Why do the manufacturers do that?

Ken Green is 100% correct…They don’t CARE about serviceability…It’s not even on their radar screens…If you have to remove the windshield and dashboard to replace the heater core, that’s fine with them.

But the rules can change…On some lines of vehicles that are popular with fleets, serviceability becomes very important…Crown Vics come to mind…

Speaking of the difference in difficulty of changing bulbs -

A family member’s 87 Camry was a pain after a few years - the bulb was easy to reach, but held on via a plastic clip that became VERY stiff and brittle with age. Getting to the bulb was simple, but replacing it without damaging the connector was a real PITA…

Both my old 1997 Taurus and our 1998 Camry had easy to change bulbs. Rather important in the latter case, since it seems to burn through them rather quickly.

Now our 2010 Mazda6, OTOH, I’m not looking forward to changing bulbs. Driver’s side should be easy - passenger’s side, however, requires that you move the coolant reservoir to access the bulb. Now that SHOULD be easy, as there are only two bolts holding that tank in, both are easily accessible, and should only be hand-tight. But I’m not counting on it, nor am I counting on them having given enough slack in the hose to make moving that tank easy without spilling coolant everywhere.

I need to correct my post. I said '91 and '92 Civics, but they were actually 2001 and 2002 Civics.

The headlights for my car are pretty affordable as far as those things go. I replaced both headlamp units with new OEM style aftermarket ones for $86, which included the bulbs, the actual act of replacing them took about two minutes per side. But I’ve heard of some cars where you have to remove the grille or other such nonsense to swap out a bulb.

Ahhh, that makes more sense. The 5th-and-up-gens were definitely more user-unfriendly than the 4th.

I, too, was wondering about TSM’s Civic. I had a '95 Civic and I bought a headlight bulb at Wal-Mart and changed it in about 2 minutes while still in the parking lot.

@ok4500

The term “obsoleting” in the auto industry means different things than in industries with more rapid technological development, such as computers and cell phones.

I once tried to get a part for my 1965 Dodge Dart (which at that time was 10.5 years old) from the dealer. The parts man proudly told me that the part was “obsolete”, over 10 years old, even though technically it was very much like the same part on a newer model. That told me that Chrysler had no interest in servicing or supplying parts for older cars, and the aftermarket had to be relied on to supply them.

Sales and marketing people have little interest in older items, and bringing out a new model line involves making the older lines “obsolete”. General Electric, when they were still in the appliance business, stopped suppliing parts for their wall ovens at 8 years. Sears will only guarantee parts for 10 years on their Kenmore appliances.

In developing countries good old car models soldier on with after market and reverse-engineered Chinese and locally made parts. An old 240 model Volvo can be completely refurbished in Malaysia, for instance. A friend of mine had one, complete with new leather upholstery. Another friend had a late 80s Mercedes S class full of reverse-engineerd Chinese parts and locally designed custom seats. With cheap labor, high import dusties, and no technical or emission standards, these things are possible.

“I have no clue why, but some manufacturers just seem to design things in the most difficult manner possible. My daughter’s … Civics were an exercise in frustration and expletives…”

They’re just trying to expand our vocabularies. Aren’t they thoughtful?

I’ll tell you what: I hope to never have to replace one of my HID headlamps, but the difference between them and plain ol’ halogen lamps is dramatic. It is a pleasure to drive at night in my current car. I have never had a car with better headlights. If the time comes that I have to replace one of them for $80-$100, I won’t be thrilled, but the HID lamps are well worth it in my opinion.

@eraser1998-

as there are only two bolts holding that tank in, both are easily accessible, and should only be hand-tight. But I’m not counting on it…

They were torqued appropriately for a plastic flange but thanks to the efforts to insure no fastener ever comes loose unintentionally you can bet those bolts had loc-tite on them! Sometimes the simplest bolts are a struggle to the last thread :wink:

I hope to never have to replace one of my HID headlamps, but the difference between them and plain ol’ halogen lamps is dramatic.

I doubt if you would have that same opinion if you were comparing them to plain old "E=Code" lamps.  

HID is a light source and the actual beam pattern can vary greatly and still be HID.  They may be great or them may be poor.  HID does not mean a good or poor pattern.  I might add that the "color" of the light is more a matter "that is the color that HID makes, just like Fluorescent lights or the orange appearing lamps on the freeways they do not give out a full spectrum light so some colors are distorted or may not show up at all.

As previously mentioned, in order to reduce assembly costs, car manufacturers developed the “Desing for Assembly” or DFA philosophy. The Ford Taurus was the first such US car in 1986 to get a serious treatment. It made a lot of things hard to service.

Design for “Maintainability” is a required if you build stuff for the military. The HUMMVEE, the original Hummer, met those requirements. The engine could be removed very quickly under battle field conditions. The gas turbine engine in a tank can be removed and replaced in just 1 1/2 hours.

Although I am not an advocate for more government standards, we do need a standard for serviceability. When we do you will see a massive improvement in ease of service.

That Taurus power steering pressure hose was quite a piece of crap. I have cut them out and had the rubber replaced to repair them utilizing only the final 6 inches of pipe at the rack and the initial 6 inches of pipe at the rubber.All the added metal pipe was to facilitate making the connection while the engine was below the wheels.

Back when they had those sealed beams standard on cars, people worked on their own cars to begin with. Would you want to mess around in the garage every 10k miles replacing your spark plugs? Do you even HAVE a garage you could work on your car in? How many do? How many live in an apartment/condo complex where they don’t want you working on your car in their lot?

Tools cost money, and lots of people just don’t want to spend the kinda money for tools to work with. Most modern vehicles require special tools to remove certain bolts/parts and those can get pretty costly; especially if you only need to use them once or twice in your lifetime.
Also, some parts can only be obtained through a dealership and are pretty costly, too. If you’ve gotta run to the dealership to get a part, why not just have them do it for you so you don’t have to buy the part only to realize you need a special tool to remove it?

@TwinTurbo - well, I’ll find out eventually.

I do know that I use VERY colorful language about Toyota every time I have to change out the strut mounts in my Camry - their design on the sway bar link is horrid, and I have yet to find an aftermarket supplier that doesn’t just copy it. IIRC, its a 5 mm hex socket that they put in the center of the stud on the link, with something like a 12 mm nut on that stud. To keep the stud from spinning, you have to use an allen wrench in that hex socket… but of course rust makes the nut hard to budge, and about 50% of the time, that allen wrench strips out immediately… so you end up with a hacksaw cutting the part off… that, or you use anti-seize on the threads and risk them coming loose. Why other manufacturers don’t use what Moog did on the replacement part for a family member’s Focus is beyond me - they used nice big wrench flats on the ball side of the stud to hold it still - an 18 mm wrench flat is FAR more effective than a 5 mm socket…

It’s all regulated. See the attached link.
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=571.108

There was recently a post about 2 grand for lexus headlight replacement http://community.cartalk.com/discussion/2284299/2200-to-replace-a-single-lexus-headlight and you thought you had it bad? We are now a disposable society, used to be a bad diaphram in the fuel pump, replace the diaphram for 6 bucks, now replace the fuel pump for 200 bucks. Planned obsolescence? From WIKI “Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence[1] in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.[1] Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.[1]”

I’m not convinced that planned obsolescence really exists. In all my years in industry I have never seen a designer think like that. A designer will design to meet a specific life expectancy goal, and use less expensive parts, materials, or methodology to stay within the cost budget, but nobody in my experience actually designs an intentional failure.

I think the reason we have to replace the entire pump rather than just a diaphragm is simply that today’s modular designs are designed to minimize manufacturing costs. There’s a concept called “Design For Manufacture” (DFM) that teaches engineers to integrate functions and reduce parts. That means parts are ultraosnically welded into polymer housings instead of being assembled of many piece-parts, Basically, the idea is to reduce the number of parts, which reduces procurement costs, inventory costs, kitting and other WIP costs, and creats a cheaper overall vehicle. DFM also teaches concepts like the use of assymetry to eliminate assembly errors, but it’s the cost reductions that apply to the question at hand.

In short, we may not be able to repair subassemblies the way we used to, but the cars are far more affordable than they would have been if they’d been manufactured the old repairable way.

@the same mountainbike

And there you are, using the common public definition of “planned obsolescence” that I was referring to earlier… :slight_smile: I wholeheartedly agree that they set goals but don’t actually design for failure. That would take some real skill, to be able to design something to fall apart at a certain age/time.

What planned obsolescence really means is that you have a plan to make your own product seem out-of-date, unstylish, etc. Not functionally obsolete, but simply to make people want the new model more than the old one, and view it as superior.

Cars are expensive to design and produce, and that’s why we have 4-5 year product cycles, but in that timeframe, sales tend to fall off significantly after the first year of a model. The idea of planned obsolescence is to try to give the consumer SOMETHING to make the newer model seem better. Sometimes it’s a very minor change, like the difference between a 97 Taurus and 98 Taurus when you look at the front bumper and rear taillight. Sometimes, its more significant - like delaying the AWD version of the Fusion for a year or two from the FWD version… or putting a newer, better engine into the vehicle, etc. More and more manufacturers are going to 4 year product cycles now for this exact reason. The old design may have been perfectly good and functional, but you’ll get killed in the marketplace if you don’t keep the product fresh. Just look at the reviews for the Ford Focus when it first came out vs. that of a few years later… When it was first out, it got rave reviews for being ahead of most of its class for performance, handling, etc… but Ford neglected it for years and they got passed quickly. Same with the last gen Honda Civic, which Honda ran with for too many years…

Generally when people use the term “planned obsolescence”, they’re talking about planned failures. Yes, here I am using the “common public definition”, the first one listed in the dictionary.

By your definition, different from the one most of the world thinks of first, than I agree, designers do design in obsolescence.

Yup, here I am, using a common definition as understood by the overwhelming majority of the public and defined in the dictionary. Wow. What a concept. You know what, I think I’ll keep on using common definitions. I like the idea.