“The struts over-center so they won’t open the hood if the latch is popped no matter if the safety catch is functioning or not.”
Both of our Impalas (2 different generations) and my trusty Bonneville have factory stock over-center struts that function as described by Mustangman.
Say what you will about GM cars, butt kudos to GM for putting these on our cars as standard equipment! Not only that, but the one’s on our old back-up Impala are as aged as the car… 15 model-years and 250,000 miles+ AND Still functioning as new! Likewise for the newer one.Awesome!
Our base level Caravan has a small, but heavy hood. It’s been a fine machine for many years and miles, but has a stupid hood-stay rod. Lousy.
And there are the cars (like my subaru) where the dipstick reading is basically unreliable. I’ve commented on this before. The reading is between zero and one quart high every time.
When I was a kid, the only car I remember having a prop rod was the 1947 and later Studebakers. Even my 1947 Pontiiac had counter balancing springs. I think Toyota took a step backward–my 2011 Toyota Sienna uses a prop rod. Both my 1947 Pontiac and my 1948 Dodge had dipsticks that were easy to read and,accurate. The Dodge had a butterfly hood and I often forgot which side to open to check the oil.
One of the issues that has always bothered me about the gas struts is that they are subjected to the most stress in the position they spend 99% of their time- access door closed.
They must have made some significant design improvements to overcome this issue because I haven’t had one fail in many years now…
Elemental lead is relatively safe.
I’ve been soldering electronics for over 40 years with no prob-bob-bob-lem.
Unlike heated mercury, molten lead doesn’t vaporize unless you get it way hotter than for normal molding, soldering etc.
I tell students I teach soldering to wash their hands well after handling it.
Most lead poisoning comes from inhaling or ingesting tiny lead-bearing particles or chemical leaching.
The quite heavy hood on my late Impala was easy to open and close safely due to excellent struts. The relatively heavy trunk lid also had small struts. When I traded It for the new Camry last year I made a point of getting the 2014.5 production with the reinforced front end for better small offset crash safety. The bonus to that is having hood struts rather than a prop rod, although the struts are not nearly as sturdy as the ones on Chevys. The tiny light weight tinfoil Camry trunk lid doesn’t need them; I just keep the hinges lubed. The other bonus was losing the pull up parking brake and getting a foot pedal parking brake.
They’re blindly dependent on technology…AND …100% full expecting it to do everything for them.
THESE are the people who file law suits against product manufacturers because the technology caused them to ignore the obvious…and the stupid judges go along with them !
– baby sitting technology has made an entire generation ( and generations to follow ) completely ignorant of the user participation needed for MANY products. Do you know how many ‘‘repairs’’ cross my bench that simply need a good cleaning or a user method adjustment of ‘‘well duh, don’t DO that’’ or ‘‘all you needed to have done is…’’ !
Even I have become victim of technology. I can NOT tell you my dad’s San Antonio phone number ( and many others ) because I use the memory menu in my phone too often but I can punch in the phone numbers to ten parts places !
I like SAAB hoods which open in reverse and are similar to the old Jaguar XKEs. They’re heavy and easy to open with one hand even with no springs, support rods, or gas lifts involved. It’s all in the hinge design.
What they NEED these days , is the front hinged complete clip…like the old XKEs.
The way they shoe-horn these thing in , a hinged, or removable front clip would sure make life easier.
I wish the front end of my Lincoln Mark was like an old XKE as it would certainly make servicing easier.
With no humor involved, I’ve told my wife I could dump a bucket of water on top of the engine in that car and it would take 2 days for it to start dripping out the bottom…
If you find the answer to this question then start looking for the reason why there is only one or two cashiers working when the store has 20 cash registers. This happens at supermarkets and Wally World type stores all the time. Thanks in advance.
Relating this back to cars, so as not to be off topic, you bring up a good point. That’s what I’ve been saying, that manufacturers need to step-up and help out the consumers and make it so not so many folks damage/destroy engines because they continue with the 100 year-old+ dipstick technology.
One supermarket chain stepped-up. They use technology to track customer volume in their stores and as volume picks up, additional clerks are summoned to check-out stations. The idea is to have them there before long lines can form. The stores can adjust the number of clerks downward as volume decreases.
100 years of cars or grocery stores should be plenty to adapt to changing customer demands or desires, I believe. It’s time to try something different, perhaps using modern technology as the grocery chain did. BMW and Lincoln have tried.
The grocery chain is Kroger. I don’t have one near me, but when I travel I shop their stores. I’m sure a short search would explain their technology better than I have.
CSA....you are right. Kroger is just about the only place that I don't stand in line.
Ever get to upstate NY or Washington DC area and now the Boston area…a grocery chain called Wegmans is the same. No self checkout…some stores have 32 cash registers with 4-8 10 items or less. There’s never a line.
Here in NH was have Shaws which just eliminated their self checkout lines and added ONE 20 items or less line. Last time I went there - there were at least 12 people in line. They went the opposite direction…to heck with customer service…we want profit.
The couple of Krogers I go to in Ohio leave a lot to be desired but there isn’t much other choice. It might be the neighborhood though.
As far as checking the oil, I guess maybe it just depends on what you have been exposed to growing up. It was something we always did and it stuck with me. Still I only check it before or after a spin on the highway or after a couple weeks. If a problem developed though, I’d probably never catch it in time. I still think it is silly for manufacturers not to spend the extra $20 to put in a “low oil level” warning light like I had in my Rivieras. If you were ever down a quart or more, the message popped up to check the oil level.
I suppose its like everything else though in what is a priority. Like changing furnace filters, oiling door hinges, checking the roof, computer maintenance, and a myriad of other tasks that could keep us occupied 20 hours a day trying to keep up on everything.
@Bing You don’t need a lot of time to check to see if things are OK. Most of us check oil every second tankful and coolant level as well when the hood is up. I check tires every 3 weeks or so.
We were out of the country in Malaysia for 5 years and our daughter stayed in our house. I drew up a lit of things to check from time to time and what to do if various things broke, and who to call.
On our trips back at Christmas I did a general check. Our daughter had only one thing replaced and that was the furnace thermostat packed it in, and she called the phone number on the furnace and had it replaced almost immediately. The service company has a 24/7 service call-in.
Never once did we worry about the house. My son took our two cars for 2 weeks at the time and drove each as a second car. No problems there.
You need a caring mentality and if you don’t have that you will have all sorts of “unexpected” problems.
If you find the answer to this question then start looking for the reason why there is only one or two cashiers working when the store has 20 cash registers.
lol … I think the best explanation for the not looking at the dipstick phenomenon I’ve seen in this thread so far is the theory that many car owners feel checking the oil shouldn’t be their responsibility. Their job – in these car owner’s mind - is to work and earn money to pay for the car. It’s somebody else’s job to check the oil and otherwise take care of it.
I think I recall from a class I took years ago that psychologists call this kind of thinking “compartmentalization”. It’s a method the mind uses to keep life tractable. “I’ll worry about this, let somebody else worry about everything else” thinking sort of makes sense if you think about it as a way to maintain sanity.
As far as the cash registers … you could try my solution, just choose the longest line you can find. I do that so I can read the goings on in the world I’d otherwise miss, those highly important events reported in the National Enquirer! Unless you read the Enquirer, you wouldn’t know the latest what Tom Cruise is up to …
Yep we called that living in water tight compartments, to not let one compartment spill over into the other. It didn’t mean you never opened the door though, just kept things in their proper compartment.
