According To You: Part(s) of a Car That Still Make No Sense?
Our According to You series is all about learning and enjoying the shared knowledge base of everyone here in the Hagerty Community. Last week we asked about car parts that are a mystery, items so hard to understand that one decides it’s not worth trying to figure them out. I started things off with the automatic transmission, and that certainly got the ball rolling.
As you will see below, there was some wiggle room for a different definition of “makes no sense,” one that’s just as relevant to this discussion. So have a scroll down and see what we came up with!
Printed Circuits
Jeepcj5: Gauge clusters make no sense to me. I’ve given up on more than one 1980-1986 Ford truck cluster after narrowing it down to that strange copper/plastic/sheeting stuff. So now two of my trucks have an aftermarket temp gauge and the fuel level is anyone’s guess since I never remember to write down the mileage at fill up.
Automatic Transmissions
DUB6: Shoot, Sajeev, tearing an automatic transmission apart is easy – child’s play, really. Now, re-assembling one into working order, THAT will put most folks into a padded room…
Jeepcj5: I disassembled an automatic transmission from a junk Nissan D21 once, just for the fun of it. I still have some of the pieces as a display in my office at work. Even more amazing than the automatic transmission itself are the folks that designed and built those things back in the 1930s-1940s before computers.
Safety Baby Sitters
audiobycarmine: By your phrasing “Make no sense”, you’re really meaning “inscrutable”, “enigmatic” or “unexplainable”. I took it as “unnecessary” or “pointless”.
By that definition, I’d nominate most of the modern safety babysitters, such as lane-drift warnings, sensors for announcing a car beside you, and the myriad other detectors replacing actual human attention and awareness.
Sajeev: I feel the need to offer a counterpoint to your (valid) definition of my question. After renting a late-model Camry LE with these features, I found them to relieve a lot of stress while driving from Houston to Tulsa. I’m not some distracted driver, I just motored down I-45 and found the experience far more relaxing. Whenever I buy new car again, it will absolutely have these features. (And they will be turned off when encountering a road more entertaining than the Interstate.)
The Integral Valve in the Valve Cover?
TG: As far as the subject goes, 2000s era BMWs have this valve in the valve cover that essentially performs the function of a PCV valve. When they fail, you get full manifold vacuum applied to the crankcase, with all kinds of adverse symptoms such as lean burn codes, oil in the intake, whistling through the crank seals due to the vacuum, etc.
These wonderful little gadgets are part of the valve cover, and the proper BMW-approved repair is a new valve cover. Fortunately the aftermarket does offer just the valve, and if you are skilled enough to cut the old one out without damaging the valve cover and without putting a bunch of plastic shavings in the engine. That is a 30 dollar repair, at least!
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Ever go to a grocery store? You park in the lot, get your stuff and when you come out you find a Chevy Suburban on one side and a Ford Expedition on the other- both with tinted windows. Since the average speed in parking lots these days seems to be 45mph, I really appreciate the cross path detection on my wife’s car.
Our 2004 4Runner has mirrors located at the top corners of the cargo bay, near the rear window. All one has to do is back up a foot or so and check those mirrors. They are situated such that they reveal if anything or anyone is approaching from the sides (that are blocked by that Suburban and Expedition). Pretty lo-tech, but also pretty darned effective.
There was a time when cars had no wipers, rear view mirrors, brake lights, etc. And I bet everytime one such device was added, some overbearing, self-possessed driver complained about a “nanny gadget.”
Sadly at almost 60 years I am now at the point that my father was once at. Scratching my head and wondering how the world of driving got to this point. Dad laughed at things I took for granted in the new cars of my day and today I try to wrap my head around why anyone would want so much distraction in the driver’s seat. Sorry, not buying the statements about how thankful people here are regarding various sensors telling you who might be hidden from your mirrors or that you are drifting over the lane markers. Every one of these little gadgets make you less of a driver. There is no way around this. At any moment that you are “comfortable” driving knowing a sensor will tell you that you are not driving between the lines is a moment that you are allowing your car to do the driving. You have been lulled into complacency. Furthermore you are the people moving the lawmakers and those people that think they are ‘driving’ when using a video game in the direction to a point that we are now approaching, That of the self driving car that no longer requires a driver. Simply, a good skilled driver does not need these things. Driving should not be thought of as a right. Driving should be a privilege. One reserved for people who have or can develop the kills. Sorry, anything less is dangerous. This you can see anytime you do drive. The number of very poor drivers on the road are increasing as fast as the overall number of drivers. So the false answer seems to be to keep adding gizmos to help avoid others who can’t drive. Those same gizmos allow poor drivers to become lazy poor drivers and an even bigger hazard on the road. I hate to shock the tech lovers and younger folks here but millions of successful and enjoyable road trips were made in the years before gadgets. In my Dad’s world the drivers would share the stories of their trips with others and tell of the challenges and joys of the drive. Today it’s about the book they were reading on self-help just before their Tesla hit that bridge it didn’t see. What so I know though. I still argue with my ’99 Chevy truck whenever the anti-lock brakes kick in at the same time I was applying the skills I acquired years ago to stop fast in the rain. All of this always takes me back years ago to a visit to my Dad at work. This was the 80s. His boss had just purchased a new car with anti-lock brakes. His comment was “I love the new brakes, I can wait much longer than I used to to start stopping.”
Lots of newer cars have part of the PCV system built into the cam cover and/or the intake manifold. Replacement of the cover or manifold is the repair when the valve fails. It’s not just BMW.
I could easily pass on most of the electronic gadgets on current vehicles but I love the back-up camera on my F150 for hooking up to my trailers. Not so much the volume of the proximity alarm. Can it be adjusted?
Lane sensors, are you kidding, there’s a magical thing that keeps you in your lane, it’s called a mirror(s). – I had that folly in a rental, it drove me crazy til I figured out how to shut it off.
If you can’t figure out how to keep your car in your lane -your probably one of those individuals who doesn’t know about that lever sticking out of the steering colum that makes a the lights flash right/left on the car.
Speaking of lights, when a turn signal bulb went bad, you could get a bulb at auto zone for about $1.69. pop it in in less than 5 minutes, voilla -all fixed.
Now with all the complicated sequencing LED light set ups I’m sure it’s gonna be a problem the dealer will have to fix, replace the whole assembly, you’ll be lucky if the fix doesn’t cost $600.