compared to the rest of the car. That's why today's cars are becoming unrepairable. The cost to fix or replace all the electronics can exceed the value of a car as it ages.
Every single thing on a new car is tied to everything else via a bus with multiple multiplexed modules. In many cases they cannot even be replaced without reprogramming the car's control module, a task that usually only a dealer can perform.
The cost of the modules combined with the labor to identify, troubleshoot, replace, and reprogram can get so expensive that it sometimes makes more sense to simply scrap the car.

Disposable, just like your other appliances.

 

Fortunately they're pretty reliable. We've had at least one "new" car since 1999, and never had to replace any sensors. Things we did have to replace....water pump gaskets, spark plug wire (one), thermostat, fuel pressure regulator, fuel pump, etc.

The old cars got a lot more stuff replaced...strange how that works.

Plan on 15-20 years, and 200k miles out of modern cars. At least, you can get that from most cars that were built 15-25 years ago. The really new ones, who know? I guess we'll find out, we have three of them! no problems with any of them so far, although only one has made it through the 3/36 warranty period so far.

 

Anyone know of a little old granny that's selling a '69-'70 2 door chevy Nova with low mileage and no rust????......

 

1996-2008 was probably the sweet spot for reliable cars. OBD ii EFI but not a ton of other electronics integrated yet. Easy to fix, reliable, economical.

Then stuff started to get complicated just because they could.

 

Unfortunately those 20-30 year old cars are 20-30 years old, and stuff quits working. And there is a LOT more stuff than there is on 60-70 year old cars!

 

How ‘bout a ‘65 Chevelle?



She only drives it on Sundays, for short trips…

cheers,
Harv

 

That's the dark cloud forming ahead. I have a 20 year old D-max truck with low miles. Everyone says, "drive it forever". Yeah, well, every electrical connector, every plastic valve, the computer, all of it is 20 years old. And it's no picnic to work on. How long before something fails that I can not get? Looking ahead, I'm thinking of jumping farther back for my next truck.....simple, simple, simple.

 

My daughter is having this problem exactly with her super low mileage 94 Toyota. It only has 40,000 miles on it looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor but stuff keeps going south on it because of its age. And trying to find parts are no fun at all. I told her that it’s almost like my shoebox back in the 80’s we bought everything we could find at swap meets and anywhere else just so we would have the parts to keep it going. So if she’s going to keep it then I need to find a couple of parts cars and any NOS crap I can find.

Edit: oh yeah she had a rock kicked up by someone on the interstate and hit the windshield and now it’s got a crack all the way across the line of vision and they don’t make it anymore and we can’t find one for it yet

 

I've been trying for a long time to put my finger on a change in the way people think, from an artisan-tool mindset to a master-slave mindset. I struggle to articulate how it's not the same thing, that a slave isn't just another kind of tool, but that the difference is in fact fundamental and profound. I struggle to articulate how it's something which actually changed at or over a specific time in history, and that it isn't just a matter of generational perspective. It's not just the way things always look from thirty years later.

My wife and I recently rewatched all five seasons of Person of Interest, and one takeaway from it was that the premise of the show implied a mindset in which Left Field didn't exist. It used to be that we expect most of the world out there to be such that things could come out of left field all the time, and then we'd apply our knowledge of physics etc. to deal with them. There was a body of knowledge all right, but we had a fairly healthy understanding that whatever existed as data in the world, an infinitely greater amount didn't.

Nowadays the attitude is that there isn't really a left field, and that everything which exists exists as data. All we have to do is to go and find the data which, often unconsciously, implies finding, identifying, researching, second-guessing whoever it was who generated the data. It used to be that the world was unscripted, except for the bits inside it which were scripted. Nowadays the world is scripted: only that which is scripted exists i.e. the world itself is a script and nothing else.

If that sounds insane, I reckon that that is because it is insane. Yet that is what the computerized-everything Internet of Things invites us to believe.

I'm not having any. I don't want my stuff to obey me, I want it to obey the laws of physics in a fairly obvious way as a result of what I do with it.

 

Technology isn't always better than what it replaced. While an argument can be made for having things monitored by a computer within the vehicle, often the solutions become overkill........much more complicated and much harder/expensive to repair. We see lots of excess in the constant battle to gain a little more "corporate gas mileage" to satisfy the ever increasing govt mandated gas mileage mandates. They add all kinds of complexity and expense to vehicles and they may slightly improve the mileage, but they often require more maintenance ($$$) ......

What they are heading toward is having all vehicles be "self driving" and we all just become passengers.
I'm always reminded of HG Wells classic book "The Time Machine", where people in the future depended on machines to do everything and could no longer do anything for themselves.

 

I have a bigger problem with idiots behind the wheel. I prefer less people.

 

This might get me kicked out, but won't the electric cars be a lot easier? Could have a big gauge on the dash tell you what's fucked up.

 

@leon bee Watch richrebuilds latest car buy and drive. Fisker.
Common sensors are 3 wire; 1 voltage input (shared with others), one ground (shared with others) and a signal return. Signal would be monitored to make sure it was within specs. Say the range was 0 to 5 volts input. Normal expected range would be limited to .5 volt to 4.5 volt, to make sure anything outside was flagged. 0 to .5 volt was low, probably open or short to ground in sensor or circuit. 4.5 to 5 (or more) volts would be short to input or another voltage source in sensor or circuit.
Old school would diagnose according to this basic setup. Modern stuff is much more complex, but the diagnostics aren't. There is no cross checking with the shared power or ground circuits and codes if the issue is shared. There is no self check to turn off the powered circuits and check signal. There are a dozen computer modules in modern cars at a minimum and a computer interface screen, but very few diagnostics are programmed in. The T-word cars do have some, but it's still not great or user friendly.

 

They just need to make all cell phones have GPS (most/all do) to sense movement and program the phones so they can talk but not text when movement over 5 mph is detected. Then maybe people will pay more attention to driving than texting.

Well, a moderately maintained gasoline engine will easily go 150,000 miles most of the time without any major repairs. I bought my wife a new SUV in 2019 and it now has 25,000 miles on it. So thats about 4,000 miles a year. If we live long enough, and it reaches 150K miles, it will take us about 37 years to get there.

If it was an electric vehicle, we would already be nearing the lifespan of the battery. Haven't checked in quite a while, but when I looked at some info years ago, the cost of a battery replacement varied between appx $2500 and $15,000 depending on the vehicle manufacturer. Don't know what it costs these days, but the thought here is that if I had to replace a battery every 7 years, I'd have bought 5 of them in 37 years. Yes, that's an over simplification. Add to that the cost of possibly having to get an electrician to wire up a 220 volt charging plug at your house and what do you do if there is a power outage........and I see them as having multiple concerning issues. My daughter-in-law had to take a business trip and her company rented her a car. It was an electric car and she had to get it charged along the way, and then got very concerned that she was not going to get there before it was depleted. She said she would never accept an electric car again as a rental. Whe I go to the local Meijer's store, I see the Teslas lined up charging in the charging station while the driver goes shopping. They have to walk a pretty decent way to get to the store from that charging area.

I do think that its good to have multiple options and there are situations where electric cars may be a good choice. Right now though, it's not the best choice for me..............BUT, they are extremely fast. Gotta admit that. Maybe a Model A with a dummy 4 banger in front and an electric motor in the back.

 

Yeah, you have to navigate through a menu to do anything and those giant glaring screens about blind you at night.
Gimme knobs.

 

Don't know about the US, but here in the EU there is no way to totally disable the spies we have in our cars since 2018 (well, not unless you're a hacker and as you may guess, it would be illegal). Ryan does not like us going into politics, so all I'd say here is none of this has to do with safety.

I'm keeping my 2016-model daily.

 

What are you up to that makes you wary of 'them' knowing your whereabouts...???

 

Yes

 

I had a 2001 Audi A2. Aluminium body that would have never rusted and an engine that would have probably gone for ever, if treated well. But I was becoming aware of how much of an old car it was getting to be. Electronic modules that went bad just because. The thing I most noticed was that the plastics in the electrical connectors had degraded and become brittle over time, so trying to unplug or reconnect anything like a headlight was a gamble on if the plug was going to crumble in your hands. Not like any of these parts were exposed to UV either. What do you even do about that? Repin every connector on the car?
Sure old cars probably go wrong more, but I wonder how much of that is down to the shitness of aftermarket parts?

 

Gone are the days when I would carry a spare set of points and a condenser…

 

Again I need to chose my words carefully: temptation is an awful thing, particularly if you consider yourself above the "commoners", and admire the way the Chinese manage their population. This is an issue of principle and also has very real practical concerns.

But if you'd have told me in 1995 this is how 2025 will look like, I'd have told you to lay off the drugs or stop reading bad sci-fi...

 

This, and I'd add the OBD1 Fords are even better. Anything with a pushrod 5.0/5.8 and EFI is pretty much bulletproof, and still easy to work on and get parts for when something does go wrong.

 

this is one of the reason(s) i wont LS any thing

staying away from that garabage

and i have no clue at why people want to put that in their vehicle ( may because they can not diagnosis a vehicle if its not plugged in a laptop or an excuse of better mpg(s) )

 

What everyone is missing , is the fact these 20 year old cars have outlasted the, what we now call classics, by more than a decade. The average 40s, 50s, 60s cars were destined for the wrecking yard in less than 10 years.

 

https://www.torquenews.com/14093/my...ey-dont-support-it-anymore-are-we-just-expect

This article highlights something a lot of car owners don't know... once a vehicle is 10 years old the manufacturer does not need to make parts for it anymore. I've even seen parts needed for 6 and 7 year old cars that are not produced until there are enough orders to make a production run worth it. Some dealerships even refuse to work on anything over 10 years old now.

In 2014 I worked at a Ford dealership and had an 07 Navigator with a failed air suspension module. It took 15 months to get the replacement because Ford was waiting to receive at least 3k orders before making a production run. In the meantime we tried to locate aftermarket, junkyard or rebuilt modules with no success.

My "new" truck is a 2007 Chevy Silverado. It is 18 years years old and every day I pray a module doesn't fail.

 

We had an ‘03 Chevy Yukon with 303,000 miles on it that had only needed a water pump in its long life. Plus tune up pieces.
Then the peripheral electronics started fritzing out. Like it would chime 30 times every time it was cranked, showing an anti-lock brake failure warning, which was BS. The chime came through the radio and the fix was to replace the anti-lock brake sensor on the proportioning valve mounted in the frame under the driver’s door ($$$) and re-bleed all the brakes. WTF??
I did find a way to remove and repair the bad circuit board, but my wife made an executive decision and it went away. Guess I should be grateful, but this was bullshit, all in the name of guvment mandated safety.

 

I tend to hold onto daily drivers for a long time
So I am thankful for this. Yes more modern stuff has the potential to far outcast most old cars without major mechanical overhaul. 200k-300k is nothing anymore.

My 86 c10 I used to own was my daily driver from 2008-2020 and had 215k and was apparently weird in the fact that it had not needed much repairs. I knew it's history since new and it had never had any internal engine work (factory intake and timing cover never removed). The transmission was the same until 212k. It broke the sunshell on a wot 1-2 shift. When I fixed it I changed the sunshell, filter and necessary gaskets. Still shifted perfectly so no overhaul needed

 

The operative words there are "without major mechanical overhaul".

Insofar as the tasks and technologies involved in service are pretty much the same tasks and technologies as involved in the original manufacture, a thing will last as long as you keep fixing it — because fixing it basically means remaking it in lesser or greater part. Yet the history of automotive technology is the history of the difference between service/repair and manufacturing becoming ever more radical.

I have a copy of Wheatley and Morgan's The Restoration of Vintage & Thoroughbred Cars, first published 1957, on my shelf. It describes remaking from scratch parts that in the later numbers-matching era could only be hunted down, and then their "originality" carefully assessed. Can't find a part? Make it! — and make it better than the OEM did. Somewhere along the line the entire old car culture shifted, and it had to do with the embodied technology.

 

i stop with any vehicle search after 81 ( pushing it with truck(s) to 87 )

after that , i think thats at when thing(s) started getting all crazy or dependent on electrontic(s)

esp with the headache(s) of acquiring component(s) or part(s) and as mentioned , working on them after 10 years of manufacture

because that is at when it starts falling from the part(s) library ( stopped being made from the factory and 3rd party kicks in ) and tool(s) are started to being replaced with newer stuff

unless you go to a pops garage , thats totally another story

but time ( waiting in line for your vehicle to get worked on ) and the expense ( how much will it cost for someone else working on it , thats if you cant or wont )

 

That isn't a camera up on the windshield it's a sensor for lane departure and auto brakes why because auto makers have to design their autos for safety do to the idiots driving while on there phones. Here's a example I'm working on brand new chevy traverse with transport damage had to pull bumper completely apart for two trim peaces never in my 41 years in body repair did I have to take pictures but had to on this one all kinds of BS on today's cars and truck bumpers.