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Why arent cars designed to be repaired?

2K views 17 replies 16 participants last post by  Mmike66 
#1 ·
Is there some reason cars are designed the way they are, instead of being easy to repair?
 
#2 ·
Government agencies like the NHTSA, EPA and all the bleeding hearts that complain about safety and air quality.
Back in the 60s when you couldn't see in major cities due to smog and people were dying in accidents cars were easy to work on! Pop the hood on an old muscle car and take a look.
And there was that oil embargo that started gas milage regulations.

I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing! I can put up with a few skinned fingers working in a tight engine compartment if I can breath the air and see blue skies. Carolina Blue that is.
 
#5 ·
I don't think it's just bleeding hearts who are responsible. People who buy cars are a lot more critical about mileage, room, and handling than they used to be: if you can shrink the whole package, that's desirable now in a way that wasn't true for your father's Oldsmobile.

Unfortunately, if you shrink everything outside the passenger compartment and added more complicated multifunction mechanics like front wheel drive, you end up in a place where it's just harder to work on the beast.

My deceased father, a mechanical engineer who did all his own car work, would have loved looking at the Passat, appreciating what a beautiful and solid piece of machinery it is. And, in the next sentence, he would have loosed a series of non-family friendly comments about having to take apart the subframe to get at the oil pan, ranting at the engineers who did something so stupid.

Germans are certainly guilty of a certain amount of obtuseness in trying to make the perfect widget at the expense of practicality. My sister's Honda Accord of the same vintage (circa 2004), for example, is a paragon of under hood accessibility compared to my 1.8T. On the other hand, it feels like about 1/10th the car, particularly under conditions when all-wheel-drive really matters.
 
#3 ·
This is actually completely false. Cars are made to be repaired. But things are a little more compact now versus years back, hence making repairs a little more difficult.

I always think of car repairs in terms of how the car was assembled. There are some parts that are made to be replaced with minimal removal of other parts (spark plugs, oil filter, oil pan, air filter, etc.) But then other things like axles, control arms, certain engine Sensors, are all installed on an assembly and lifted into the car. Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it, and know how to take a few shortcuts. Repairs also TAKE TIME and a good feel for machinery. You can't rush things...

Its a very common fault for people to think engineers intentionally make things super difficult just... because. There is such thing as bad design too

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#4 ·
Well said vbora01. Even the OE knows they will be paying warranty labor so the easier it is to fix, the less expensive it is for the manufacturer.

There are many factors that dictate vehicle design and in my personal experience working with OE's I can name several instances where design was influenced by the assembly process or the overall cost of a component/assembly. Everything can't be on top and easy to reach, something has to be buried in the car. It's all a compromise.
 
#6 ·
I can assume that you are referring specifically to these B5 vehicles? In my opinion, they generally are easy to repair, with obvious exceptions like the heater core. I had to change the cylinder head on a Toyota truck that I had, only vehicle I've owned that blew the head gasket, and that job was equal to control arms and valve cover gaskets on a B5 put together.
 
#7 ·
Most cars nowadays are front wheel drive. The transaxle is crammed forward and now you have two axles jutting out that never used to be there. The addition of emission controls and catalytic converters takes up whatever remaining space there is available. There's just more crap crammed into the front of the car than ever before so it stands to reason there's much less room to work on things.
 
#12 ·
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.

plus they want you to take your car to the dealer for repairs = more profit for the dealer.
so they make shit harder to work on, need special tools for some jobs, etc..
First part true to a degree, but probably not really intentional as it was in the 60's-70's. They didn't pick the rubber in the control arm bushing to tear over time, that's just material properties. However, not being able to grease the ball joints, lifetime transmission and hydraulic fluid, is sort of examples (since older cars you could grease that part.) Electrical bits are hard to design to fail unless you're using really shotty components, or have a cheap design. Interior parts is once again about materials than design. So really you should blame the materials engineer :)

Special tools aren't made to discourage diy repair. Usually, they're made to aid assembly and manufacturing. You put yourself in the place of the VW assembly plant guy whose responsible for clamps. They made it a "one time" clamp because its a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to squeeze that together than to twist EVERY screw clamp on. The cam lock bar for a V6 is used for timing the V6, just like it was used at the factory. Special tools simply enable someone to have exactly what they need for what they're repairing. Much cheaper than trying to design around universal tools IMO.

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#10 ·
Yes it should. Funny how you can tell who the OP is just by the thread title
 
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#11 ·
I spoke to an engineer about this one time. What he said was, products, including cars, are designed to be built, not repaired. Every part gets "touched" during manufacture; reducing the time or number of steps that takes is of immediate financial benefit to the manufacturer. In the old days, cars were built by hand, and parts were designed to be handled that way. Now, much or most assembly is done by robots.

After the car is sold, many parts are serviced once or twice in the life of the product, and maybe never. And, the customer pays for it! Why on earth should they spend any effort making it easy? The only reason they're repairable at all is to limit customer backlash and a bad reputation.

Finally, an observation of my own, on that "bad reputation." Customers (on the average) these days are enormously and increasingly fickle. My family is from Germany originally, and we've mostly been "VW guys" in the same way someone might be an Eagles fan. Now that changes on a whim; I've spoken to more than one person who wasn't sure what car they drove. My neighbor yesterday had to look at the badges on his SUV to be sure. "It's... Japanese." Brand loyalty? Further, the brands themselves change. Jaguar was Jaguar. Then BMC, British Leyland, Ford... Now, I think it's Tata. Even if you build a reputation for repairability, things may be different next model change.
 
#17 ·
Cars are made to be repaired just not for DIY types. More engineering goes into building the car for sure. Why should a manufacturer care if the car can be repaired in your driveway? Cars were simple to repair in the 60's because they were simple designs. Wishbone suspensions, electronic fuel injection, 4WD, turbo chargers, intercoolers, and ABS were not common as they are today.
 
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