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The Rant

My rant...I think car dealers are the opposite of lawyers, they are great until you need them.

Now that the temps are rising we've noticed that our CRV keeps heating up whenever we stop for any length of time, which is unavoidable in traffic on our ride home. Figuring as usual it was something in the electronics, which I can be a nightnmare to track down on the never cars I decided to take it to the dealer to have it checked out. Turns out it was just the electric cooling fans that were shot. The AC has not worked properly for some time so that fan may have dies long ago while the cooling fan next to it probably just dies or quit some time over the winter.

Here's my gripe, they want $1550 + tax to replace two small fans bolted to the radiator!!! They told me the fans run about $400 each and they have to order the fan, shroud, etc all separate and so on.

Instinctively I told them to hold off while I think about it. Turns out I can find the same fans, shrouds, parts, etc included for about $49-$75 each (depending on brand) from numerous online part stores.

Seriously, they want to charge me $800 + another $700 in labor for a job I can do myself for about $131 (Parts + expedited shipping). They still nailed me for $180 just for looking at the damn thing!!!

I've observed markups and overpriced parts at dealers before but this is freaking insane. Despite being only assembled in the US, I love my Honda, at 310K miles with less than $1K in repairs (excluding normal wear items such as brakes and tires) over it's lifespan it has been the best car I've ever had, but the markup on OEM parts and labor is unfreaking believable.

Lucky this is something I can fix myself. They have really screwed us over. They make cars overly complex so they can in turn overcharge for parts and labor because they know the majority of people can't begin to repair them themselves, esp today's generations.

I'm working hard to keep my Chevy Pickup running as long as I can. It has very little electronics, no GPS, tracking beacons, etc. Just very basic fuel injection which caan easily be swapped out for a carb in a pinch.

Glad I came from one of the last generations of people that still don't mind getting dirty and fixing shit themselves....but that is a rant for another time.
 
We've owned Toyotas for over 20 years and the local Toyota dealer has always been one of the best ones in the state.

Then they got bought out by Penske who spent a lot of money remodeling the place. It's fancy and beautiful now with a fabulous stock of cars but the service department has gone to shit.

My dad started me fixing machines when I was 6 years old. Until I was in my late 50s I had never taken my stuff into a shop to be repaired.

But then I decided it was time to kick back and let somebody else pick up the slack. Beside that, I didn't really want to work on a Late Model Toyota. I'd rather pay someone to do that while I work on my rusty old antique stuff.

But I was ticked off last night & I went out to service my truck for the very first time in 8 years.

I just got fed up with the local Toyota dealer seeing how they have failed to maintain my wife's new Camry.

It was in the shop last month for service and instead of cleaning up the battery cables the bastoids just told my wife she should buy a new battery. Her battery died in under 4 years, because in 4 years of service they never cleaned the battery or put water in it.

I normally get seven years out of a battery. Got to clean the terminals every 6 months and keep water in it & make sure it gets charged. This car goes in the shop every 6 months and yet they couldn't handle that.

Yesterday the battery gave up the ghost, and I found it low on water & those battery cables in miserable condition.

For years I've Been telling them put 10w30 oil in my truck. Half the time they still put in 5W30.

I'll have to continue this later there's just too much stuff...
 
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Toyota rant continued...

This one had a bit of a happy ending but I took off work one day to take my truck in to the dealer and have new tires put on it. I told him I wanted the factory original tires. . . no problem, right?

I come back to pick up my truck and find a completely different set of tires on it. Bloody hell ! ...they didn't even look close. Did these guys think I was blind?

Then thet try to BS me that these are the right tires and they were certified by Toyota for this truck.

In addition they had given me cheaper tires, and charged me for the more expensive tires which I had ordered.

When I told them to change the tires and put the right ones on, they told me that they never actually had the right ones.

So I had to take off work again and take the truck back 2 days later to get the correct tires installed.

In addition to all that inconvenience, nobody bothered to tell me that had I waited one day to buy my tires I could have gotten in on the October tire event and saved the cost of one entire tire. I made them refund the cost of the tires and then charge me on a new bill for the correct tires on the 2nd of October under, which they had to give me a free tire.
 
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All I want to know is, who goes to the dealer for tires ?

I run Yokohama geolander ATS tires, awesome, no road noise, track straight, wear excellent. Will not put any other tires on my Tacoma.
 
I have never gone to get tires from a dealer. That's just asking for trouble. Thats like going grocery shopping at pep boys. Sure they have some food there but not the right stuff...

The only time I'll go to a dealer is for a part only they have. Which is not too often.
I fix my own vehicles. Learned it on my own.
Tire stores get my business....cuz they have everything...and good prices too...
 
All I want to know is, who goes to the dealer for tires ?
. . .

1. I was going there anyway for other service.
2. I wanted the tires to all match. I have others the same as spares. Of course there are better tires. I didn't really give a shit. 90% of my driving is just around town 30-40 miles an hour so tires aren't of great consequence.
3. I drive past the dealer twice a day so it's convenient to go there.
4. Price was not a conern. I could as easily have bought a brand new Tacoma on that day. I considered it too. The new ones don't have enough track record yet for me.
5. This dealer used to be the best. Since it changed hands they can't do a thing right.

I still do some work on this truck. I changed the shocks and put an anti-sway bar on it. It's off warranty now and I'm semi-retired, so I'll have more time and motivation to deal with it.

But I also have two cars, a 4 wheel drive, a motorcycle, and a boat to take care of, so for the past 10 years I have been jobbing out some things that I would have done by myself in years past.
 
Well I killed this thread for almost a whole year!

I came to bitch about the fact that the amount of respect engineers get is reflected in the quality of products that are sold to Consumers.

This stupidity is really about the marketing people lording it over the engineers. For instance, they should never have redesigned the Mossberg 500 magazine assy, and then still called it the 500.

It should have been called the 501 & the next one should have been called the 502. Or some sensible system of unambiguous nomenclature should be used.

Damn marketing people want to change products every year to excite the public, but they want to give it the same old name.

Name recognition means eficient sales, and efficient sales means more than efficient engineering, in a world where everything is run by money.

I only bring this up because ordinary people do not understand anything about how day today products are engineered.

When you look at the deficiencies of a new product that you just bought, please remember that that in big manufacturing companies the engineers are the last ones to have a say in anything.

Product liability problems are largely started by salespeople, dumped onto engineers, and eventually "solved" by lawyers, politics, and payoffs, rather than by funding better engineering.

This practice is one of the reasons I was so happy to retire early. It's also one of the reasons that most American cars have been such garbage since the 1970s.

They're convinced they can attract customers more quickly with fancy marketing than with good products.
 
Well I killed this thread for almost a whole year!

I came to bitch about the fact that the amount of respect engineers get is reflected in the quality of products that are sold to Consumers.

This stupidity is really about the marketing people lording it over the engineers. For instance, they should never have redesigned the Mossberg 500 magazine assy, and then still called it the 500.

It should have been called the 501 & the next one should have been called the 502. Or some sensible system of unambiguous nomenclature should be used.

Damn marketing people want to change products every year to excite the public, but they want to give it the same old name.

Name recognition means eficient sales, and efficient sales means more than efficient engineering, in a world where everything is run by money.

I only bring this up because ordinary people do not understand anything about how day today products are engineered.

When you look at the deficiencies of a new product that you just bought, please remember that that in big manufacturing companies the engineers are the last ones to have a say in anything.

Product liability problems are largely started by salespeople, dumped onto engineers, and eventually "solved" by lawyers, politics, and payoffs, rather than by funding better engineering.

This practice is one of the reasons I was so happy to retire early. It's also one of the reasons that most American cars have been such garbage since the 1970s.

They're convinced they can attract customers more quickly with fancy marketing than with good products.
From a mechanical engineer...a lot of truth in this post CaddmannQ. It's Easter so that's all I'm going to say.
 
I was a mechanic before I studied mechanical engineering, so I get that.

But they never did those things on purpose. Engineers have a code of ethics you know.

You will find that behind a lot of great engineering flops, there was bad data given up front.

As a manufacturing engineer, I once "wrote" 2000 computer programs for a particular project. (I didn't actually write anything with a pencil. I used computers to generate these programs.) But I only had two weeks to do it and I worked seven days a week + overtime for 2 weeks. The ladies in payroll looked at me strangely when they gave me my paycheck, because I got time and a half and double time!

One of the other people involved in the project had given me a piece of bad data and for an Arcane technical reason, virtually every one of those programs was garbage because of it.

That was the end of a very lucrative job, due to Politics over reason . . .

In a world where money rules everything that is not an uncommon occurrence.
 
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As a mechanic, I hate engineers. They design shit that's nearly impossible to repair in an efficient manner. When you have to disassemble an entire assembly, to change one part. That's terribly inefficient.
I completely agree. Those guys drive me crazy too. Some engineers aren't that great and they design things to be hard to work on. Some of that is intentional (smaller percentage) and is pushed by accountants so people pay them to make the repairs. Sometimes they just don't know any better. The really good engineers that I have come across in my career impressed me with their common sense and they all grew up with a hobby/interest that had them using tools. When I was studying engineering (early 1980’s) almost every guy I studied with was a motor head. Mostly cars or motorcycles. The good engineers do design for initial assembly and later repair. Unfortunately today you get to many kids that just want to sit at computer and never get dirty. A good engineer will also talk with end users/mechanics/repair technicians and be open to input. I have seen some engineers with big egos that would never accept any input and would never seek to learn from mistakes. There are good and bad engineers just as there are good and bad mechanics.
 
I also realise things are engineered to be assembled for production more efficiently. Once it's off the line, out of the lot, there is no regard for the consumer.
 
That's because the consumer is supposed to consume.

Not repair! Not in a world of mass production.

You're supposed to just get a new one!

Unfortunately that's the kind of selfish and wasteful mentality that drives our consumer culture.

It is true that I have seen a lot of Engineers who had never built a dog house or a birdhouse or a complicated model in their lives. They really were only good on paper & had little clue about spatial relationships, access and assembly sequences.
 
By the way you guys that was just a joke about the engineer's code of ethics.

You see, the people paying their salaries have no code of ethics.

It's very much like the politics you see everyday on TV.
 
It is true that I have seen a lot of Engineers who had never built a dog house or a birdhouse or a complicated model in their lives. They really were only good on paper & had little clue about spatial relationships, access and assembly sequences.
We called them "book smart"...great at homework and passing a test but couldn't design their way out of a paper bag.
 
Okay now I'm going to rant about gun manuals.

I finally got the manual on my Mossberg Cruiser. This was a gun ordered by someone else, and when it came in they didn't like it, so it went on the store shelf. I bought it off the shelf about a year later at a nice discount.

I mention this because I went back to the same store and bought two new pistols yesterday, and lo and behold the owner had not only found the factory paperwork and the lock but also the original box!

I had a good laugh when I read through the factory manual because it covers 5 model numbers in about 20 variations.

The diagrams were good enough, but they cover both mag tube mounting systems and multiple other things, in one manual, on one drawing.

To me that's a very poor engineering practice, and furthermore in this age of instant and effortless computer reproductions, there is absolutely no excuse to be cheap and produce confusing manuals in the process.

These things are dangerous, Mr. Mossberg.

We don't want people to be confused about how they go together or how they work, or about which parts they actually own.

They say if you want to bore people then "tell everything."

As an engineer who drew diagrams for people over the course of 40+ years, I tell you that if you want to confuse people put multiple differing products in one diagram, and put the instructions for six other similar but different models in the same manual you expect them to read and understand clearly.

Then make the manual in English and Spanish too.

Now, what you could have clearly done in four pages or 8 to include Spanish (except for the required legalese) is 58 cluttered pages long.

If you just want to satisfy the lawyers make the damn book a hundred pages long! But if you want people to read the thing and be safer, make it concise and explain exactly what they must know.

Sometimes in computers you have a buffer overrun. This means there's too much data to go in the spot you've reserved to put it, the computer doesn't know what to do and so all your data gets lost.

When you make a product manual too big and confusing you cause human Minds to have buffer overruns and the data does not get through.

Also, while having the manual in Spanish may sound like a good idea, in order to buy a gun here I believe that you must read and pass the official firearms safety test, which is in English.

I'm pretty sure that, in California, if you can't read English you can't legally buy a gun. Someone would have to coach you on the test answers.
 
I was just looking at the "Operating Procedure and Safety Instructions" manual for one of my ladders. It's 12 half-pages long. That's just for English. Flip it over and it's another 12 pages in Spanish.

The biggest problem isn't the engineers... it's the lawyers.
 
:perfect:
No engineer would argue with that statement, but jouarnalists ain't much behind.

We had another black guy named Mohammed running around shooting white guys today, in Fresno, because he didn't like white people.

The LA Times spun it as a "suspected hate crime".

According to our police chief Jerry Dyer, one Kori Ali Mohammad shouted "Allah Akbahr! " at the cops. According to the Killer's Facebook page "he hated white people."

Kudos to the Fresno Police, who report that Mohammad shot a security guard and three random white men in succession, before suddenly attracting a swarm of hot lead.

He is now sharing his racist views with all the other copycat dead muslim guys named Mohammad. In hell. That is to say, he refused to give up, and got himself shot dead.

:cool:

Sorry, that last part was just wishful thinking. Mohammad survived his arrest and is in custody.

Three of his victims did not survive. :(:(:(
 
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