Manufacturers Outsmarting Themselves

my mom had a GM with those silly belts. I used them ONCE they way they were designed to be used and never again. A serious PITA.

I am glad they got consigned to the dustbin

My '91 Brougham has those belts. It is unbelievably awkward if you try to leave the buckled. I've only tried it a couple of times.

VW had those stupid door mounted belts too. Two of my favorites are the GM wheel heat treatment debacle of the early '90's and the plastic valve covers they used on the 3.1 V6. Those things would start leaking within 5000 miles. The replacements were die cast aluminum, telling me GM was aware of the problem but shipped the cars anyway.

How about the late 70's to early 80's GM passenger car diesel engines. If memory serves correct, this was a huge GM engine design failure based on using parts and tooling from the gas engine variants to save manufacturing costs. I think most of them self-destructed before 50,000 miles. Has anyone seen one of these still running today?

I specifically remember one, Olds Cutlass with 40K miles, on a used dealer's lot in the early 80's. Even the salesman commented at that time he was surprised it still ran. They were basically giving it away. GM gave diesel engines in general a black eye during that time.

Lordy, those things were awful. Olds 350 block with a forged crank, not enough bolts around the cylinders for proper clamp loading. My dad bought a Eldorado diesel, the 2nd time it blew a head gasket the radiator exploded (feeding diesel compression into the cooling system is a good recipe for disaster). He asked if they were going to fix it so that wouldn't happen again. Oh yes, they told him. So he asks what's the fix?

Get this: the new head gaskets were notched so that when (not if!) they let go it wouldn't blow combustion pressure into the cooling system. In other words, a designed in blow point.

In the mid 90's I did Road Side Assistance for Range Rover. I don't know if this problem was due to a design flaw or another Range Rover "Quirk" that the service manager spoke so fondly of. A woman in her 60's is coming home when here battery light comes on. Her husband tells her to keep going and they will call the dealer from home. She gets in and pulls into the garage where she is now trapped. Everytime she hits the unlock button the truck, fearing something bad is happening due to a lack of voltage, relocks the door before she can open it. She is unable to pull the handle hard enough to open the door with the lock button down. The dealer insists that pulling on the handle will open the locked door if only she were a bit stronger. When I get ther I go to put my jump pack on the battery to boost it, but a shelf in the carage prevents the hood from opening far enough. In the mean time she a neighbor has panicked and called 911 so I have an audience of firemen with axes waiting for the ok to smash the windows out. I ended up dragging the Rover and it's captive out of the garage with my truck so I could charge the battery and open the door.

After 5 years in Her Majesty's road service I can only imagine how much more the British Empire could have achieved if they had just bought a couple Datsun pickups instead.

Ah yes the infamous Olds diesel.

So awesome it has its own Wikipedia entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine#Oldsmobile_diesel_problems

Available in TWENTY ONE 1980 Oldsmobiles!!! Sign me up! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhrme2kvvIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-a6-OCxnLw

Oh sweet baby jesus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nq3K4HfoYs

pinchvalve wrote: The new M5 adds engine noise to the cabin by playing a special soundtrack through the car speakers. How much time did Claus spend on that farce?!?

A-freaking-men!!!

the 99 G20 uses the same SR20DE Block and head (for the most part) as earlier versions. One difference however is the 91-92 SR20 had a longer duration and lift Exhaust cam - installing this in the head of the newer car nets more exhaust scavenging and higher flow - this nets about 6-8% hp at the wheels and a bump in MPGs.

Trans_Maro wrote: Why not take all the dollars they waste on systems like this and actually make the car better? This is the kind of stupidity that makes me hate new cars.

Well, your screenname suggests that you play with GMs, which are notorious for having the engineering heavily cheaped-out and then plastic trim and badges stuck on to compensate, so your attitude can be understood. However, we're talking about Ford. They don't do that junk, they make good cars.

Why, no, I'm not biased at ALL....

I see a lot of people complaining about the mouse belts... which were Federally mandated restraints. A car had to either have airbags or automatic seatbelts.

I actually kinda liked GM's solution. Technically it was an automatic belt if you used it the way the owner's manual suggested, but its placement and buckle design meant that it could be used like a normal belt, and not some failure prone 2-piece motorized contraption. Ever stick your head out the window of a mouse-belted car when maneuvering it onto a ramp, then crack the door slightly so you could better line up the tire, and then OH HELLO BELT NICE TO MEET YOU ?

My contribution: First generation RX-7 power steering. The power assist was only necessary to counteract the additional weight of the pump and enormously heavy, bulky 3-dimensional plate steel pump bracket. Remove the pump and depower the box, and the steering is as light as a manual steering car, just with a faster ratio.

Watched a customer in a newer Dodge pickup trying to back up to his trailer with the door open.

The truck would back up about a foot, something would ding loudly and then the driver nanny would slam the brakes on.

Apparently, you're not allowed to move the truck with the door open.

This is why, when my '82 Corolla finally dies, the '62 Pontiac in the garage will be it's replacement.

I don't know what will replace my '96 F-150 but it's probably going to look a lot like a '77 F-350 Supercab and sound like a Cummins.

Shawn

you say driver nanny.,. you mean the truck itself would hit the brakes or the ding would make the driver think something was wrong and he would hit the brakes?

I didn't stop to ask what the problem was.

From what I could see, it looked like some safety feature that was tied into the brake system.

The door was wide open, the truck would go back about 1 foot, there was a loud "ding ding ding" noise and then the truck braked pretty hard.

It happened a couple times, by the confused look from the driver and the violence of the stop, I assumed the truck was doing it all by itself.

Perhaps it was something they've built in to keep you from backing the door into something.

It could have simply been a very stupid owner and not something integrated into the vehicle. I'm not fully up to speed on new vehicles, the newest thing I own is a 1996.

Shawn

ReverendDexter wrote:

integraguy wrote: Cars that use paddles or "manumatic" shifting of automatics where the upshift/downshift on one make is different/not standardized from 1 car company to the next.

I honestly hope that never happens, because the large majority have those directions wrong. Mazda is the only one I've driven that doesn't have it backwards.

Isn't it always right for higher and left for lower? Unless you're talking about the faux bump shifter some of them have, I could see manufacturers messing that up.