Wow, I guess i'm a little surprised I have to defend this. I would think that guys as obsessed with top quality lubrication and oil change intervals are either trying to maximize the lifespan of their car or minimize unnecessary money spent, and they would be right down this alley.
This isn't "pining for the old days", or believing things like "when they develop the perfect fuel injector it will be a carburetor" which I heard everyone saying in the 1980's. It's being tired of Planned Obsolescence - things ARE designed to fail, there must be some engineer here who can attest to that. Theyr'e just designed to fail "after the useful life". Thats why we have timing belts needing a replacement at 101,000 miles in interference-engine designs when everyones car warranty only goes to 100,000 miles - timing chains last far longer normally to the lifespan of the rest of the engine so I don't have to touch it until it's ready for rebuild.
Many things ARE "designed to fail" and that figure is determined by a balancing point of what people will put up with vs what they think they can get elsewhere. (look at the carp reliability of US cars until the imports forced them to finally improve their game) I'm trying to make a point. That I don't like being lied to, deceived, or jerked around with bull by companies trying to extort from me backend profits that weren't agreed to up front.
I don't have any problem being told up front what the cost of something is, and being allowed to choose. If i'm the type of person who dumps a car right after the warranty period i'm not going to care. But there are lots of times when I would choose a longer life option if it were available to me. I would pay more for a better part that I probably don't have to replace again. But the companies don't give me that option.
None of this means they don't try to maximize reliability within the designed life. Even i'm impressed by how hard Ford tested their Ecoboost for their trucks for instance to the equivalent of 200,000 miles of practically nonstop work. (though that means a little less learning from here 90% of wear happens on startup) That doesn't mean that the Ecoboost won't also probably have a bunch of parts designed to poop out at the tail end of that though - the companies want you getting a new truck after that, continuing to use the old one is not in the cards if they can get away with it.
So talking about all that is not my point. I care less about that they are doing it since I know it will never change and more about figuring out where it got worse. My point is to identify where things took some of their unique downturns to maximize profit out of long term car owners/used buyers. To find some cars that maybe are more of a sweet spot or that have less of the compromises than others. Maybe even at some point to engineer some parts to fix those weak spots definitively if I happen to otherwise like my car and want to keep it another decade. I'm not pining for the days of carburetors here - just wanting things that aren't a $1000 surprise kick in the groin out of the blue when trying to hold onto an older car.
So...
...lets...
...gently...
...move...
...back...
....on...
....topic....
... please?
Instead of griping about me griping about cars or griping about my title (when I cant fit a more precise title in the chars allowed anyway), help me gripe about what "modern car design" seems to be designing to guarantee extra dealer visits or "beyond designed life" breakdowns, annoyance, and hassle. I'm perfectly fine leaving it up to you the poster to decide what you think counts - i'm hardly an expert mechanic, and i'm more curious what else is out there that I haven't encountered yet, especially on different models makes and years of cars.
I'm not even going to claim 80's cars were more reliable than newer ones (tho i'm not sure 2010's were any better than 90's), because that was when domestics were still getting their rears kicked by imports being far more reliable as a commonly quoted reason for buying. What i'm interested in doing is IDENTIFYING THE CHANGES FOR THE WORSE because at some point the attempts to make things better reversed at least for what they thought they could get away with. (i'm aware someone thought complaining about forced rotor changes wasn't a big deal, but when it's $1000/rotor on a Mercedes it becomes a big deal IF it doesn't otherwise need changing and IF the change didn't make anything better) Much of what I can find seems to indicate a sort-of sweet spot in the 1990's for many vehicles - relatively minor "long term profit" compromises, offset by enough of the major forced improvements in things like safety cage engineering, ABS, airbags, and japan-competitive reliability.
A good case in point is that I heard of the 1980's Mercedes that they really were designed to run freaking forever - i'd heard the engineers werent forced to rein in their impulses of designing a truly superior car until the bean counting 90's - which is why you can find 300SE diesels and such with half a million miles on them. Now I haven't owned one and i'm sure theyre still not cheap to fix (when something is truly BETTER thats one of the few excuses for not being cheap to fix) and maybe there's stuff I don't know about that goes out alot worse than the 90's chevy caprices (that would run a half million in taxi service without batting an eye usually after 100k of hard hard highway patrol and police service before being auctioned off) but it's an example of the kind of car i'm more interested in.
Examples of changes for the worse I could think of:
- Easily broken plastic on control surfaces, whether knobs, switches, or sliders, which has only gotten worse over time. And handles especially outdoor handles! To anyone who says "just be gentle on it" you've apparently never had kids, or never had your door freezeover with rain-ice.
- Timing belts on ANY interference engine design. (personal pet peeve because I hate changing timing belts) Other than up front cost can someone tell me the supposed benefit? My Saturn has a chain thats unlikely to break and i've seen a few catastrophic timing belt failures before.
- Any plastic in a critical underhood area, i've heard alot of intake manifolds and such out of the new thermoplastic all start cracking around 8-10 years. You could mildly argue the weight savings is worth it as the 'normal life is keeping a car 8-10' years but that's not a tradeoff I would choose.
- Any arbitrary changes, like some newer BMW's I guess don't use standard coolant hoses, they use some fancy O-ringed getup. Which... in no way I can determine performs any better under any condition, it just costs more money. Find a way to make something thats a commodity into something proprietary and add two zeroes onto the price = easy profit.
- Possibly arbitrary demands for special coolant, oils, and similar. The factory tells me i'm supposed to use Honda Blue in an Accord, but I can never tell if it's Fear Uncertainty and Doubt scaring everyone into it, or if they literally designed something to fail with normal more affordable coolant. I just don't buy claims that anything is somehow necessary for performance or wear properties or anything else when the majority of manufacturers build 200,000 mile lasting vehicles with the same MPG and the same horsepower that don't need such special things - this seems like a nickel'n'dime to me. ** Now if that arbitrary coolant is not required for comparable-to-other-vehicle component life like the water pump, but actually enables much longer life, then i'm all for it - when it's optional.
- Air conditioning condensors which cannot really be flushed due to coolant passages so tiny you pretty much cant blow air through them even. Is there honestly any performance increase vs how it was before?
- Probably every single thing in the fuel and ignition systems of high end cars like Mercedes. I hear nightmare stories of people spending more to fix an ignition than i'd spend for an entire engine and now I see why the resale value of used high end luxury cars is so low. If the car was otherwise reliable i'd figure out a way to convert the entire thing over to Megasquirt and Megajolt/EDIS and probably spend less from the conversion than I would on the first repair.
- Possibly nonrebuildable parts in general. If I have to replace something I generally just replace the whole unit (caliper, power steering pump), I don't care to save a few extra $ because my time is more valuable and i'm saving enough turning the wrenches myself. But for when there is more time than money or you really are scraping by this could also be an annoyance.
