Shit Ideas

[rusty_vw_man]

Deleting the temperature gauge and replacing it with a light that comes on when it’s too late and it’s cooked itself. Top bombing.

Replacing the spare wheel with a can of squirty foam, because that will fix the gaping hole in my tyre.

Those Audi indicators that kind of scroll  rather than properly flash. Only upside is given only currently Audi fitment you don’t see them in use that much......

[Tadhg Tiogar]

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Bloody stupid electronically latching indicator stalk used on the later Vectras, Signum and probably others.

Tap to turn indicators on, then tap the other way to turn off if they don't self cancel.

Except at least two cars I've been in where this doesn't work and this renders it essentially impossible to manually cancel the indicators...you end up going down the road alternately signalling left and right trying to turn the damned things off...

Introduced by BMW back in 2003 on the E63 6-series. Knew it was a feckin' shit idea the moment I turned left out of the showroom.

[PhilA]

1 hour ago, twosmoke300 said:

Two things- following on from the poor dipsticks earlier in the thread . 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.

Renault PK6 gearboxes where what you think is the level plug is infact far too much oil and will fuck the box.

Two words:  Torque converter. Unfortunately due to the design of the things when you switch the engine off there is a chance that it'll burp and fart and drain the oil out of the top half of the thing back into the oil pan; it also may decide that the conditions are perfect for it not to, much like the sheet-of-paper-under-a-pint-glass thing works.

Hydraulic oil expands quite a bit when it's hot, so if you have it running all the pipes, converter and orifices are full and at a known quantity of oil contained, hot it's at its max level so again you can guarantee better that you have the correct amount of oil in it.

 

Inconvenient but that's the way it goes.

 

File it under "automatic gearboxes are a shit idea" if you want

 

--Phil

[bunglebus]

Vauxhall SOHC engine - thermostats always fail, and the housing is behind the cambelt. Why?

 

Also I like my Passat and it drives very nicely on that suspension set up.

[martc]

6 hours ago, holbeck said:

Injury's sustained from radio vol / tuner spindle's was a thing in 1970's accidents. 

BL tried to address this in their SRV2 concept vehicle. The facia design for the Mk2 Marina was a direct lift from the safety concept prototype

Can't remember the exact logic of why a passenger was more expendable in a crash, but hey - they tried! 

So what was their excuse for the wipers going in the wrong direction? The unswept area in front of the driver cannot be a safety feature surely? And they went the wrong way (but 'right' for us) on export models. Blinkin' brilliant.

UK

USA

[ETCHY]

4 hours ago, inconsistant said:

This is from 1970s memory so might be wrong, but isn't the Marina's radio slot not car radio shaped either? I'm sure when my dad fitted a radio to ours he had to cut the top right corner off the front of the radio to get it to fit.

That rings a bell with me. I seem to recall that the radio gap/hole was rounded at the top right  due to the dash design, so on my mates Marina's we generally had to arse about to get them to fit.

 

[jonathan_dyane]

/\ ISTR that it was found in pre-production that the Marina drivers wiper was blown off the screen at speed making driving at speed in the rain impossible so fitting them backwards was the *creative workaround.

[Richard_FM]

Hillman hunters & other rootes arrow cars had the wipers wrong handed - but was mirror imaged on the Lhd cars

[Dan302]

Dolomite Sprint angled head bolts

[Hard on Equipment]

Timing belts that run in oil.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Ford's relatively modern key bonnet release.  Turn one way, then the other.  Then scrabble around for ages to find the lever that's hidden under half an inch of grime.  Urgh.

[Timewaster]

1 hour ago, rusty_vw_man said:

Deleting the temperature gauge and replacing it with a light that comes on when it’s too late and it’s cooked itself. Top bombing.

I had a Clio courtesy car on Monday, it has a blue temperature light that stayed on for the first 2 or 3 miles. 

Never seen that before. 

It had touch screen sat nav and dab, alloys, 4 electric windows and keyless entry but no temperature gauge. 

[twosmoke300]

1 hour ago, PhilA said:

Two words:  Torque converter. Unfortunately due to the design of the things when you switch the engine off there is a chance that it'll burp and fart and drain the oil out of the top half of the thing back into the oil pan; it also may decide that the conditions are perfect for it not to, much like the sheet-of-paper-under-a-pint-glass thing works.

Hydraulic oil expands quite a bit when it's hot, so if you have it running all the pipes, converter and orifices are full and at a known quantity of oil contained, hot it's at its max level so again you can guarantee better that you have the correct amount of oil in it.

 

Inconvenient but that's the way it goes.

 

File it under "automatic gearboxes are a shit idea" if you want

 

--Phil

Hadn’t thought about the torque converter ? that makes sense although Honda do it “ my way “ if you like . 
And dsgs with no converter are still done running and up to temp .Scary as fuck when the level plug is inside the drain plug .

[Fumbler]

From Brother Fumbler's RR days:
GEMS
Natural rubber air bladders for the suspension
The blend motors
The marvellous notion of being locked outside of your car for X minutes because the alarm ECU went into panic because of mobile phone RF, drained the battery in the process and then thinks the car is being hotwired when you jump it.

[georgeinabz]

The egr valve in the doblo 1.3 multi jet , same as corsa /punto /panda , who designed it round the back , also egr valves in general making a car eat its own crap , especially on direct injection with no petrol or diesel to clean the inlet.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[artdjones]

9 hours ago, HMC said:

Sounds like an engineering biased question. I would venture the simplex chain driven oil pump on a generation of vag TDI engines. It looks odd diagrammatically and from an engineering perspective apparently it’s questionable- resulting in premature failure of the drive to the oil pump and goodbye engine. Mission critical but flakey engineering practice.

Only on the 2.0 engines that used the same chain to drive a large harmonic balancer in the sump and drove the oil pump off the balancer.The ordinary 1.9s are not troublesome,at least not the oil pump drive.

[Talbot]

28 minutes ago, Dan302 said:

Dolomite Sprint angled head bolts

Same as the head bolts (basically the same engine family) on a Staaaag V8.  Actually that engine was a complete load of bollocks.  The design of it is utterly awful and it has zero redeeming features.

 

Also.  Foot operated parking brakes on a manual car.  They can FRO.  Works fine in an automatic, but you need three legs to drive a manual with one.

[Richard_FM]

29 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

I had a Clio courtesy car on Monday, it has a blue temperature light that stayed on for the first 2 or 3 miles. 

Never seen that before. 

It had touch screen sat nav and dab, alloys, 4 electric windows and keyless entry but no temperature gauge. 

My 2001 Toyota Yaris had a temperature light like that.

[Ghosty]

Honda D-Series oil filter. On the back of the block facing the bulkhead under the inlet manifold and above a crossmember. 

 

Electric power steering. 

[Mrcento]

6 minutes ago, Richard_FM said:

My 2001 Toyota Yaris had a temperature light like that.

My Suzuki Ignis Sport did too.

[rantingYoof]

Having only been in one car that had such a transmission (a Prius taxi), what exactly are the advantages of a CVT over a traditional automatic?

From everything I've read the larger the engine the more sense they make in respect of smooth, quiet and noise-free motoring. Obviously some manufacturers appear to be allergic to fitting anything except a CVT irrespective of the size of car/engine, so it must be cheaper to build or attract less maintenance cost/be a lower risk over its lifetime, right?

[twosmoke300]

8 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

Renault did that because the gearbox sits at different angles on the Laguna and Trafic.  There is a small plastic dipstick you can buy from dealers with markings for both. It doesn't fuck the gearbox but it does piss oil out of the breather and can blow an oil seal out.

I have the dipstick ! What a pita tho .

The gearbox rebuilder I use gold me the overfilled gearbox means the oil flingers are submerged so don’t fling . Could be bollocks but he’s good at his job

[wuvvum]

13 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

As did the Alfasud, 1973 or whenever.

Yep, my '77 'Sud certainly did, although it wasn't blue - it was orange all the time, it came on when cold, went off when up to temp and came back on again when overheating.

51 minutes ago, Talbot said:

Same as the head bolts (basically the same engine family) on a Staaaag V8.  Actually that engine was a complete load of bollocks.  The design of it is utterly awful and it has zero redeeming features.

It does make a nice noise when running right though.

[Cavcraft]

Actually looking forward to doing 180+ miles a day in of these. A lesson soon learnt.

 

[New POD]

1 hour ago, Hard on Equipment said:

Timing belts that run in oil.

It's actually very clever. If you run the timing belt in oil, you have one chemical the material needs to withstand.

If you put it outside the engine you've got to make it survive all sorts of random cleaning fluids, battery acid, coolant, coffee, and wash fluid, plus salt off the road And you have to pay for dynamic shaft seals for cam shafts and crank shafts and the machined feature they sit in. And you've got to make the tensioners with sealed for life bearings, filled with appropriate lubricant. 

Put it on the inside, you just need an insert moulded seal on the plastic cover.  The saving is massive £££££. 

[UltraWomble]

1 hour ago, Timewaster said:

I had a Clio courtesy car on Monday, it has a blue temperature light that stayed on for the first 2 or 3 miles. 

Never seen that before. 

 

1 hour ago, Richard_FM said:

My 2001 Toyota Yaris had a temperature light like that.

 

1 hour ago, Mrcento said:

My Suzuki Ignis Sport did too.

 

54 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

As did the Alfasud, 1973 or whenever.

Designed to let you know the engine is "cold" so you dont rag the arse off it and reduce the lifespan of the CHG

[captain_70s]

2 hours ago, Dan302 said:

Dolomite Sprint angled head bolts

Is the main issue not that the bolts/studs or whatever are steel and the head is alloy, meaning an inherent tendency for them to glue themselves together?

I know back when I was running the 1850HL the general consensus from the TDC forum was to try and find another engine if you needed to remove the head on a Triumph slant-4 as usually the bolts would snap and render the whole lot scrap anyway.

[320touring]

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

Triple flash indicators.

Internal clutch slave cylinders.

Electronic auto box control modules - what was wrong with vacuum and cables?

 

[Roobarb]

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?

[Dan_ZTT]

1 hour ago, 320touring said:

Triple flash indicators

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.