They are trying to make parts as light as reasonably possible to comply with the retarded bullshit the faggot-ass epa is mandating
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Plastic parts on your cars engine? Made to fail as soon as the warranty is up.
- Thread starter Maggot
- Start date
Interesting. I posted because I’m truly curious. It seems you’d want a reliable product but for whatever reason they continue to ignore this well known issue with such a seemingly easy solution. I figured there’s a reason hiding in there.
Pretty much all hvac actuators are plastic along with the parts they turn. The last hvac unit I replaced was on a 2019 western star because the driver lost a ball point pen in the dash. The actuator didn't fail, it was the plastic shaft that it turns. You will always find the next week point when upgrading components.
53 years old
318
4-speed
HD Dana 44
Dana 60
4:09/4:10
Manual Steering
Power Drum Brakes
It's the custom edition
Chrome
Radio and a cigarette lighter.
115,000 one owner miles
The only real issue, typical rubber floor mat floorboard rust....
Well, I’ve owned a lot of vehicles and the actuator hasn’t failed in them. I don’t have a single friend that has ever told me about this happening, nor any of the cars my parents have ever owned. Not the largest sample size just saying, it seems a problem with JKs and could clearly be avoided as shown in all the other manufacturers that don’t have this high of failure rate. As for new diesels, I don’t have enough experience to know about their issues.
Jk's also had a lot of cooling system issues. My 2012 had a plugged heater core with 8k miles on it. I drove it for 4 months with no heat because the first dealer didn't fix it and the second dealer had to get approval from corporate to replace the parts the other dealer said they did. It was a very common issue with them.
I bought a 1990 honda civic in 2004 with 180k miles for $400, today I just rolled over 420k …who says cars can’t be investments 
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You can say that a out everything car related. Not hard to change brake pads, disc's, even timing belts on many cars.
But the average person doesn't own a set of tool let alone know how to use them.
Nor do they want to.
Most prefer to throw money at simple tasks, one of the reasons the world is slowly changing over to one trick pony's. Not a bad thing as long as the game stays in play. However should a hitch in that giddy up transpire somehow, those same people might become real Long Pig, at some point.
I'm amassed at the amount of simple things most these days can not do for their selves. I do understand the disconnect to a point though, as some could pay another for 40hrs of work and still have 50% of their 40 hr weeks earnings.
At walmart some years back a 40 something woman was standing by her car crying. Being the asshole I am I ask here if there was anything I could help her with. She went on to say her cell phone was dead and she was locked out of her car. I said let me try, in a huff she stood there pushing the fob button over & over. I ask again allow me to try, she almost slammed the keys into my hand. Inserting the key into the lock, well you know the rest. She just stood there and looked at me like I had a third arm. Her out, was the salesman told her she just had to push the button. This is the mentality walking around out there.
So here's the deal - cars are designed to last for 10-15 years and 150-250k, because that's the intended service life. The industry works hard to achieve this goal, which is why so much of the running gear will last damn near forever.
But when things go wrong and parts fail for whatever reason (which all comes back to the fallibility of man), the likelihood of "permanent corrective action" comes down to the ownership experience for the original owner, because that's who cracked open their wallet. How long do original owners hold onto their vehicles? About four years is the historical average, although this number is trending higher due to dramatically increased sticker prices. You'll note that this also aligns pretty well with the typical warranty duration. If stuff is generally not failing within the warranty, it's unlikely to get any sort of a running design change. It might get fixed the next time the part's redesigned, which will usually be the next major refresh. If it's a common part used across multiple platforms, it might not get changed for many years.
This isn't some sort of evil scheme - it's late-stage capitalism. I'd love to see things like stainless-steel brake lines because I'm kinda sick of that being a constant problem with 10-year-old vehicles in the Midwest, but very few new-car buyers care about such things and so there's not really any motivation for the OEM to spend extra money when it could instead go towards fancier stitching on the (fake) leather seats.
The funny thing is that I'm paid pretty damn well by my customers for doing my day job, but yet it still makes sense for me to do my own automotive work because labor prices are insane nowadays and the markup on parts is almost worse. Yeah, I've got a decent shop filled with some fancy tools that make this possible, but I spent plenty of time during my youth with jack stands and a basic Craftsman set.
Repair information is more widely available than ever, and tools are actually more affordable now than when my dad was a young man.
- Nov 3, 2010
- 9,691
- 20,356
Nice truck, need to drive it regularly!!
This 89 has 340k plus miles and was my youngest daughters daily driver for almost 2 years. Gets the weekend cruise most weekends.
Not gonna lie, I have the know how to fix a lot of things, pretty much anything I own. Yet, when the weekend comes I'm not interested in spending 4 hours fucking with the 10 year old washer, especially when I know the next broken part will be right behind it, and then the next part. I've been there, done that. I stick it out by the curb, knowing it will be gone before the sun goes down. Then I buy a mid tier washer and the process starts over.
I used to spend hours fixing shit. I've worked hard to make good money and not wasting a shitload of my life fucking with this stuff anymore. If I was a poor 20ish year old, I would would, but not now. My time has value. A $600 washer for another 10 years, looks cheap to me.
Now, when the HVAC guy wanted $8K to replace the HVAC unit a few years back. I bought a top tier $4K unit and installed it myself.
I used to spend hours fixing shit. I've worked hard to make good money and not wasting a shitload of my life fucking with this stuff anymore. If I was a poor 20ish year old, I would would, but not now. My time has value. A $600 washer for another 10 years, looks cheap to me.
Now, when the HVAC guy wanted $8K to replace the HVAC unit a few years back. I bought a top tier $4K unit and installed it myself.
It’s probably cheaper to just replace the defective pieces as they trickle in instead of re-designing the part and issuing a service campaign to try to replace all of them in a short time frame. And they might not have known about the issue before they got out into the wild. Unfortunately being reliable has been playing second fiddle to the garbage epa fuel efficiency and safety standards for a long time
I was just approached by a person driving a dead nuts twin to this truck in ,Ky . His has 23,000 on the clock it’s a 64 . I’m in shock , seeing 2 in a week .
That is a nice rig , something to be proud of . I had one just like it . Floorboard rotted for years . Once it was no longer road worthy I put a plywood floorboard in it and used it for getting firewood on my land . Lock em in and that beast would go anywhere .
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