I’ll start, the dreaded mechanical fuel pump. I find it very humorous that everyone told me to get a gee whiz tech vehicle and it has a mechanical fuel pump on it like an old VW beetle. Of course if it goes bad its not easy to replace on the side of the road like I have done many a times AND the vehicle still has a finicky electric pump in the tank. Well finicky if its a GM, I do know of some electric pumps that seemingly last forever but not in a GM truck.
Remember how car the old reliable Carburetors are bad because they dilute the fuel. But direct injection is good despite doing the same thing, diluting the fuel?.
A 80s chevy caprice has a 400k mile engine. Countless have made it there after starting life abused as a police car then “retiring” into a brutal life as a taxi cab. Running unfashionable 10w30 oil or even 20w50 these engines ran forever. 400k was nothing for them unless you bought one with an odometer roll back which was so common back then. Your 305 chevy that was worn out at 150k miles actually had 375k on it!
You can overheat one of them to the point it won’t run and let it cool diwn and it will continue to plug along. Ask me how I know!
These new aluminum butter engines running sewing machine oil snd water in them are blowing up left and right and that’s progress.
When was the last time you’ve ever replaced an electric fuel-pump? My and my wife and owned a plethora of vehicles with electric fuel pumps and I’ve NEVER EVER had to replace or even service on - even after hundreds of thousands of miles.
Fuel injection (Now direct injection) is far far more reliable than ANY carb. I’ve probably had to rebuild (or replace) 3-5 carbs on various vehicles I’ve owned over the years. Last one was on my 1984 GMC S-1 5 pickup. GM have a minimum of 20 different variations of their carbs for that vehicle. Some were just variations based on engine and if you had a manual or automatic. The rest were Engineering changes because of failures of the previous design. The mechanical part of fuel injection is far simpler than a carb. The simpler the design the less prone to failure.
I’ve owned several vehicles (4 and 6 cylinder) engines lasting at least that long with ZERO engine issues.
I haven’t replaced an alternator on ANY vehicle we’ve owned in the past 40+ years.
Back in my college days I drove a 1981 Buick Century, took three attempts to find a refurb-replacement alt that didn’t leave me stranded in my driveway or on campus!
That could have easily been due to buying the house brand or economy line instead of the more expensive (most of the time) top tier branded items, or simply buying from places like AutoZone (may have been Auto Shack back then)…
Plus some year, makes and models of vehicles are/were prone for starter, alt and or electric fuel pump etc etc failures…
I’ve seen plenty of Corolla alt and stater etc etc last over 500K miles as an example…