Show Me Examples of Poor Design

j_tso said:

For real, I nominate engines with the power steering pump located over the alternator which kills it from leaks over time.

The Toyota 1UZ is notorious for this despite otherwise being totally reliable.

It's bad enough on Mitsubishi Monteros there's an alternator shield made for them:

First generation Toyota sequoia has the same thing with the 2UZ-FE. PS Pump sits right above the alternator, which also sits at one of the lowest parts of the engine, which sucks if you do any type of off-roading or "muddin." 

Also see 2UZ-FE starter location. I'm curious why they went for a compact design like this when there is no shortage of room under the car, in the engine bay, or and in the tunnel. 

In reply to DirtyBird222 :

I've always assumed that starter-under-intake designs were intended to keep the starter away from wet, corrosive road grime. 

aircooled said:

Sorry about this one also:
 

What happens when you loose (or gets shot out) an engine and you are not in a low hover.... a very fast crash landing (or harsh landing if you are near an airport).  What happens when both get shot out....  

It will not autorotate.  It does apparently crash well (falls apart appropriately)... which is nice I guess.

When one engine stops the Interconnect Drive system transfers power from one engine to the other rotor. I don't have the time right now to find a better pic but it works. I met a pilot (they brought him in because I worked at the place the builds the ICDS) to thank us for saving his bacon when they had a sudden engine failure and finished the mission on one engine. 

Not to say it is a great aircraft but thats how that works. 

calteg said:

Dodge Stratus

Oh man, that's bad.  That tie-rod design is unique, too. 

aircooled said:

Sorry about this one also:
 

What happens when you loose (or gets shot out) an engine and you are not in a low hover.... a very fast crash landing (or harsh landing if you are near an airport).  What happens when both get shot out....  

It will not autorotate.  It does apparently crash well (falls apart appropriately)... which is nice I guess.

That thing is a death trap.  Not to mention its so loud the enemy can hear it coming way before they would hear a helicopter.

Accidents and incidents involving the V-22 Osprey - Wikipedia

jharry3 said:

aircooled said:

Sorry about this one also:
 

What happens when you loose (or gets shot out) an engine and you are not in a low hover.... a very fast crash landing (or harsh landing if you are near an airport).  What happens when both get shot out....  

It will not autorotate.  It does apparently crash well (falls apart appropriately)... which is nice I guess.

That thing is a death trap.  Not to mention its so loud the enemy can hear it coming way before they would hear a helicopter.

Accidents and incidents involving the V-22 Osprey - Wikipedia

I work with a Marine that was a crew chief on them. He loves them.

Ask you friend if he can share the engine out proceedures.

Yeah, I realize there is an interconnect, but (and the info is a bit hard to confirm) it will not fly on one engine, and maybe that is only when it is fully loaded (which is normally a requirement for a twin engine aircraft).  From what I read, it can land from a low hover (loaded I assume) if an engine goes out (since it's in ground effect), otherwise it's a fast traditional landing.  It should be pretty obviously, looking at the wing, a traditional landing will need to be rather fast (depending on how much pitch they can use).  It should also be pretty obvious that in such a landing a prop strike seems likely (this is a pretty gray areas, since I don't know what pitch they will use).

Now, a dead stick (no power).   First you better be able to feather those props VERY quickly, then (which apparently is the procedure) you will need to dive at the ground to pick up a lot of speed (better hope you are not low) and do a very high speed low angle crash (rotors apparently "spagettify" nicely).

As you what happens if you hit a rotor with a decent sized shell (knowing they are designed to spegettify nicely)?

Love to see some details on these procedures, but I am not sure they are publicly available (and maybe for obvious reasons).

myf16n said:

Another example (no pic) is my C6 Z06. Like many cars, when shutting off the ignition, the powered drivers seat can be set to slide back to ease exiting the car. The reverse is not the case. Every time you get in the car you must press the button on the door to cause the seat to move back to the 'memory' position. It does not automatically do so when starting the car.

I call this a design win.  I have 35" legs, few things are scarier than getting into a vehicle owned by someone who is 4'3 and the seat tries to break your femurs while you frantically try to find the seat controls to stop it.

I mean, better still would be if the seat didn't move at all.

In reply to Tyler H :

The complete front suspension and steering are a very poor design.

In reply to aircooled :

It can fly on one engine. It is designed to do it, it has been demonstrated. It doesn't land "conventionally", ever, the rotors don't clear the ground. All rotorcraft have the exact same issues you speak of about autorotation and the I'll effects of having any object strike a rotor. This system isn't wildly different than a chinook. In that AC both engines and the Main rotor gearbox are at the rear with an interconnect shaft going to the front rotor. Single point of failure = very bad situation. 
The V-22 has the best of both worlds with fixed wing speed and range with hover capability. It also has the worst of both worlds with not great forward speed and the complexities of all rotorcraft. It fits a mission profile and it fits it better than every other RC the military has designed in the past 30 years. That's why the replacement RC is the next generation of the same concept (Bell V-280 Valor) and not the twin rotor that Sikorsky developed. A lot of the accidents that happened with that RC happened early on when they had some wonky aerodynamics issues in ground wash. 

My Jeep's transmission drain is about 1.5" directly below the exhaust crossover pipe. The gap is just tantalizingly close to make you believe you can fit a normal socket into the plug. It would've been very easy to for them to move the pipe forward or lower just a tiny bit, but they didn't.

Also changing the radiator is an excruciating tank. It's as if the entire front end was built around the radiator. 

There's also the fact that almost every single plastic push pin/rivet/clip is of the one time use, "Christmas tree" style. So unless you replace them, nothing ever goes back together as solidly as is was before you messed with it.

YouTube's new layout.

Ford 4.0 V6 timing chain(s) and their related parts.

Pretty much anything under the hood of a VW or Audi made of plastic.

(I know this is telling, not showing) 

I just got a request for feedback from IT at work.  The email said (paraphrased) "Please provide feedback on TKT1234567", with a link to the survey.  The survey has no further info on that ticket.  How the berkeley do I have any idea what I'm providing feedback on?  Give me some details, the subject of the request at a minimum.

R53 cup holders are a lie. 

When motor failures smoke the control and control failures smoke the motor you have a pretty serious design problem. It is German, so I guess that's to be expected. 

My AT&T internet line was damaged during a storm 2 weeks ago. I've received 8 different automated text messages telling me the repairs are complete and my service should be working. 
 

It's not.  No one has been to my house, and the cut wire is still laying in the yard. 
 

The texts tell me to reply "FIXED" to confirm. They give no option for reply if the service is still not working. 
 

They did give a link for me to use to manage the account.  But I can't use it with no functional internet.  I did try to use it from someone else's computer. It required an access code which was never given to me. 
 

One of the largest technology companies in the world doesn't seem to be able design a simple response text message. 

In reply to SV reX :

If it makes you feel any better, I had the exact same scenario happen with Spectrum, except they sent out an actual human who ran a new line, told me it was fixed and then bolted. It wasn't fixed. 

One that used to annoy me nearly every single day of my life but has now been fixed:  We had a Keurig coffee maker for several years (10?) that upon power-on would begin heating its water.  When the water was heated - and only once the water was heated - you could choose what size coffee you wanted and it would begin brewing.  I would constantly yell at it that it didn't need to wait to have the water hot to know what size I wanted.  Let me press the button and then you can go ahead and brew the coffee whenever you're good and ready so I can wander off and do something else!

My amazing wife got us a new unit for Valentine's Day.  This one will make a full pot of coffee as well as doing single cups, which is great.  But the most amazing feature about it is that when I turn it on I can immediately choose my cup size and then, like I always requested, I can walk away and it will heat the water and then make me my coffee when it's ready.

SV reX said:

R53 cup holders are a lie. 

Amen brother!

Oh two designs that are a huge pet peeve of mine:

1)  Why is there not just a continuous dial to control wiper speed?  The first half could be intermittent, the second half could be constant speed.  I get that back in the 70s or the days before more complex electronic control introducing a delay required a separate circuit.  But now it should be super simple to unite them.  You want to clear water faster, turn it right.  Slower?  turn it left.  

2)  Similarly, I have an older version of this toaster oven.  To use the oven you use the top dial for temp and bottom dial for time.  To use the toast, you must have the top dial set to toast and then use the middle dial for the duration.  The number of times I have "toasted" something only to find out the heater wasn't on is crazy.  Its a magnificently stupid design. 

After Hurricane Ian rolled over us, I'd be listening to the radio in the car and there were PSAs put out by the different internet providers saying that they know the issue is huge. Then they'd give a web address that you could go to in order let them know you had no internet.
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there were also no cell providers up. We were effectively living in 1876 (no phones, no power, no running water, no internet) and they wanted us to go to the website to tell them we can't go to any website LOL

Speaking of capture nuts, the ones on the Fiesta ST front suspension were "captured" by folding a flap of panel metal over them. I am not making this up, the same tin-can material that made up the unibody was simply folded over the nut. Any torque applied to the nut simply bent the metal and allowed the nut to spin. It would not seem odd on a Chinese made toy car I suppose, but on a modern Ford it was just dumb. 

In reply to DrBoost :

"Raise your hand if you can't hear me"

I own old British cars. 

"Poor design" is considered "character".