Dear Mr Car Manufacturer, why?

[Station]

Every car has it's faults, but specific cars develop specific faults across the range.

 

I'd like to know why the mk1 Corsa's rear arch spats faded from black to white after a couple of years.

Why all Vectra and Omega MFD digi displays degenerate into a mess of missing pixels.

Why on modern Vauxhalls, do oil breather pipes go back into parts of the engine like the inlet manifold, which is connected to bits like control valves, which get clogged up with old oil.

Why does most red paint fade to pink?

 

I can't think of anymore, but god damnit, it makes me ask myself 'WHY!?'

[Timewaster]

I'd like to know why the mk1 Corsa's rear arch spats faded from black to white after a couple of years.

 

I'm told because they were made of recycled plastic of a different grade to the bumpers.

That also explains why most bumper restoring potions wont work on them.

 

Corsas suck anyway!!

[Formula Autos]

£

 

That's why.

 

Doing things 'properly' increases the cost. This would either reduce profits and/or have to be passed on to the customer.

 

Most things are built to the lowest possible cost. Which affects standards.

 

Building a car to aircraft standards would result in it costing far more. As is the case with Bristol.

 

Admittedly though, some manufacturers manage to strike the right balance - whereas others fail.

[Pillock]

Mostly cost cutting. More use of technology and there's a massive difference between "cheap" and "good" - when you're making a few million Omegas and Vectras, a 5p saving on the soldering on the MFD is a lot of cash. Same with plastics, look around many mid-90s cars and all the plastics fade at a different rate but Corsas definately seem the worst. Still, they outsource all the manufacture of these parts so when a company turns around and offers a million-pound saving because they've left out some UV-resistant stuff, they don't care because the cars will be long out of warranty.

[Autoplas]

Question 4 - Oxidisation, which on red cars shows up much more than on other paint colours. Don't know why, but whenever I see a faded red car it is usually a 90's Vauxhall

[M'coli]

Red paint fades to pink because the red pigment has to absorb all the other light wavelengths. Red light has the longest wavelength of all the visible light colours, and so the lowest energy. The other, higher energy wavelengths help cause the bleaching and oxidation that causes the fading to pink.

 

PS this was meant to be posted about 6 minutes ago - I hit the "Submit" button, switched to another tab, and then came back to this one to find the "Someone else has posted - do you still want to post?" Of course I bloody do!

[Timewaster]

Red paint fades to pink

 

My red Peugeots turned orange.

[Pillock]

....red pigment......wavelengths.....visible light colours...energy....oxidation

 

Bloody hell! Autoshite taught me something

[Rusty Pelican]

Why

Does the Shitroen Van I have to drive at work " auto locks " the doors as soon as I get in , pressing the button on the dash makes no difference , get to delivery turn off donkey , get around the back to find the doors locked , back to get the keys and so on .

Poxy piece of shit

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

Question 4 - Oxidisation, which on red cars shows up much more than on other paint colours. Don't know why, but whenever I see a faded red car it is usually a 90's Vauxhall

 

Or Volkswagen. I am about to buy a faded Golf, I should really T-cut some spunking cocks, etc. on it. OMG CRUDELY DRAWN COCK LOOK.

[Timewaster]

Why Does the Shitroen Van I have to drive at work " auto locks " the doors as soon as I get in

 

Poxy piece of shit

 

You just answered your own question!

[Autoplas]

Question 4 - Oxidisation, which on red cars shows up much more than on other paint colours. Don't know why, but whenever I see a faded red car it is usually a 90's Vauxhall

 

Or Volkswagen. I am about to buy a faded Golf, I should really T-cut some spunking cocks, etc. on it. OMG CRUDELY DRAWN COCK LOOK.

 

How about 'PLEASE T-CUT ME'

[Pillock]

"I wish my wife was this oxidised"

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

That's the one! If I did the spunking cocks I'd only have to T-cut the rest.

[Formula Autos]

I am about to buy a faded Golf, I should really T-cut some spunking cocks, etc. on it. OMG CRUDELY DRAWN COCK LOOK.

 

How about the carefully T-cutting the face of a religious deity/deceased celebrity into the bonnet, and proclaiming it a miracle? - may I suggest Elvis?

 

You could rake it in.

[Station]

My dad had an Ascona that was a brilliant red after nearly 20 years!

 

I read red fades just as quickly as green or blue, but you eye sees red different and more dramatically because it has the longest wavelength in the spectrum - in astronomy, objects moving away in space give off more red than blue, and objects moving closer appear more blue.

 

I took some 1500 grade wet and dry to my entire car and it no longer goes back to dull after a few weeks of polishing, it looks much better.

 

I was asking these questions more as a rhetorical 'christ, all these common faults that aren't fixed' type of thing.

[Claypole]

The Dynarod orange fades like crazy.

[Pete-M]

Why all Vectra and Omega MFD digi displays degenerate into a mess of missing pixels.

 

Much as I hate to say this, it's not just Vauxhalls that suffer. VAG stuff suffers from it too, and BMWs.

 

The clock in my Jag is knackered, and it's about the most common fault with 'em. So Jag charge £170+vat for new ones. Nice one.

 

My pet dislike is saggy headlining syndrome. Unfortunately, Range Rovers suffer badly from it, as do Volvos, Rover SD1s and Jag XJs. Bugger.

[woolleyiain]

Yup, VAG stuff eats strut busings, Mazdas go through top engine mounts and recently, oil coolers and front crank seals like no bodies business. Subaru's eat lower control bushings, and on the new stuff, ac compressors and steering racks. It would be great if you could take all the good stuff from each car and build something proper...

[Negative Creep]

Water pump impellers and timing belt tensioners made out of plastic which invariably breaks and need to be upgraded

[ruffgeezer]

Here are a few of mine from 10 years in the trade:

 

Unsheathed handbrake cables on vauxhalls.

Anything where the bonnet hinges forwards.

Citroen/Peugeot making their modern springs out of chocolate.

Fords with a built in use by date of around 10 years.

 

Also I hate shit pattern parts, if it doesn't fit, doesn't do it's job properly or doesn't last 10 minutes, then it isn't a pattern part, it's a piece of shit.

[Station]

Much as I hate to say this, it's not just Vauxhalls that suffer. VAG stuff suffers from it too, and BMWs.

 

The clock in my Jag is knackered, and it's about the most common fault with 'em. So Jag charge £170+vat for new ones. Nice one.

 

My pet dislike is saggy headlining syndrome. Unfortunately, Range Rovers suffer badly from it, as do Volvos, Rover SD1s and Jag XJs. Bugger.

 

I've never suffered from a saggy headlining, even having a car that was meant to suffer excessively from it.

All those digital displays are made by VDO, which is like the Bosch of the digital clock world (ie. they work perfectly, and then break without fail after five years).

[Cavcraft]

Modern(ish) Vauxhalls and Mercs: Might be better if your sensors weren't built out of papier mache by dsinterested blind people on 30p a week in a sweat shop.

 

Vespa: it'd be really helpful if you hadn't made your clutch cables out of cheese straws then routed them through the fucking headstock.

 

Iveco: Brakes that don't brake and everything else that does break. Just go and fuck yourselves.

[MK5 Escort]

Yes, the plastic arch strips on the original Corsa's were made from a different grade of plastic, which somehow reacted terribly to the sun, causing them to fade until they literally turned white. From my experience, keep them treated from new and they tend to be okay. There's a couple around here (giffer owned jobbies) which are still looking quite decent. Most are completely shot though.

 

I hate to be anti-Vauxhall, but I find the brakes on most I've had to be no better than mediocre. The rear brakes rarely worked fully on any I've had (you can tell by the lines of rust still on the disk after use) and the handbrakes need to be pulled right up for them to hold anything...

 

VAG products tend to go through bulbs.

[Pillock]

Mk1 Mondeos that treat suspension arms as consumable items. I had three pairs in three years for three MoTs. So they know it happens, but don't redesign the part because by then, they're onto the Mk3 Mondeo and making sure it splits the intercooler pipe every 14 miles when in TDDI configuration.

[pandamonium]

 

You could rake it in.

 

Wouldn't that scratch the paint?

[AnthonyG]

I always thought the red-turning to-pink paint issue was only due to water based paints, which is why it only happens on 1990s onwards cars?

 

I know I could well be wrong on this though!

[M'coli]

My old man's 1979 Cortina had the red-to-pink thing in the early 80s - difficult to believe that the West of Scotland had enough sunlight to cause this, but there was a drought in 1984, so the T-cut came out.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I've been tooling about of late in an 09 plate Insignia SRi CDti. On the whole it's pretty good. It's decently made, drives extremely well and is comfy. It's gone back now, but i quite liked it.

But it has some utterly stupid design features. It would appear that either the cruise control doesn't work, or it's impossible to actuate. I've tried EVERYTHING and the fucker will not play ball. You've got to touch the brakes before engaging cruise, you've got a switch on the steering wheel, another bit on the column stalk........for fucks sake, the cruise lever in my old BMW is a single lever on the column. You press it away from you to engage cruise, job done. The interior mirror, unlike the self dipping one in my 15 year old shitbox 3 Series, has a manual dipping lever. What the fuck is that about in 2009?? The radio is an utter nightmare and as for trying to find out what your average fuel economy is via the OBC, forget it.

It's a nice car, but is just loaded with over complex shit that makes it so hard to use. It's a pity GM went down the 'festoon every surface with buttons' approach rather than making the controls simple and intuitive.

 

At least they binned that bastard indicator stalk on the Vectra. That was just madness.

 

 

Faults? Ah yes.

 

German car manufacturers. Stop using third rate 10 pence poor quality Bosch shite, and use Hitatchi. That way it might last more than 12 minutes.

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

Bring back the 1975 Cavalier.