Shit Ideas

[320touring]

6 hours ago, Dan_ZTT said:

You mean where you just tap the stick lightly and it flashes 3 times? I think that's properly great, really annoys me that my main car doesn't do it. 

Thems the ones. Irritating due to inability to do any cool 'flashy thanks' should someone let you pull out etc.

 

That and the "is it off" factor..

 

Horses for courses and all that, but I don't like them. Especially on the ML and my dads e60.

[Wack]

12 hours ago, twosmoke300 said:

 

 

Navara / cabstar engine . Simplex chain from crank to fuel pump , duplex from pump to cam . Take a wild stab which one shits itself on a regular basis . Who the fuck signed that off at the design stage?

I had one of those in 2003 , for about 5 seconds when cold it sounded like it had ball bearings rattling about in it , went back to nissan twice for the same problem in the 2 years I had it , PX'd it a week after the second fix before the warranty ran out because whatever they were doing was only a short term fix.

[Wack]

S550 Ford Mustang oil coolers 

A water /oil cooler , only the water/oil separation part shits itself around 40k mixing both and destroying the engine.

Despite ford fitting a number of new engines worldwide and an alternative air cooled alternative is available having been developed by 3rd party suppliers 2020 cars still leave the production line with the same cooler and if they replace the engine you still get the same ford cooler 

£1000 fitted for the replacement.

[Richard_FM]

7 hours ago, Roobarb said:

Any car, intended to go faster than 15mph and around corners with the engine in the bloody back. 

Add a light front end and for extra shits and giggles rear suspension where one side is connected to the other. 

Didnt stop VW selling a boat load of Beetles, karmann ghias, camper vans... and don’t get me started on early 911 swb cars with weights in the front bumpers to try and reduce the madness...

Still love ‘em though...

Except for the washer jets that are powered by the ‘its Always going to be flat’ spare (located in the front to try and even out the weight issue). And while I’m talking about crap VW beetle and 911 design........,.

Sorry(!)

^^^ Is that what they call ‘Character’ these days?

It was a popular layout when the cost of making cv joints made fwd too expensive for small cars, Fiat, Simca & Renault also made millions of them.

 By the time the hillman imp was launched small fwd cars were on the upswing, which was one of it’s many challenges.

[twosmoke300]

The beetle washer was a great bit of design - there should be a valve that stops the tyre going below 20psi

[RoadworkUK]

14 minutes ago, Wack said:

A water /oil cooler , only the water/oil separation part shits itself around 40k mixing both and destroying the engine.

VAG 1.8T engine has possessed this "feature" since '97. 

Right now I quite like it; when my coolant header tank was full of Primula cheese spread and I feared OMGHGF; replacing the water/oil cooler, the water pump, radiator, header tank, most of the pipes and flushing the entire cooling system was much less of an ordeal than a head gasket would have been.

[JimH]

14 hours ago, Wack said:

I had a 2013 Doblo with this bollocks , it'd been serviced by the selling dealer, I had it about 3 weeks , bombing along at 70 when flashing oilcan comes on in red

I think fuck,  not only is it red , it's flashing red , double fuck, what's happened, has the sump plug fallen out , so I dive for the hard shoulder , check the oil and it's ok 

Get to a slip road and get the manual out

Oil degridation light

Fiat then charged me 1/2 an hours labour to turn it off , made me sit in reception for 40 minutes while they pretended it took that long to do it.

My contribution to the thread

Keyless entry , who'd have ever thought it'd be easier to steal a car in 2020 than it was in 1974 , all because people are too lazy to press a button 

This is exactly what happened in our Combo office van. I'm whizzing along the A90 and a red oil can starts flashing in a most insistent way. Solid red would be bad enough but this bugger is flashing. Self-destruct must surely be imminent. The thing is I've heard a couple of engines with terminal oil pressure problems and this doesn't sound like one of them. Coast down a handy slip road, check the hand book and find out that you want me to CHANGE THE FUCKING OIL?

 

I had quite a tizzy strop over that at absolutely no one.

[JimH]

9 hours ago, 320touring said:

The dual mass flywheel - the engineering solutions to a question nae cunt asked.

Let's turn a lump of steel into a service item. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

[JimH]

9 hours ago, Roobarb said:

Any car, intended to go faster than 15mph and around corners with the engine in the bloody back.

It's just fine if you know what you are doing.

The best ever.

[leanycan]

16 hours ago, JimH said:

You want shit design? This beauty is on a floodlit podium in the foyer.

 

 

Each time you look at it the engineer inside you dies a little more.

What is that out of? 4 timing chains or am I being obtuse? 

[JimH]

It's a VW of some flavour. Look at the number of chains and the number of tensioners and sliding surfaces and just wonder how much power is lost because too many of these things are designed by marketing departments. It is very depressing.

You can have a Corvette C8 with one camshaft, one cam chain and one tensioner but that only puts out about 480hp. *rolls eyes*

[Asimo]

15 hours ago, twosmoke300 said:

 Why so many autos have to have the level checked when hot and running ? Surely the correct level could have been set at the prototype stage and an appropriately marked up dipstick fitted on production vehicles with the correct level for cold and hot with engine off.

There is a good reason for this. 

The oil level only matters when the engine is running and therefore the gearbox needs to work.

Much of the oil is inside the hydraulic plumbing and the torque converter when the engine is running. 

When the engine is stopped the oil in the valve-body etc and the torque converter drains slowly back into the gearbox sump, causing the level to rise. Exactly how much drains back will vary with time and the rate will also vary from 'box to 'box. This doesn't matter so there is no need to engineer this out. 

The issue is dealt with by instruction to "check when engine running hot". It would be unacceptable to instruct "check when car has been stood cold for two days"

[twosmoke300]

Honda manage tho

 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, leanycan said:

What is that out of? 4 timing chains or am I being obtuse? 

I think only three of those are technically timing chains - the other appears to drive pumps and shizzle.  That's still two too many though.

[High Jetter]

17 hours ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

Aah, the Audi 3.0 V6 TDI. Like modern BMW junk, the chain is at the back of the engine.

 

[leanycan]

11 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

I think only three of those are technically timing chains - the other appears to drive pumps and shizzle.  That's still two too many though.

Christ above. Why do manufacturers think things like these are a good idea? Bet this was thought up during a marketing meeting. Easy to break, difficult to repair and expensive to replace. Perfect for modern money grabbing corporate tw*ts 

[georgeinabz]

Let's turn a lump of steel into a service item. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

service items , that would be 1970's Ford front wings then.

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[JimH]

Because race car. Because four cams are four times as good as one cam. Because quad. Because overhead. Because pushrods are bad. Because 48 is better than 16. You only have to take one old school V8 apart to start to get a feel for how few moving parts there are and how few losses there would be. Just look at how the ancilliary drive chain makes a near 90 degree turn over a plastic guide before making a near 180 degree turn over another plastic guide. I am prepared to wager that the total valve train losses in a GM V8 is about the same as the losses in that one chain.

Setright wrote long and weary on subjects like this.

[georgeinabz]

Square or squared off steering wheels

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[Tadhg Tiogar]

1 hour ago, Asimo said:

There is a good reason for this. 

The oil level only matters when the engine is running and therefore the gearbox needs to work.

Much of the oil is inside the hydraulic plumbing and the torque converter when the engine is running. 

When the engine is stopped the oil in the valve-body etc and the torque converter drains slowly back into the gearbox sump, causing the level to rise. Exactly how much drains back will vary with time and the rate will also vary from 'box to 'box. This doesn't matter so there is no need to engineer this out. 

The issue is dealt with by instruction to "check when engine running hot". It would be unacceptable to instruct "check when car has been stood cold for two days"

Citroen went one better. In the CX manual it says to run the engine for one minute before checking the auto fluid level. In other words, when it's neither cold nor hot.

[georgeinabz]

BMW singled sided swing arms on their bikes , style over substance , they fail at an alarming rate

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[georgeinabz]

BMW singled sided swing arms on their bikes , style over substance , they fail at an alarming rate

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[JimH]

Just now, georgeinabz said:

service items , that would be 1970's Ford front wings then.

Cars used to rot like vampires in sunlight so we sat down and we looked at test tubes and sprayed things with salt water and bashed calculators and we came up with a way of stopping them (mostly) doing that. Woo! Yay! Progress!

The DMF was the reverse. We looked at something that never worried anyone from one decade to the next then got an infinite team of monkeys together and gave them an infinite number of gears and springs and after only a few minutes they'd given us an answer that not only wore out but if you were really lucky would take the rest of the engine and gearbox with it when it gave up the ghost.

[georgeinabz]

Any car that only needs less than 1" extra clearance to the chassis leg to allow the gearbox to come off without need to remove engine mounts etc.

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[wuvvum]

34 minutes ago, georgeinabz said:

service items , that would be 1970's Ford front wings then.

Also, 2000's Audi front wings.

[junkyarddog]

The Vauxhall viva hc, 

The fuse box is located on a flat panel at the rear of the bulkhead on the drivers side.

Open the bonnet in the rain and marvel at the water cascading over it like a waterfall. 

[Skut]

Minimally painted mild steel fuel filters under the car where they rust and leak. Corsa C and my Alto Zen both had them there, as no doubt do others. 

Just put it in the engine bay like normal people. 

[JimH]

The profession of locating fuseboxes and other electrical bits and bobs is littered with examples of people who were clearly having a bad day when they came up with that idea. A personal favourite of mine was the wazzock who mounted Mini flasher units against a damp foam pad which let the pressed tin enclosure rot away with no outward sign there was anything wrong and there must be some other reason that your indicators have stopped working. 

Surely the best example of how not to do it is to start with an elderly design which was put together in a different time for a different reason. Then for all sorts of reasons people latch onto that design and it becomes a Thing. The builders of that Thing realise what is going on and sees that there is money to be made here so the Thing is pushed upmarket with more and more electrical bits and pieces to impress the buyers. The problem is, however, that this Thing wasn't designed for this. There is nowhere to put stuff so you need to start jamming things under seats, in wheelarches, in doors and anywhere else that you can find a handy bogey hole. Then in twenty years time someone can start crying as they fruitlessly chase wires around the car in the vain hope of making their sub-woofer work again.

You all know what I'm drivelling on about...

Still like them, mind.

[Talbot]

13 hours ago, wuvvum said:

It does make a nice noise when running right though.

 

13 hours ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

When it works, it's a lovely engine. It revs nicely and sounds epic in the way a Rover V8 just doesn't. Only a few mods needed - Ford V6 water pump, Lumenition and a very careful rebuild. The angled head studs were rarely a problem, it was only when they were cooked or not run with anti freeze. They could be a right bastard to get the heads off though. The best way was a small bottle jack between the heads, believe it or not.

 

"When running right" and "when it works"... so basically never then.  The angled head studs were an absolute bastard, and every single sodding engine has corrosion between the studs and the head, meaning they all corrode on.  Every single one ever.  You should not have to jack a head off the block!

Combine that with shite timing chain that stretches so far the automatic adjuster over-extends itself and falls to pieces, an exhaust system that looks like spaghetti, woefully shit power output, astonishingly shit coolant jacket design that leaks for a laugh and a water pump that can barely move any water, and you've got a recipe for a boat anchor.  Absolute kack.

[LabRat]

Mg6 (that's probably enough for this thread right there) keys/doors/ignition set up. You get a whacking great slab of plastic for a key:

This in turn goes into the dock to start the car.

 

However, because it is made of finest chinesium, the dock will shit itself and require replacent at totally random intervals. This needs coding to the bcu at a dealers, cos no bugger else has the software.

Also, the door locks are made of brie and will pack up if not oiled on a monthly basis. This means that you have to use the emergency key, hidden in the slab of plastic.

As you can see, this also is plastic and guaranteed to snap in the seized lock, the moment you try it. 

Once you do eventually gain access with the emergency key, you're fucked anyway as the dock has thrown a wobbly and you can't start the fucker. Also, you have to pull the door cards off the doors, whilst they're closed to get to the locking mechanism.

 Still. It not like the parts are hard to come by or anything...