Yaris, Scion xD, Honda Fit - no water temp gauge

I'm not aware of any readily available statistics on really, really long
term use, but if you're talking about cars from the 80's the Krauts had
it down back then.

Consumer Reports, et. al. IMHO take a short term view, although somewhat
by necessity since I don't know how many people actually keep cars as
long as I do.

Even so, any car "of a certain age" will have issues, no matter *how*
well built.

nate

 

Hmmm... in the past 10 years catching "statistically insignificant"
indications from simple gauges has saved me at least two engines (and
breakdowns that might have occurred God-knows-where.) That's sure as
hell not insignificant to my bank account, or my family's safety.

it's

As I said before: God you're dumb.

No one is advocating "extensive" instrumentation. The instrumentation
needs of a passenger car are SO simplistic that there's no need to
condense/combine/dumb-down the instrumentation.

 

I can honestly say that I didn't understand a single tiny bit of what
you were trying to get at with your reply. Congratulations, a new
Usenet record.

nate

 

And you forgot that even if the failure isn't serviceable in the car, at
least if you have advance warning, you get to repair it at your leisure
rather than trying to call a tow truck in BFE, Ohio.

nate

 

No DUBMASS. Nate is saying that dumb-assedness begets dumbassedness.
Designing for dumbasses makes more users into dumbasses. Up to a point
"ease of use" is beneficial. Carried to far, it dumbs down.

 

But since you are one of three people who cares like this, the real
world says manufacturers wouldn't care about you and your wants even if
they knew about you.

I'm talking real world here.
[/QUOTE]

Note from the real world: lots of cars DO still have adequate
instrumentation. Just because a couple of little shitboxes from a couple
of shitbox-specialist manufacturers don't doesn't mean the rest of the
world will follow.

 

Which may be why the NEWEST car I own has seen 250,000 miles without
need for a towtruck (EVER). The highest mileage has 447,000 miles. The
middle one will hit 300k sometime this summer. Not bad for "inferior
American cars."

 

Again: that "basic" instrumentation is beyond 99.9% of the auto buying
and driving public.
[/QUOTE]

That's ridiculous, anyone that can tell time can read an oil pressure
gauge. That skill wasn't beyond my grandmother who drove cars from 1920
until 1995 and never had more than a high-school education, so it damn
sure better NOT be beyond more than 1% of the driving populace today or
we really are headed down the sewer as a society.

 

You wouldn't make much of a politician, I'll tell you that.[/QUOTE]

Wow. So you CAN compliment someone!

 

Good God! Do I have to explain it AGAIN?????

The temperature was STILL WITHIN THE NORMAL RANGE. It would NOT have
turned on an idiot light. The key was that it was creeping higher than
USUAL in certain situations. No idiot light would EVER have indicated
that, but a gauge does. Can you not understand that? Do you REALLY not
comprehend something so BLINDINGLY SIMPLE?!?!? A simple analogy would be
the same as saying, "you don't need a gas gauge, just depend on the low
fuel warning light. It would have served the same purpose."

How do you debate with stupidity that thick? If you really can't
understand that ALL manufactured items, regardless of the manufacturer,
are subject to the vagaries of manufacturing processes, then you're
beyond hope.

 

Nice projection. Do try to follow the conversation. I explained it to
you. But, go ahead and keep siezing up engines since you don't consider
your labor to be worth anything.

 

That's ridiculous, anyone that can tell time can read an oil pressure
gauge.[/QUOTE]

<snort> Sure. Uh-huh.

You don't get out much, do you.

 

Most, if not all the cars on the US market today perform at levels
beyond a similiar percentage of the auto buying and driving public, yet
automakers aren't limiting themselves to basic transportion like a base
model '60 ford falcon.[/QUOTE]

So? At the same time, they're taking away instrumentation.

Selling cars is about marketing. You find what hits the buyer's hot
button. Massive instrumentation doesn't do that.

 

I'm not aware of any readily available statistics on really, really long
term use, but if you're talking about cars from the 80's the Krauts had
it down back then.[/QUOTE]

Sure they did.

And then they realized that they'd rather sell highly expensive 3 year
wonders to rich idiots who are happy to lease and flip. THAT'S what
keeps the money pumping into the company.

EVERYONE knows the story of M-B in this country. From tanks to trash.
It was a business decision--to build junk.

 

Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:



.....you don't want the engineers who have to know the

Often the opposite is true.

"Bean counters" dictate what engineers have to work with and how. Good
example might be the Accord tranny problems of a few years back. Another
is marketing sales that make promises and in order to meet traget
production rates/timelines, engineers are forced to take shortcuts.

During my working career, I saw this to be the case all too often.

JT

 

There are engineers who understand business (good), and there are
beancounters who give zero credibility to the engineers and who have no
idea and don't care whether their company sells cars or toilet paper
(bad).

But the engineer who knows only engineering and knows only that in his
world it's important to know the temperature at the top of the piston,
is not the guy you want running the company. At all.