We've never had it so good

In reply to Toyman01:

Very good point. My brothers 03 bmw has an inop passenger door power to anything and its not as easy as pop in a new power window relay or fuse. Its canbus so its basically a power window "computer" that needs replacing. Yeah it may or maynot be easier to pinpoint whats wrong in a car with a canbus system but only if you have the expensive computers to hook up to it to find out whats wrong in the first place.

Gone are the days of "my cars not running right", "well whats it doing?" Its now, "my cars not running right" "well whats the check engine light say?"

The electronic module failures are usually simple things like cracked solder joints or blown power transistors. Plenty of DIY people are repairing modules rather than replacing, and there are companies that will repair your PCM/BCM/whatever and send it back so that you don't have to get a generic reman unit initialized/flashed/whatever.

We've used autoecms a lot in the past and they do good work. There's another company whose name I forget that specializes in ABS controllers, too, have sent out BMW units to them with good turnaround and for pennies compared to replacing with new. More locally, we have a guy who we send esoteric things like instrument clusters or Toyota window control modules and he will repair the stuff for us within a day or two.

The sky isn't falling, it just looks a little different.

Now, Mitsubishis DID have nonrebuildable problems, they used cheap capacitors that would leak acid onto the circuit board and ruin it. I'm not sure if there is a "generic" fix for this. (PNP standalone seems to be the cheapest/best option)

I think it's awesome that cars are lasting long enough body-wise and mechanically-wise that solid state electronics are the new failure.

Of course this means people are whining that they ONLY got 250k out of a car before it was sidelined by a blown framus module or something. The "good old days" guys who had worn-out used-up rusted-through everything after five years would smack them upside the head.

In reply to Knurled:

I've never had a car rust out or wear out mechanically. I don't live in the great white north, so that's a moot point for me.

Your PNP? Forget about that. It won't pass EPA. That would be the EPA that wants to keep the aftermarket from making products that have anything to do with emissions. With the move to controlling everything through the PCM, ECU, BCU, ETC, you will need EPA approval to have them rebuilt. All the systems are getting interconnected.

The manufacturers are doing everything they can to shut down the rebuild companies, citing proprietary software. Remember that discussion from a few months ago? I know a guy that just got shut down by large auto manufacturer, for having software written so he could test modules after repair. They used copyright law to pretty much stop him from rebuilding anything made in the last 10 years. They didn't just sue him to stop him, they sicked the prosecutor on him and he will serving time on house arrest, as well as a $$$$$ fine.

Regulations and manufacturers are doing all they can to lock things down, so you won't be allowed to modify or change anything. I don't see that as a good thing.

In reply to Toyman01:

Being in the Copyright/trademark/patent arena with my job I would like to know some information about your friend so I can look up the case.

What can you share?

In reply to Toyman01:

The remanufacturers don't touch the software. They fix the blown circuits and send you yours back, or in the case of mass remanufacture they send you a "blank slate" that you will need to flash your software to.

Knurled wrote: The electronic module failures are usually simple things like cracked solder joints or blown power transistors. Plenty of DIY people are repairing modules rather than replacing, and there are companies that will repair your PCM/BCM/whatever and send it back so that you don't have to get a generic reman unit initialized/flashed/whatever. We've used autoecms a lot in the past and they do good work. There's another company whose name I forget that specializes in ABS controllers, too, have sent out BMW units to them with good turnaround and for pennies compared to replacing with new. More locally, we have a guy who we send esoteric things like instrument clusters or Toyota window control modules and he will repair the stuff for us within a day or two. The sky isn't falling, it just looks a little different. Now, Mitsubishis DID have nonrebuildable problems, they used cheap capacitors that would leak acid onto the circuit board and ruin it. I'm not sure if there is a "generic" fix for this. (PNP standalone seems to be the cheapest/best option)

I agree eleventy billion percent. Sure, you cant take a piece of belt leather and use it as a main bearing like in the old days, but anything that develops a common failure or is a popular model tends to get aftermarket solutions pretty quick. Even some of the odd stuff can have solutions if it used a common supplier. Its not like Bosch and Continental build 100% unique modules for each function on each brand.

Its all been down hill since the steam engine anyway.

In reply to Toyman01: I almost feel sorry for you. Your future is so very bleak.... And you know it already.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to Toyman01: I almost feel sorry for you. Your future is so very bleak.... And you know it already.

Not bleak at all, I just don't buy what manufacturers are selling because I have no interest in it. Electronic fluff is boring to me.

Toyman01 wrote:

alfadriver wrote: In reply to Toyman01: I almost feel sorry for you. Your future is so very bleak.... And you know it already.

Not bleak at all, I just don't buy what manufacturers are selling because I have no interest in it. Electronic fluff is boring to me.

Except at the rate cars are taken off the road, and the cars you like wear out, what are you going to have in 20 years? Can you keep your 20 year old cars on the road for another 20+ years?

In reply to alfadriver:

Yes. Keeping my personal fun fleet running the rest of my life, will be easy.

The work truck will get replaced with whatever is cheapest used when necessary, and the wife will get to drive whatever she likes. I have no interest in those, beyond never having to work on them.

alfadriver wrote:

Toyman01 wrote:

alfadriver wrote: In reply to Toyman01: I almost feel sorry for you. Your future is so very bleak.... And you know it already.

Not bleak at all, I just don't buy what manufacturers are selling because I have no interest in it. Electronic fluff is boring to me.

Except at the rate cars are taken off the road, and the cars you like wear out, what are you going to have in 20 years? Can you keep your 20 year old cars on the road for another 20+ years?

Some people say that, but my car is 31 years old with who knows how many miles, somewhere north of 200k cause broke odometer. But its tighter and more solid than my friends 60k mile 7 year old mazda (and its not a base model). Will his car still be on the road in 20 years? At the rate parts are already failing no way in hell, will mine? Damn right it will.

The 90s seem to be right around the peak for keeping a vehicle on the road forever. Modern enough to have things like EFI, but not super complicated electrically. And most of the electronics seem pretty easy to keep going.

The extent of electronic failures in my Jeep after 18 years and almost 204k miles is one blown injector driver in an ECU (which was swapped with a used one, and I have another spare sitting around too). And I kept the failed one in case I ever care to fix it. Only other issues have been 2 cracked solder joints, both of which only caused minor annoyances and are easy fixes.

rslifkin wrote: The 90s seem to be right around the peak for keeping a vehicle on the road forever.

Many, many, many people in the 90s felt the cars were too complicated and too computer reliant to last. I remember lots of grumbling, especially from my fellow tech school students who were afraid of a multimeter. You even needed a fancy scan tool to work on them!! Dang computers!! Every fault was blamed on a sensor. People would yank fuel injection off and put a carb on.

Give it 20 years and people will be talking about how much better the CAN bus was compared to whatever the electronics of 2036 are called.

Its the circle of life! Just like how Jeep guys say the last "REAL" Jeep is the one that just left production because only soccer moms drive the current one (Can you believe they dont wave!?!?)

Work on anything electrical in a pre CAN Euro luxury car and you'll sing the praises of modules that can talk to each other versus having a huge mass of wiring with multiple relays and switches to control things by mutiple inputs.

I'd rather deal with an Integrated Failure Module than some of the crazy manual control schemes used to control headlights or other things. It's a single point of failure, but it is at least a SINGLE point of failure, no umpteen dozen different relays to fail or connectors to corrode and high current switches to wear out.

A lot of the reason new cars have so many features is that it isn't painfully expensive to implement anymore. It's a few lines of code rather than miles of wiring and additional discrete components.

More thoughts -

Skill sets change and adapt. There are many people on this board, myself included, that are not very good at setting up and tuning carbs (I've seen several posts admitting such). All the carb guys either adapted or stayed with the technology they know. Same thing with points or any other olde tyme technology.

I am starting to run across younger techs that struggle with pre-OBD2 diagnosis. It was a different skill set. Many guys may not have the tools or knowledge. Analog multimeters used to count sweeps after jumping a wire are not all too common. Ive seen guys struggle with counting flashes ("What is a long flash again?") Watch the confusion when you tell a guy to pull the carpet back to look at the PCM to get a DTC. All used to be common skills but have changed.

90s are decent. My F350 is a 94. New enough for EFI, old enough to not have most of the other acronyms. Reasonably simple with a minimum of fluff.

In reply to logdog:

From what I have seen, a lot of people who say they can work with a carb, can't.