Yaris, Scion xD, Honda Fit - no water temp gauge

You plainly don't understand marketing and sales.

You're asking the wrong question. The CORRECT question to ask is this:
why should every car be built with the 747 cockpit? Let the THREE
PEOPLE in the world who care about that, add whatever they want.

In the meantime, the REAL WORLD marketing will keep the cost of the
vehicle down by NOT adding the 747 dashboard that requires flight school
and years of training to use.

It's easier to put that years of training into a proper computer program
which will decide, properly, when something needs tended to. Design
that one time, spend the money one time, then the program can run at no
extra cost on every car that comes off the line.
[/QUOTE]

I don't believe that that is actually done. Do you have any evidence of
any software like you describe?

My belief is that most cars are essentially toaster ovens on wheels,
made to be used for a couple years, discarded, and then replaced with a
new one. At least that's how the manufacturers would like their
customers to think of them. That's why I don't buy cars that show
evidence of this design philosophy if I have any choice in the matter.

nate

 

Are you honestly telling me that the car buying public operates their
cars on this basis?

Fact: they don't.[/QUOTE]

I'd never allow anyone to borrow one of my vehicles that didn't know
enough to at least watch the gauges at that superficial a level.

nate

 

I trust my eyes more than I trust someone to actually take the time to
do that properly.[/QUOTE]

YOU trust YOUR eyes. Ain't that nice.

You are also, by definition, trusting not only the gauges but the
sensors. There are plenty of failure points here.

Back to the point: YOU trust YOUR eyes more than you trust the
programmers to write a program to watch all the sensors and to have a
map of various parameters that will tell when the SYSTEM is out of
normal range. That's what you're saying?

That's a choice, and as jim says you ENJOY doing all this
stuff--therefore much of your choice is, indeed, based on recreation.

You seem not to want to acknowledge that the car buying public doesn't
get its rocks off by watching a 747 dash full of gauges like you do.
They don't want to watch, they don't care to know. YOU are definitely
within the minority. And the economics of the situation have spoken:
if YOU want those gauges, then YOU add them. It would be silly to force
a 747 dash full of gauges on the buying public, virtually all of whom
would be turned off by them and would refuse to pay for them.

You keep harping on detail items, while completely ignoring the reality
of the outside world. Yes, I said outside world. There's a huge world
outside your lab, Dr. Brown, full of people doing things that have
nothing to do with knowing how an ICE works or what rules of thumb one
should use for an oil gauge or a water temp gauge or a cylinder head
temp gauge (that would be one per piston, right?). They drive cars
EVERY DAY, they do so successfully, and they have the expectation that
they DO NOT NEED to be YOU, Dr. Brown, just in order to drive a car.

The car manufacturers are catering to those people, because those people
represent 99.99% of the market. It makes ZERO sense for Ford to give a
shit that you want the 747 dashboard full of gauges.

 

it's called obdII. it's on all modern cars.

 

Nate Nagel wrote:

8<

no dude, it knocked because a bolt was letting go. once it was gone,
the rod threw. that's not a bearing problem.


8<

"irrelevant"??? dude, that is /so/ wrong.


8<

but it doesn't show anything until it's /way/ above activation. that
doesn't help you per your argument.


8<

absolutely not - the gauge stays rock steady during the whole on-off delta.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38636024@N00/2445120839/



8<

no, you wasted money on band-aiding something that probably failed at
the same point as it would have anyway.

8<

you band-aided, you didn't fix.


8<

dude, labor is expensive. it takes many hours to rebuild a motor. to
get it done to a high standard is going to cost you thousands. a new
one, factory new, for my car, is $3,640. once you factor in time to
replace, and down time, - i.e. you get the new motor shipped in, take
the old one out, fit the new one, and drive away vs. having the vehicle
occupy shop space stripped down for a few weeks while the motor gets
done, then replacing new - it becomes much more economic. factor in
superior reliability and longevity, and it becomes more economic still.

or you can pay ~$300 for jdm.


8<

dude, i'm serious. how can a gauge /prevent/ a bearing going? it
can't. all it does is give you an increased chance of seeing that it's
about to go, but it can't prevent it.

 

YOU trust YOUR eyes. Ain't that nice.

You are also, by definition, trusting not only the gauges but the
sensors. There are plenty of failure points here.

Back to the point: YOU trust YOUR eyes more than you trust the
programmers to write a program to watch all the sensors and to have a
map of various parameters that will tell when the SYSTEM is out of
normal range. That's what you're saying?

That's a choice, and as jim says you ENJOY doing all this
stuff--therefore much of your choice is, indeed, based on recreation.

You seem not to want to acknowledge that the car buying public doesn't
get its rocks off by watching a 747 dash full of gauges like you do.
They don't want to watch, they don't care to know. YOU are definitely
within the minority. And the economics of the situation have spoken:
if YOU want those gauges, then YOU add them. It would be silly to force
a 747 dash full of gauges on the buying public, virtually all of whom
would be turned off by them and would refuse to pay for them.

You keep harping on detail items, while completely ignoring the reality
of the outside world. Yes, I said outside world. There's a huge world
outside your lab, Dr. Brown, full of people doing things that have
nothing to do with knowing how an ICE works or what rules of thumb one
should use for an oil gauge or a water temp gauge or a cylinder head
temp gauge (that would be one per piston, right?). They drive cars
EVERY DAY, they do so successfully, and they have the expectation that
they DO NOT NEED to be YOU, Dr. Brown, just in order to drive a car.

The car manufacturers are catering to those people, because those people
represent 99.99% of the market. It makes ZERO sense for Ford to give a
shit that you want the 747 dashboard full of gauges.
[/QUOTE]

and even then, once all that is done in prototyping, and it is, there's
no point in replicating it if it stays in spec for the life of the
vehicle. if it doesn't, the motor's fucked, and a gauge wouldn't have
prevented it.

 

But do you have any evidence that, say, oil pressure is monitored by
anything other than a simple 5 or 7 PSI pressure switch?

nate

 

Maybe, maybe not. I didn't do a postmortem, as it was a 3.5l straight
six, which "never go" so junkyard motors were readily available. And
the car wasn't worth more than a junkyard motor.

That's where you're just not getting it - *any* anomaly is relevant.
When you see an anomaly, you need to figure out why the anomaly
occurred, *before* you have an actual failure.

What do you mean? I can sit there at a stop light, watch the gauge
creep up to about 210-ish, fan kicks in, temp quickly drops back to
195ish. That's the difference between 3/4 of the way through the
"normal" bar and 1/4 of the "normal" bar on my 944. If it ever creeps
over 3/4 without the fan kicking in, that's an issue. And yes, I *did*
detect a bad fan thermoswitch that way, before the car ever actually
overheated. Was maybe $20 and some coolant to fix, as opposed to an
expensive head gasket job.

No it doesn't. Not with a finely calibrated gauge. What you show is
not the behavior of a real gauge. I don't deny that some mfgrs. may
adopt that strategy to avoid extraneous comments from idiots, but that
is a failure of education and IMHO the wrong way to handle the issue.
Apparently Porsche does not subscribe to this philosophy, which is one
of many reasons that I remain partial to their cars.

That explains why it was driven for 4-5 years afterwards as primary
transportation.

See above.

Depends on what car we're talking about. For some older vehicles, your
options may be "junkyard" (either in the sense of "roll the dice and
acquire used engine from" or "start searching the classifieds and send
what's left of car to") or "rebuild."

That's all well and good, *if* you have a popular Japanese car and *if*
it is new enough that there's still a good supply of JDM engines.

And that's not important? Say, if you're planning a long road trip
halfway across the country, wouldn't it be nice to have that information
*before* you left, rather than discover it the hard way halfway between
Cleveland and Toledo?

Heck, I had an alternator fail on me once in just such a situation. It
was a royal PITA and quite expensive to boot. Had I a proper voltmeter
in that car, I might have seen some signs of that before I took off from
Detroit heading to Annapolis, and saved me an expen$ive tow, repair
bill, and hotel room by having the issue rectified before I left.

nate

 

Or, buy a rebuilt engine. People in Mexico have been rebuilding for
cheap for decades. Labor is cheap there. They buy bearings, rings, etc.,
in bulk. And they have a pretty good warranty. Just buy the engine, swap
it out when it comes, and return the old one.

You can also buy a rebuilt engine at AutoZone and other retailers,
although I would be leary of the quality.

Jeff

 

ok, let's get this straight:

i. your experience count is 1.
ii. you didn't determine the cause of failure.

but you still feel qualified to lecture on bearing failure? i'm done -
this thread is a fucking joke.

 

I'm not lecturing on bearing failure at all. Simply pointing out
various situations that I've been in where either gauges have helped me
or, if they'd been present (but they weren't) *could* have helped me.
Why you can't seem to understand that they are valuable tools that give
you important information on the health of your car's engine is beyond
me, even though we both can at least agree that many drivers do treat
them as if they're simply wallpaper.

Door, butt, etc.

nate

 

keep on deluding yourself. fact: no gauge can /prevent/ bearing
failure. it can [debateably] offer you the opportunity to stop driving
it, but the value of that is questionable. and you still need to
undertake expensive surgery, regardless.

get some more schooling and experience kiddo.

 

Not just bearing failure. Also other kinds of failures that may be
positively inexpensive and easy to rectify that could *lead to* the
expensive kind of failures if left as is.

I may not be the oldest guy on this group, but I've logged lots of miles
driving cars that many people would consider well past their "best
before" date and/or were self-assembled, so I have a pretty good handle
on what I want to see on a dashboard to feel comfortable with a machine.

nate

 

Now we get to the crux of the matter: you're driving older cars, in
some cases seriously older cars, and you know that as cars age they
develop quirks.

And you know that to keep driving them as they age, you need a 747
cockpit full of instrumentation.

That's way, WAY different than the original proposition that "cars need
gauges". That's way, WAY different than the neighbor's ditzy 16yo
daughter driving the new Rabbit convertible that daddy just bought her.

Way, WAY different.

 

I don't believe that that is actually done. Do you have any evidence of
any software like you describe?[/QUOTE]

Ever hooked up a ScanGauge?

Ever driven a Prius? Ever looked into the technology of a Prius? That
the Prius drives just like any other car is testimony to the abilities
of the software engineers at Toyota.

 

That's correct. And those of us who know better, buy quality cars that
can easily outlast the manufacturer's ultimate wishes. Want a 94 Lexus
ES with 174K on the clock? No 747 dashboard full of gauges, but runs as
smooth as the day it was born.

So what cars do you buy?

 

Great, but the manufacturers and car dealers are happy to sell to those
people.

 

As I recall, the Wabbit 'verts came with the usual Wabbit gauge package
(speedo, tach, fuel, water temp,) plus a voltmeter, oil pressure, and
oil temp gauge in front of the shifter. Even better than the A1 GTI
which got a damn clock instead of the oil pressure gauge. So I'm not
sure where you're going with this

nate

(if I were a real jerk, I'd point out that the last Wabbit was made in
1984, and the last A1 chassis Cabby was made in 1993, so the newest car
you could call a "Rabbit Convertible" probably falls into the category
of "well past their best before date" <G> but if you know of any you
want to get rid of, I still have a good sized stash of cool VW parts
looking for a builder chassis... Why the hell did I sell my Scirocco?)

 

The original claim was that most people can't maintain their cars
halfway decently.

And yet, the sales of cars seems to be through the roof--even high end
cars.[/QUOTE]

Yes, that's true. If you don't maintain your car properly, you have to
buy a new one long before you would if you were more careful. Poor
maintenance _increases_ auto sales.

If you don't do regular maintenance, any car is a complete waste of money,
because it won't be worth much for long.
--scott

 

See my comment elsewhere in this thread. A properly crafted computer
program can do a much better job watching a MUCH wider range of
measurements and integrate those measurements into a program that knows
what to look out for.[/QUOTE]

This is true.

This is not true. Just because it CAN do a better job doesn't mean anyone
is bothering to make it do so.
--scott