Car parts and the panic button.

We definitely have a real problem, this mechanic is saying that fifty percent of all parts have defects and have to go back to the supplier. He goes through the years from the good days at Detroit until now, Then laments the fact that mechanical repairs are getting problematic. He is thinking that we have a cascading failure event. Which will have to make mechanics have to work out workarounds. The failure of parts seems to be endemic.Then wonders why the cash for clunkers came in , when easily to keep going forever cars were crushed.He gives an interesting rant.

a reply to: anonentity

Uncle Tony makes some great videos.
He's right on about defective parts and it's not just the automotive industry.

a reply to: anonentity
He is a good guy, Mopar man!

This is why I like my good old SBC motor, and my collector-ish car. But yep, lots of crap parts put out, all offshore manufactured

a reply to: anonentity

Obviously the penny has dropped yet.

Old Cars - Petrol - Oil - Climate Change - Bad.

Quality new parts are not going to be continued to be made. It's been decided already.

Really, some people need to start paying a bit more attention to what's being jammed down the pipeline. It's incoming and it's incoming rapido.

a reply to: anonentity

I fully anticipate a future conflict over the right to have a non-autonomous vehicle in the future.

I think cars as we know them will continue be obsoleted. You won’t be able to work on, modify, repair or even drive them. I think it will be for the following reasons:

1) safety
2) productivity
3) control

a reply to: MDDoxs

Yes its obvious, There doesn't seem to be much wrong with the basic engines.I had a Kombi with fuel injection, if the temperature was below 20c the thing took ages to start .So I took the airbox off removed the contacts to the injectors and stuck a two-litre carburettor on to the air box , it was from an old Cortina, After cutting the hole and building it flat with plastic steel. Shoved a normal fuel pump on. and it gave no more trouble.

With incoming inflation who’s going to be able to afford to own a vehicle in the future? Much less hire someone to fix it if you can’t do it yourself.

a reply to: anonentity

Everything he says is true, same in the UK and our automotive industry which was of course tiny compared to the US is mostly gone now or foreign owned.

If an EMP occurs all these modern cars will be fried and good for nothing, the guy with the old car will be able to get it running eventually (though leaded oil will be a pain to find) and the guy with the ancient diesel will not even notice the EMP (and can probably run his vehicle on old cooking oil if it comes down to it).

It is not just the cars and trucks because most consumer items have what is called inbuilt obsolescence, they are designed to break or have only a limited lifetime, part of this is to force you to buy new parts or even entire new item's to keep the money going around and back out of your pocket into there pocket.

a reply to: LABTECH767

A pony and Trap is looking good these days.

I don't know about fifty percent, but I know mechanics and they say about one quarter of parts are defective. They also say that they don't last very long, maybe a year to a year and a half. That part hasn't gotten that much worse, it has been going on for five or more years now. But what is new is the delay in getting the parts and the replacement parts if they are defective. It can take two weeks to get a part if the autopart store does not stock it and most auto part stores here are low on inventory since their orders never come in. It kind of sucks. My brother just tried to get bearings for the boat trailer and he finally found a set...of course they were double the price they were two years ago. He got them locally at Menards, nobody else had them and he could not find them online. I gave him the fourteen foot starcraft aluminum boat and he has been working on it for a few days. It needed work, it was dirty and the board that holds the swivel seats in front was kind of punky. He will probably have a couple hundred bucks into it when he is done.

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: LABTECH767

A pony and Trap is looking good these days.

Make friends with the Amish and the Mennonites, they will be the best people to know!

Cheers - Dave

It is already possible to retrofit some internal combustion engines with electric motors.
I was thinking of doing this with an old Ford ranger instead of buying a crate or junkyard engine for it.

a reply to: anonentity

Ironically a lot of this is caused by the EPA. The EPA requires cars to be more and more efficient. The most efficient way to increase efficiency is to make cars lighter. This means making parts out of plastics instead of metals - plastics that can't be recycled rather than metals that can. Plastics that fail after five years instead of metals that last 25+ years. So we have massive amounts of trash being created at a faster rate instead of slightly less efficient cars. Gotta love the climate change agenda

a reply to: rickymouse

I've been dealing with a parts problem with my car for about six weeks now. Found out yesterday they sent the wrong master cylinder. Hopefully get the right one Friday.

originally posted by: anonentity
The failure of parts seems to be endemic.Then wonders why the cash for clunkers came in , when easily to keep going forever cars were crushed.He gives an interesting rant.

I like him and also prefer less complicated cars which have less than can go wrong.

I would prefer to see some hard data on car parts failures rather than an off-the cuff comment repeated from un unspecified and unverifiable source. I'm not saying he's wrong, but that I just don't know and that would be an incredibly high failure rate if true.

Another thing he talks about is the shortage of new cars due to the chip shortage and how that's driven up the prices of used cars from an average of $12000 to an average of $16000 or something like that. There's an interesting video on youtube that says supply chains are incredibly complicated, but what happened was that auto manufacturers (except Toyota) scaled back production anticipating a drop in sales, but the sales recovered far faster than they anticipated, and the supply chain of chips could not make such a recovery for complicated reasons.

Then he explains how most automakers incorrectly implemented Toyota's just in time production system by trying to eliminate ALL inventory, instead of just trying to eliminate excess inventory. The exception, Toyota realized how critical chips were so they keps 2-6 months inventory on hand and thus didn't have the severe problems of other automakers who were trying to run their plants with close to zero inventory. It's a fascinating video overall, but the automotive supply chain issues segments begins at time index 7:30:

Why There are Now So Many Shortages (It's Not COVID)

originally posted by: JIMC5499
a reply to: rickymouse

I've been dealing with a parts problem with my car for about six weeks now. Found out yesterday they sent the wrong master cylinder. Hopefully get the right one Friday.

Years back I changed quite a few master cylinders on cars I owned. I bet I changed ten total in my lifetime. Some of them are a pain to change, others are not bad at all.

They used to stock master cylinders for all makes of cars at the autoparts stores years ago, I suppose because many people order online now they cut back on stocking them. You can't stock a lot of parts without selling them, the cost of inventory is too high for most businesses and inventory is taxed once a year, worked in retail a few times and we had to take inventory of everything.

a reply to: vonclod

Hard to beat a normally aspirated chevy small block, they run even when you have to check the gas and fill the oil.
In my younger days i had a 350 that ran for ever with a ticking valve and then number 7 rod started knocking, had to rebuild it after about a week.

Went to a monster 383 in a old 77 short bed pickup with rusted out fenders, wheel wells, door rockers and skins that would flap in the wind, and the wood bed was gone and driver side rear bed wheel well gone. it was the ultimate sleeper.

Several times for a about a month I use to smoke what i think was a 75 vette, I know it was a 70's model, on the way home from work. Anyway It started one day when I went rumbling by him and he came up beside me and pointed to the bridge, I pushed my foot through the rusted out floor board and ran off and left him. Got to the top of the hill slowed down and waited for him, and when he went by, I ran him down and waited again, it was a running 5 miles from where he got on interstate and where I got off. We did that several times. The last time we raced I did the same thing, but this time at the top of the hill he just waved me on, I punched it and left him again.

Just glad we were rolling when it started, if we had left from the line he would have smoked me, ass end was to light from being all rusted out and bed rotted away. I finally had to pull the engine and trans and put them in a 68 Chevelle. That was a fun car to.

a reply to: rickymouse

In all fairness to the parts store, they switched from SAE to Metric in the middle of the model year. The parts store has the parts for the metric system, not for the SAE. They sent me the Metric part.

Another thing people need to be aware of, when your at the auto parts store and they pull up your vehicle. There is usually a list of different manufacturers parts, ranging from cheap to expensive, from no name brand companies to top brand companies.

Don't buy the cheap ones, as the old adage says, You get what you pay for.

a reply to: TomCollin

Hard to beat a normally aspirated chevy small block, they run even when you have to check the gas and fill the oil.
In my younger days i had a 350 that ran for ever with a ticking valve and then number 7 rod started knocking, had to rebuild it after about a week.

For sure, parts are cheap, and plentiful too.

Went to a monster 383 in a old 77 short bed pickup with rusted out fenders, wheel wells, door rockers and skins that would flap in the wind, and the wood bed was gone and driver side rear bed wheel well gone. it was the ultimate sleeper.

Nice!, my Regal has a 383 stroker..vroom, vroom!! passes all but the gas station..lol, I drive it fairly conservatively, all blacked out a la GN, so, I try to avoid the attention of the road pirates. It's fun to let loose though.

Several times for a about a month I use to smoke what i think was a 75 vette, I know it was a 70's model, on the way home from work. Anyway It started one day when I went rumbling by him and he came up beside me and pointed to the bridge, I pushed my foot through the rusted out floor board and ran off and left him. Got to the top of the hill slowed down and waited for him, and when he went by, I ran him down and waited again, it was a running 5 miles from where he got on interstate and where I got off. We did that several times. The last time we raced I did the same thing, but this time at the top of the hill he just waved me on, I punched it and left him again.

Just glad we were rolling when it started, if we had left from the line he would have smoked me, ass end was to light from being all rusted out and bed rotted away. I finally had to pull the engine and trans and put them in a 68 Chevelle. That was a fun car to.

My dad had an old chevy van, kind of a sleeper like your PU had a nice LT1 in it, that van rocked!! he, surprised a few people in that thing.

68 Chevelle..nice, probably my favourite year!