anyone heard of drive by wire? intrested in what replaced your carb? well in between the carb. and now drive by wire throtle body was a regular cable operated throtle body. but now adays there almost all going to drive by wire throtle bodys . no cable between throtle pedal and the throtle body. yea realy. thought this was unreal when i found the problem on this car. it was a 2007 dodge caliber . 4 cyl. with 76,680 mile on it when it happend. 2 of the three gears inside the throtle body are made out of plastic. the motor drive gear is steal. the real problem that caused this to happen is how strong the return spring on the throtle plate is. the customers compaint was no power. it was because the motor in the t.b. could not open the throtle plate because the 2 plastic gears were striped. and no it was not under warranty, and the dealer had it in stock. anyway i took pics of it , they didnt come out like i wanted but you can tell what it is. here they are http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa99/old_ladys_mad/2007 dodge caliber throtle body/ check them out. wonder why it cost so much to fix late model cars?
My daily is a 2002 P***at with drive by wire. It's a trip playing around with diags software/scanners on these newer cars. Not only can I manually run the TB through it's open/close procedures with the click of my mouse ****on, but my custom tune software can adjust all of these properties for more HP, I can even change the language of my speedo cluster or number of chimes when the key is left in. I even re-flashed my transmission computer to operate in Audi sport mode for better shifts, since my model P***at shares the same transmission as about a doze different VW/Audi models. There are some plusses to all of this tech, but there is most definitely lots of room for failures, and it can be a real chore to track those failures down. Just imagine all of the mechanical valves in your every-day old fashioned auto trans replaced with little electric solenoids, when one stupid little solenoid goes a dealer won't even bother trying to repair it and you're looking at a $4k+ transmission unless you can fix it yourself.
Sounds like the car manufacture has nothing better to do than make it harder & harder for a man to keep his car running without having to bow down to a computer to tell them whats wrong with it . The it all comes down to a cheap plastic parts that cost a Penny to make but will cost the owner $300 to get fixed . There is no real quality left in a car anymore , Everything is computer run and build with plastic ! It's really sad that the so called technology has come this far to get no place but to stick us all in a plastic cookie cutter car that is not safe unless you have a bunch of balloons blow up all around you so they can protect you ? I really don't trust a plastic balloon to blow up at just the right second and expect it to save me from another person killing me ! If they just made a safe car that was made out of steel , we wouldn't have all these people getting hurt badly in car accidents . I just don't understand why everything has to be made in plastic besides it's cheap to make , but then they don't last either ! Quality has been long gone and now they want to take our quality built cars away from us ! I wouldn't give mine up for no one ! I know I went a little long but to see that plastic parts like that break , then where do all those little pieces that broke off go ? If they aren't sealed then I guess they go right down the intake into the injectors . How nice . Jim
No Retro Jim, we wouldn't have people getting hurt badly in accidents, we'd have people getting killed. Now, I'm not smart enough to be a modern tech, nor am I interested in late model cars at all, the simple fact is that our cars are death-traps*. Non-collapsable columns, flush steering wheels, and a lack of designed crumple zones make "big steel cars" a lot more risky in a real wreck than a modern sedan. Technology has always had problems and it always has had solutions. In fifty years these cars may be around, but (if they are) they'll be a helluva lot more simple than those cars. *phrase used for effect.
Yes, technology is what it is, always has been. Not that I'm a big fan of all the latest tech but some of it's pretty good especially safety-wise. The fly by wire technology is fairly recent. Just look over the years at all the new tech developments, challenges etc. and those who opposed and defended it. Imagine 60 or 70 years ago, folks our age having a very similar conversation. From horses & wagons to those new fangled automobiles - what is the world coming to? A whole new set of challenges came along with that new technology. Where I work, I have to deal with continually emerging tech stuff to ***ure all maintenance and related information is accurate. It's a challenge! Todays soldiers must adapt and learn how to operate and maintain their equipment. Same as they did 40, 60, 70 years ago. The rules haven't changed all the much. The equipment has. Not to dispute - I love the old stuff. "Pipe, iron and wire", as the old saying goes. Much simpler than the newer stuff. And a blast to drive. Safe? Compared to today's cars - generally speaking, not so much. Reliability? Still to be determined. But today it's not uncommon to hear of cars getting 100K, 200K or more miles on them before major failures. I don't recollect it being that way even when I was a kid. 40K, 50K miles and dad was looking to "trade the old clunker in". Technology itself isn't going to go away. Being able to adapt to it is the challenge. "Damn new fangled automobiles! What's this world coming to?."
My o/t bonneville car that I am putting together has it, and it too is a vw project something similar to what EchoOfGecko has. Amazing what you can get out of the technology!
the only reason the new cars are so called safer is because they took all the nice thick steel away and replaced it with plastic and surrounded us with blow up plastic bags of air ! If the cars had a nice steel bumper and steel doors . I think I would be a lot safer in an accident than the little sardine cars they want us to drive today ! You can't tell me that if I was driving my 55 Ford down the road at 35 mph and there was another modern car coming toward me at 35 mph and we hit head on . Now tell me who will be walking away from that little plastic car with all the blow up bags of air to protect them . Not one of them ! My steel car would drive right over them and tear that car up in no time flat . I really hate to drive in those small cars we have today ! I know that if I have my seat belt on in my 55 Ford and hopefully it never happens , I will walk away from the accident to help the others that are all entrapped in their tiny cars . All they worry about today is how many miles to the gallon the little car gets . So they take away all the steel and replace with much lighter plastic & rubber parts . So where do we as a drive win ? I use to drive a VW that was all steel , drove good in the winter and was easy on gas ! They had just as much room as the **** they sell today . But because of pollution stands that came from California's we all lost those great cars There were other smaller steel cars back then that also got good gas mileage and and were very safe ! I guess at 57 year old I am just too old skool when it comes to cars . I will keep my bigger steel cars till the day I die ! I will not be the one trapped in a tin can car when someone hits me and I can't get out if I am lucky enough to be alive . Now the cars are starting to build stronger frames and cages to protect us better but is still covered in spear thin metal and rubber products . Now start to consider how much heavier those cars are getting to be . So who really wins ? Just the oil companies & car manufactures because our government will bail them out when they can't sell their cars anymore . In the end , we as the consumers will be screwed once again . That's the way it always is and that's the way it always will be . We are loosing our choices on what we want to drive and how we want to drive our cars all because of the oil companies and the lousy car manufactures that are dictated by the government in the end ! Yes the government tells the car manufactures how their cars have to be built no matter if the consumer wants it , likes it or not ! They are forcing us to drive these death traps ! Have you ever seen what the government drives around in ? Take a look sometime and it's not the **** we are forced to buy & drive in ! Just something to think about ! Yes the engines last longer from technology due to the roller ***emblies and better oil and I am sure no lead helps as well . Have a great weekend ! Jim
I'll keep my manually actuated carburetors and cable actuated thottle bodies, thank you very much. I drive the car...the car doesn't drive me.
well i dont like it either , that was actualy not an easy problem to figure out . i drive a 2000 toyota echo as a daily driver because of gas milage. i know if i get hit by something big im hurting. but i cant aford to buy the gas for my oldies at this point with the economy like it is. my echo gets 38 back and forth to work. my 55 might get 20 . when my step son starts driving he will get the echo and ill be driving the 55 . should be in a daily driver reliability and comfort then.got 2 years to get it there.
I agree with Jim on the point of the doors and bumpers being tougher since they were made of a thicker gauge steel in these old cars. However, I am an EMT and have been on thousands of traffic collisions. Those life saving balloons are great if the person is belted in the car but they will kill you if your not and go head on at 60+mph. The whole thing is about kinetics of the car hitting the other car, the body hit the belt or whatever else it strikes, the organs in the body hitting each other or the bones that hold them up. These three factors are all slowed down by the crumple zones, air bags, and seat belts. This has been proven to save lives. Regardless of these safety factors, I agree that my '54 without all those safety features is fine and if I die from a traffic collision in that thing, oh well. I do wish that the "Average Joe" would realize that there are still people out here that drive these cars and its important to keep us around with these cars that need parts and that need keeps people off the unemployment lines and paying taxes. Oh dammit I went political again. Okay I'm done.
Food for thought........ http://carsafety1.blogspot.com/2009/10/old-car-vs-new-car-surprising-results.html
Actually a roll cage and 5 way belts would be the best way to go . But yea who would where them because it would mess up their cloths and so on . I wouldn't;t want your job at all . I have pulled people out of bad accidents and seen the worst of them like when someone I knew didn't where a seat belt going 100 mph on a side road because he was mad at his girlfriend . Well he hit a small bridge culvert head on at 100 mph in a Datsun 240Z . Need less to say what happened and me and a friend was the first on the at the mess . We were playing cards a 1/2 mile down the road and heard the crash . With no cell phones back then someone ran back about 1/2 mile down the road and told them to call the fire department . There was no 911 then either . The guy didn't feel a thing and I am not going into details on why but he didn't feel a thing ! They brought a chopper in to pick him up the best they could . That was in 1979 and I can still to this day remember everything I saw that night . Nothing would have helped him to survive no matter what he was wearing . BTW he was wearing a seat belt that was worthless . Cause more damage to him wearing it . He was ejected through the front wind shied onto the road while wearing his seatbelt ! I really don't think they make cars safe enough anymore . You are totally correct that holding the body in place is the easy part , it's all your insides that has nothing to hold onto that causes the problems . I still say a steel car might be heavier but it's a whole lot safe when you get into trouble ! Everyone just be as safe as possible and watch out for all the other ***holes using their cell phones ! That needs to be out lawed while driving . PERIOD ! The last accident I was in was while driving a work truck when a women ran a stop sign and I T-boned her on the drivers side . She said she didn't see me because she was texting on a damn cell phone ! I had a perfect driving record with my company for 17 years till then ! Of course I was found not guilty . My step van still had to be towed home along with hers . People just really need to pay attention and forget the damn phones ! We did very well with out answering machines & cell phones for a very long time ! I guess I better stop but I still love my bigger cars ! Jim
Interesting to watch the crash test videos of the Smart for two. (Dumb little euro roller skate about the size of a large wheel barrow) It is so small but crumple engineered and it just gets batted out of the way by the larger cars.
I can't figure out for the love of GOD why the hell anyone in their right mind would piss away their money on that POS ! I would take my chances on a motorcycle than one of the not so smart cars ! Have you actually seen the gas mileage it gets ? My wife's Honda Fit is getting 38 mpg on local driving ! Jim
The Jalopy Journal
