popular mechanics weighs in on toyota

I love my old cars.

Shawn

Dr. Hess wrote: The other problem I see is just stray electromagnetic interference. You can shield the crap of out everything and reduce your problems to one in 100 million, but then when you have 7 million cars on the road every day, well, there's a significant chance of a problem. A spike comes down the line, not filtered out or the filtering circuits are shot from the last million spikes (it's a car, remember, lightening is around, there's 4000 * # cylinders/2 20KV spikes just a couple feet from the computer and electrically connected to the computer every time it's going down the highway, etc.), spike changes something in the ECU RAM, zoom.

I had this type of problem. Ocasionally the speedometer would sweep to full scale and various chimes would go ding. Also the cruise control would work OK until you put a load on it gong up a hill, then the car would just slow down and eventually stall.

Problem started out occuring infrequently but got worse and worse over a couple months. The mechanics at the dealership said the Vehicle Speed Sensor(VSS) was giving false reading and they replaced it, TWICE!!

Turned out the problem was intererence from some crappy aftermarket plug wires I put on was getting into the VSS circuit. And the more the wires deterioated the worse it got.

I remember a few years back during the audi acceleration deal ,one of the auto mags did a test with a V6 camry and a taurus . The camry was run at 60mph then accelerator and brake were both fully pressed at the same time , The camry had a shorter stopping distance then just using the brake on the taurus. brakes usually out perform acceleration on cars. I find it hard to believe that other manufactures don t have the same complaints .

alfadriver wrote:

friedgreencorrado wrote: I think y'all have just about talked me out of "fly-by-wire" until the next generation of controls comes along.

You do realize that there IS a world outside of Toyota, right? With that VW representing you, I'd figure you would have heard about Bosch NOT being Toyota/ Denso....

Ah, I'm still angry that VW doesn't represent me anymore-in the US, anyhoo...they want me to buy a $20K Golf or $30K CC instead of a $15K Polo. If I was buying new right now, I'd go for the Fit.

alfadriver wrote: There are a lot of examples of ETC out there that are very, very good. Don't let what Toyota is not getting right ruin it for everyone. Eric

Point taken, but it's not about what's avalible on the "high end". I'm sure that any Bosch equipped "fortunemobile" will have the stuff to do the job correctly.

Guys like me have to wait until such goodness is commonplace enough that it can be found in the base models. And again..in the case of VW, hoping that the base models will be offered in the US to begin with...