Do we really need to keep adding this crap to cars. A monitor that watches your air pressure in your tires and lets the driver know when they are going down. I check my tires often and I know how to use a gauge. I am tired of car companies thinking they are improving cars. In fact they are making them worse. How many people can still fix their car  when something goes wrong. Not too many I think.  Nothing is easy to get to under the hood. Some cars you darn need to pull the engine out just to change a spark plug. They put all this pollution control stuff on them, My buddy had a pickup with a 350 Chevy that passed our emission tests here when we had them. He passed the test and he was running straight pipes and a carburetor. When we had these tests there was new cars that failed them. Come on have you noticed these cars get into accidents and one they are hit once they are screwed, off to the junk yard they go. I don't want a car with crumple zones. Why would you buy a car that crumples. I want a car that would hold up after hitting another car at 30 mph. Now that's putting good design to work. Plastic bumpers, I want a metal bumper, something that will hold up when I do accidently bump something, not something that costs $500 to fix. Air bags save lives yeah right. If those things pop you have to fork out a fortune to get them put back in. On board computers and electronic fuel injection, What about the cars that did not have all these electronics on them, they ran fine and they were easy to fix when something did go wrong. I wish car companies would realize the more junk you put on them, the more junk that can go wrong. I am just tired of the junk car companies are putting on and calling them good cars. Cars a getting more expensive and don't hold up for nothing and when they break they cost even more to get them fix. What do car companies think just because we are not making enough money selling the car we make money in our service center.




[urlhttp://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/automotive/stories/automotive-88887520010725-120741.html[/url]


Six

[url]http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/automotive/stories/automotive-88887520010725-120741.html[/url]

The shop manual on my late model car is over 4000 pages and it does take a little electronics and computer savvy to work on the newer cars.  I was forever messing with the carburetor/points/plugs on my old car and didn't get real good gas mileage.  My late model car gets 30 MPG on the freeway and can run 12.90's in the 1/4 mile on street tires.  I haven't changed anything under the hood except the air filter and oil in 40,000 miles.  

I wouldn't mind having an air pressure monitor in my car.  My g/f managed to destroy one of my tires and rim by driving around on it flat.

I agree that working on the cars is more expensive and the unibody plastic bumpers suck!  

What;s really scary is that the Army falls for this crap too. I predict that our LMTVs will start to become a logistics nightmare once the fleet gets more than a few years old. Way to damn complicated for an Army truck.

United Defense is actually pitching "fly by wire" technology for the next generation of armored vehicles. This scares me.

"they" add stuff to cars because simply put people are idiots. How many times in snow or rain do you see people flying along when you can "feel" there is less traction. "I have AWD",. yeah great AWD, 4-WD don't stop any faster even if they allow you to get up to "ramming speed faster". Don't get me started on tailgaters.

In other words, the tire and auto guys feel that a tire monitor system will alert the idiot drivng when they have a flat tire. Not like Firestone/Ford had anything to do with the problem. Of course with "run-flats" it has been a requirement for a while.

Daytime running lights are another good one. Of course you get about 1% of the people who think their headlights are automatic now, because they have "running light". And then they drive at night with the DRL's and no taillights........

What about SUV's?? How many times have you heard..."I had to swerve to avoid a A) deer B) dog C) piece of debris in the  road. That is usually followed by something to the effect of "the seat belt bruised me when the SUV stared rolling...." Good thing the didn't hit that 150 lb object with the 4000 lb SUV, much more dangerous than swerving off the road.

Why is it there are so many more bad drivers, when we are driving cars with computer controlled engines, electronic traction control, and anti-lock brakes?

They had a lawsuit locally a little while ago somebody rolled their mini-van and the roof caved in resulting in a serious head/neck injury. They sued saying the van was defective because the roof wasn't srtong enough. They won. What ever happened to saying, the roof wasn't strong enough?? YOU wouldn't have had a problem if YOU didn't drive so poorly as to roll your vehicle.

Mini-vans.... it seems more people drive them like they are watching wide-screen TV in their living room istead of actually driving. Maybe they should have to put a sticker on the windshield that says "this is not a TV it is the windshield of the vehicle you are driving. The windshield allows for "real time" viewing of the world around you."

The computers do make cars run better, longer, and more efficiently. You are correct once a computer car stops running there is nothing you can do.

Air bag standards were set by the US Government. They wanted the bag to deploy with enough force to "restrain" a 195 lb male driver that was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash. Gee, wonder why the airbags are overpowered? Maybe that shouldn't deploy at all if you don't wear a seat belt. And maybe they should be set to deploy only above a certain amount of crash force, like so hard you would be surely injured if you were wearing you seatbelt and the airbag didn't go.

I'm pretty sure they could may cars so rigid that alomost no crash would severly damage them, of course all the force of the crash would be taken by the vehicle occupants. That way once they get the bodies out the car it can be resold. I think I would rather have the car "sacrifice" itself so the occupants have a lower level of injuries.

I don't think people drive better, but I think cars are safer and the statistics seem to suggest that.
[url]http://www.ncpa.org/pd/regulat/pd040400c.html[/url][b]Road Deaths Lowest in Five Years  [/b]
American motorists logged a record number of miles last year, but the number of fatalities dipped to its lowest level in five years, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Figured on a per-mile-driven basis, death rates were the lowest for any year since the government began keeping statistics in 1966.

Overall, 41,345 people died in traffic accidents in 1999.

Americans drove more than 2.6 trillion miles last year -- for a fatality rate of 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles driven.

In 1966, the fatality rate was 5.5 deaths per 100 million miles driven.

The road fatality rate based on population also hit a record low of 15.2 deaths per 100,000 people.

At the same time that traffic deaths fell, seat belt use declined from 70 percent of occupants in 1998 to 67 percent last year.

Source: Scott Bowles, "Despite More Miles, Fewer Die on Roads," USA Today, April 4, 2000.

I'll take crumple zones...and my SUV weighs 4,963 pounds. I like it because I can drive over Honda Civcs with thumping stereos and potato launcher tailpipes.

Why do people complain about not being able to repair their vehicle?  I can repair mine, but I'm a mechanic.  I CAN'T repair my TV because I'm not a TV repairman.

Eddie

"I work in the auto industry. Your anger is misdirected. If idiots would check their tire pressure, there would be no call for this. It's a "cover your ass" response."

What ever happened to "Being responsable for your actions".  Why is it always someone elses fault when something happens?  

I'm really tired of hearing "I raped that 5 year old girl beacause I was molested by my 3rd uncle, twice removed, when I was 2 years old, and that is why I can't possably be held responsable for my actions".

I feel that if someone is dumb enough to drive on a low tire, talking on the phone, applying make-up, looking for the Davis report all at 85 MPH and they roll over beacuse their leg gets a cramp, so be it.  They have no one to blame but themselves.  And if they do hit someone (god forbid) then charge them with murder (vehicular homoside or manslaughter is something that Ted Kennady must have came up with)

I wholeheartedly agree on the tailgaters.  I drive an RX7 with HUGE brakes, will stop on a nickel (better than a dime) and find myself being tailgated by any number of POS that couldn't stop on a mile.

I don't believe Firestone or Ford had anything to do with the problem.  People bought an Explorer, which is a truck, and complained that it rode like a truck.  DDDUUUHHH!  The remedy to many was to lower the tire pressure.  Ford dealers may have been partially to blame because they were telling people to lower the tire pressures so it would ride softer.  Let's see: Underinflated tire (so it would ride soft, boo hoo), heavy vehicle, and hot weather make tires go BOOM.  I rent Explorers all the time, going back three years, sometimes in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico.  They have always had Firestone tires.  I always made sure they were inflated to the proper pressure and even in the heat of the west Texas desert in July, I have never had a problem and I always push them, both speed and cornering.

As for DRL's, you are absolutely correct.  They do it in the rain as well.  The automakers make them light up the dash automatically.  Maybe they should stop that and then maybe people would realize they need to turn the lights on.  I use headlights during the day quite a bit.  I learned it in the GTP days of IMSA.  The faster cars would have their lights on to get the attention of those that were being lapped.

You hit it right on the head about the airbags.  You don't want to buckle up, you should suffer the consequences, not be protected.  Do away with airbags, seat belt laws, and helmet laws and let Mother Nature take it's course.  It's call Darwinism.

As for the cars being 'sacrificed', most passenger cars (unibody) these days are designed to crumple in certain areas and to come apart to dissipate the energy, much like the F1 and CART cars.  Pickups and SUVs are not designed to do this.

I think a portion of the increase in hp/ci is due to certain technological advances such as multiple valves per cylinder, EFI, etc, but the rest of it is plain old physics - horsepower is a function of both torque and rpm, so by merely measuring horsepower at a higher rpm you'll get an "increase." Today's cars are generally powered by an OHC as opposed to an OHV engine, and one of the trademarks of an OHC engine is that it makes its power higher on the cam than an OHV engine does. Why? I'm not exactly sure - perhaps it's because an OHV engine's rocker arms multiply cam lift for higher valve lift (typicaly 1.5:1 or 1.6:1) which results in more air/fuel mixture flowing into the cylinders. At any rate, higher RPM operations generally translate into increased engine wear, which is offset to a degree by much better lubricants than were available during the muscle car era. Any V8 gas engine from the muscle car era will last to 200K miles or beyond if properly maintained with quality fluids and parts (IHC light- and medium-truck gas engines were doing it back in the 70s.)

The "100K before the first scheduled tuneup" claim on many new cars is one of the biggest gimmicks, IMO, because they don't tell you about the very expensive work that will most likely be required at the first tuneup. Most of this work would be unnecessary if tuneups were performed at the traditional 12-15K mile interval, but when you figure that a great percentage of today's drivers couldn't change spark plugs and wires or gap spark plugs even if they did own the $15 in hand tools necessary for the job, it kinda makes sense (I'm not even gonna get into tightening or changing a belt!) Personally, I'll stick with the "old" technology - my '85 6.2L diesel is at close to 150K now (or maybe 250K, I bought it used with "low miles"), starts after 1/2 turn of the engine, only uses a quart of oil between 2500 mile change intervals (typical for a 6.2), and I've put maybe $700 into the engine for a new injector pump, injectors, glow plugs, and lift pump.

Did anyone see the article on this that either Road & Track or Car & Driver did? They bought a used Explorer, fitted it with a set of Firestones from the affected lot number, and modified a wheel so that a person not in the car could vent ALL the air from the tire by remote control. The driver would get going at a certain speed, and without any warning the trackside person would let the air out of his tire. No loss of control, regardless of the speed at which the vehicle was going. Videos showed the driver with his hands behind his neck, simply braking the vehicle to a stop after a "blowout" at 70mph. Granted, tread separation may have been a factor in the fatal wrecks, but IMO it was more likely the drivers didn't pick up the easily felt signs of impending tire failure, and when it blew they cranked the wheel hard and caused a rollover. It's not an unlikely scenario at all, especially when you see what a large percentage of drivers do to recover from a skid in the wintertime.

Don't get me started on front wheel drive!

I can understand both sides here, but I also think just because it's new doesn't mean it's better, there are plenty of old cars etc. that can look and run well without all the "extras" that are so common today. The big problem I have is, like someone else mentioned, no one wants to be responsible/accountable for anything. Why should I check my oil, that light on the dash we tell me if its low and those tires I'll just run them until they blow out, I can sue someone for them being over loaded,  under inflated, patched, poked or whatever.

 If I had the time and money would have some nice "retro-modern" vehicles. An example would be something like a nice '70-72 Chevy/GMC truck with a pretty much stock interior and running gear, but put on some after market fuel injection and ignition, then some better springs, shocks and tires. This should give you something strong and reliable with good handling and drivability, but still pretty simple. I forgot one item, I'd glue a block of 12" foam to the steering wheel for my airbag.  [:D]

BMB      

Exactly.  Look at all the lawsuits going on because of the Explorer/Firestone thing.  That was all because people lowered their tire pressure for a smoother ride, were not paying attention to what was going on, and did not know how to respond when something happened.  So the auto/tire manufacturers have to 'cover their ass'.

When I last bought a car I wanted just a plain-jane car that had enough power to pull a trailer and air conditioning.  That beast did not exist.  I was forced to buy electric windows that broke in three years and were a major production to get repaired correctly.  I was forced to buy electric seats that also broke out of warranty and have not bothered to fix.  This is what annoys me.