Car designer should ahave to Intern in real shops, yearly

[dmccarty]

I have only owned two non US made cars.

One was a Honda. RIP. And now a Toyota to replace the Honda.

I have not had to work on the Toyota yet. But the Honda was interesting......

The first challenge was to replace the cabin air filter. How hard can this be? It is an air filter. The car manual was useless. They wanted you to take the car to the dealer to pay a service charge. After 30-60 minutes of trying to change the filter I searched online and found photos or a video on an owner site showing how to change the stupid filter.

Ridiculous.

Then I had to change the engine air filter. This required removing the air intake and a bunch of star head screws. Took at least 30 minutes.

Ridiculous.

My F350 air filter take five minutes to change. Same for the JD tractor. I think if JD can invent an air filter housing that can be accessed easily and quickly but able to withstand the huge amount of dust the engine has to work in then Honda can do a bit better.

But Honda is trying to get the car back to the dealer to rack up service charges. JD would go out of business if it tried that tactic.

Later,
Dan

 

[Taylortractornut]

A friend of mine met his wife in England after going to see relatives there. Her father and uncle own some sort of agricultural machinery plant. They are small but make custom planters and repair things. Him being an engineer he was confused when he worked there one summer they stayed They asked him his size for a uniform. it was a set of workers coveralls and told hime to go help the mechanics. Said it gave him a whole new out look on how to make things. I know about JD and Cat equipment. They had alot of quirks like the change a rim on a Cat scraper and most of the loaders the planetary had to come off. On a Deere scraper to replace the muffle support the right rear motor support has to come out to take the support loose.

But the biggest worst job that ever added to my colorful vocabulary was when I was younger and times tight dad replaced the water pump on moms Dodge/ Plymoth reliant K Car. It was cold in the little shop and dad looked at the water pump and saw it sit out from the motor on a neck. After 5 long days of working on it I was well verse in swear word combinations and how bad he would like to meet the designer of that car. That was the worse thing we ever owned here.

 

[DanielVT]

...with the MBA on top, then the marketing, and the technical at the bottom.

I think the real problem is how these people are compensated. The MBA gets a salary, and a whopping bonus based on how much product he sells, regardless of how poor the quality is. The marketing guy gets a salary, and a whopping bonus based on how much product he sells, regardless of how poor the quality is.

The technical guy gets a salary. The folks who actually build the product get an hourly wage. If there's any bonus for them, it's a) tiny and b) based on...how much product the MBA and marketing guys sell, regardless of how poor the quality is.

Eliminate incentives to push cr*p, and instead reward quality, and the hierarchy outlined above is no longer a problem. Could apply this to all sorts of problems, Wall St., mortgage lenders, credit rating agencies, health care, on and on. But it would require a fundamental change in attitudes in the business community, and serious leadership from Washington, neither of which is likely to happen in my lifetime.

End of off-topic rant.

 

[bp fick]

I have only owned two non US made cars.

One was a Honda. RIP. And now a Toyota to replace the Honda.

I have not had to work on the Toyota yet. But the Honda was interesting......

The first challenge was to replace the cabin air filter. How hard can this be? It is an air filter. The car manual was useless. They wanted you to take the car to the dealer to pay a service charge. After 30-60 minutes of trying to change the filter I searched online and found photos or a video on an owner site showing how to change the stupid filter.

Ridiculous.

Then I had to change the engine air filter. This required removing the air intake and a bunch of star head screws. Took at least 30 minutes.

Ridiculous.

My F350 air filter take five minutes to change. Same for the JD tractor. I think if JD can invent an air filter housing that can be accessed easily and quickly but able to withstand the huge amount of dust the engine has to work in then Honda can do a bit better.

But Honda is trying to get the car back to the dealer to rack up service charges. JD would go out of business if it tried that tactic.

Later,
Dan

Dan, I feel your pain, as I had to change the cabin filter on my wife's Honda. Absurd and dangerous, because you can trip the air bag circuitry while messing around behind the glove box. yikes!!

That said, NO!!! It is isn't really a plot. Honda isn't trying to "get the car back for profitable service expenses." It is not a John Deere and the comparison between them borders on the absurd.

Look guys, there simply isn't the space to jam all the crap needed/required/mandated into the space allotted. End of story.

First you build it and THEN, if you can, you figure out how it is going to be disassembled for a repair project. It gets figured out after the fact, ala Apollo 13 trying to figure out how to make a repair to get back to earth.

A vehicle would be twice the size it is, to hold all the stuff, taking "easy repair" into account. With customer demands for more and more creature comforts, stringent government mandated safety requirements, 10 airs bags, more and more electronic wizardry, navigation, traction control, self parking, HVAC comforts, home theater level sound and DVD, pollution control devices, in smaller and smaller spaces for vehicle weight and EPA fleet mileage requirements, this is just going to get worse!! No, how it is to be repaired is simply so far down the manufacturing mandate that it is a mere spec in the rear view mirror.

 

[rtimgray]

One of the many reasons that a Suzuki Samurai is my favorite vehicle. There is practically nothing in the way of anything when you need to work on it. Starter, Alternator, oil filter, etec are all 5-10 minute change outs. You can change the radiator in 30 minutes or less. Fan belt replacement is 10 minutes or less.

Cons: No power steering, no A/C, and a whopping 60 hp from the engine.

I think that working on the Samurai has spoiled me and I encounter many of the same problems that others have mentioned working on our newer vehicles. I love our new Kia Sorento, but you have to remove an engine cover on top and a skid plate underneath just to change the oil (something you're supposed to do every 3,000 to 7,500 miles, right?). Why make it so complicated? I assume it's so that you'll give up and take it to the dealer for service.

Good luck and take care.

 

[bp fick]

I love our new Kia Sorento, but you have to remove an engine cover on top and a skid plate underneath just to change the oil (something you're supposed to do every 3,000 to 7,500 miles, right?). Why make it so complicated? I assume it's so that you'll give up and take it to the dealer for service.

Nope. Not a plot. The "skid plate" is there to make the car more aero, to reduce drag of what NASCAR calls "dirty air" or turbulence, hurting drag co-efficient. Mileage improvement, which they measure in amazingly small increments. No plot to make you "give up and take to the dealer". OEM's don't make dime off the dealer repair/service centers. If it helps their fleet EPA mileage requirements, they don't give a flippin' nickel if it slows your access to the oil filter.

 

[bdeboer]

I also suspect that in the case of most designs that don't make sense, is that the end result is a series of compromises.

In the case of the PT someone said wouldn't it look cool to take a Neon and give it a retro look. The bean counters say OK but it must cost this much and use these existing/standard components.

 

[eepete]

DaniellVT, I'm embarrassed that I left out production workers. I did so only because typically they get little input in the design. Sad. When I've taken a product to production, I go to the assembly house and work and listen to the workers and get great feedback. Many companies that have mechanisms for assembler input see increases in yields and productivity.

BP, I think you're right in that function does not dictate form. All this stuff we just gotta have has to crammed into some neat looking package. But there still seem to be too many times that some minor change would make things easier, and I think that there is no profit in one more design iteration to improve ease of maintenance.

My Datsun B210 was easy to work on, but I don't miss changing points at all. Holy Moly I'm part of the problem :laughing:.

When things do go right, it's often by accident. I seem to remember that one of the goals of the original IBM PC was a very small list of common tools that would be all you needed to assemble or disassemble the computer. Of course it was boxy, heavy, and had exposed screws. It was a small start up group and as such it didn't get the "benifit" of extensive management. Everything on my MAC and other computer stuff has no exposed screws, expensive molded cases, stuff that snaps together, etc. The MAC is OK since it is expected that users will get inside of it.

I bet you could make a list of the top 5 car repairs that people do on their own, and tweak the design so they could be done more easily. But that's too small of a pool of people and the cost of adding those considerations into the design are too high.

Pete

 

[Travelover]

I worked in the industry for 26 years so I can give you a glimpse of how decisions are made. The final decision for where all parts are mounted is determined by a packaging group. These are the same guys who own all the CAD data (what used to be the drawings). This activity has no real power - they are sort of cat herders and must act act as arbitrators for the design engineers that actually release each part. As part of their prove out, there are a series of maintenance and repair operations that have to be shown to be feasible and not take more than a certain amount of time. An example might be to take off the oil pan without lifting the engine. Most of this stuff is now done virtually using CAD programs, though some operations are still done on prototypes to determine how long a repair or maintenance operation takes.

Other decision makers also have a say - the vehicle assembly activity has ergonomic requirements to make sure it does not kill a guy to reach a certain bolt 80 times an hour. The line workers do have a say in this, though they may get over ruled if that appears to be the only practical solution.

In the pecking order of things, durability and quality tend to get highest priority (these days), then comes cost, then assembly ease (which is tied to quality) and repair ease is near dead last. The good news is that far fewer repairs are needed these days, the bad news is that it is all packed in there pretty tightly. :confused2:

 

[dmccarty]

Dan, I feel your pain, as I had to change the cabin filter on my wife's Honda. Absurd and dangerous, because you can trip the air bag circuitry while messing around behind the glove box. yikes!!

That said, NO!!! It is isn't really a plot. Honda isn't trying to "get the car back for profitable service expenses." It is not a John Deere and the comparison between them borders on the absurd.

Look guys, there simply isn't the space to jam all the crap needed/required/mandated into the space allotted. End of story.

First you build it and THEN, if you can, you figure out how it is going to be disassembled for a repair project. It gets figured out after the fact, ala Apollo 13 trying to figure out how to make a repair to get back to earth.

Bovine Scat. The cabin air filter was hard to change because THEY designed it that way. There was NO reason to make it that hard. It was done so that you had to know just how to do it. Which required a shop manual or a class. The car manual did NOT show how to change the filter. Period. Only reason is to get the car back to the dealer.

My JD engine compartment is smaller than the Honda's. If JD can create a design the requires no tools to change an air filter so can Honda. Honda's was designed to make it harder to change so the dealer got a visit. PERIOD. JD can design a engine air filter than can quickly be changed with no tools. A filter that has to be able to handle very dirty air. They have a harder design point but they make the filter easy and quick to change. The vaunted Honda engineers should be able to do the same. It ain't rocket science.

The Honda does not have such working environments and took several tools to change the air filter. Why? To get a visit to the dealer ship. In fact I don't think I have ever had a car that required tools to change the air filter. Except Honda.

Later,
Dan