[AT] Chevy Astro

[Henry Miller]

Be glad you don't have to work on new Mercedes.  Sometime about 1990 they got 
this idea that if they made cars so complex even they don't understand them, 
nobody else has a prayer of understanding it, and thus they cannot fix it.    
They reached the point where they were proud of how complex things were.

Then they discovered the hard way that if debugging a design is 10 times 
harder than creating it in the first place.   Therefore if you design the 
most complex thing you can, you are by definition not smart enough to get all 
the bugs out.   

I can't complain about that too much, I'm one of the few people in the world 
that understands their computers now.   (I've been working on third party 
diagnostic computer scan tools)   Not everyone is smart enough to do that.   
(If that sounds arrogant you need to meet some of the engineers I have known)

On Sunday 12 November 2006 10:00, Francis Robinson wrote:
> 	"Trying" to work on later model (after mid 1980's) stuff really makes you
> appreciate how easy it is to work on our old tractors. Years ago I drove a
> 1969 Mercedes 240-D. Gee, that thing was easy to work on. I always said
> that all automotive design engineers should be required to work in a
> dealer's service garage for about a month every year. Really work, not some
> walk through. There is much to be learned from physically working on a
> 10-year-old car that has seen plenty of the real world, not a lab tested
> car. It would also help if one week of that month was spent in a small auto
> repair shop that "did not" always have access to special tool #999876-q.
> 	When you get right down to it they are still just re-inventing the
> horseless carriage and many of the "new" innovations over the years had
> already been invented. History gets lost and too many lessons have to be
> re-learned over and over again. Simple stuff many times... One hot spot
> with me is how many vehicles I have owned where the fuse block was hidden
> up under the dash where you have stand on your head in a half twist with a
> flashlight in your mouth just to change a simple fuse that is designed to
> fail... The 1948 Chevy truck had them in a simple metal covered box under
> the hood that was opened by popping off a couple of latch springs like on a
> distributor cap. Then some dummy said "lets see if we can make that harder
> to get to"...    ;-) IHC did a good job in the 60's and 70's of making
> fuses easy to change. You didn't even have to open the hood, just the glove
> box door... Today they are again doing a better job at making them
> accessible, usually up on a wheel well in a box along with several relays
> etc. but it is only a matter of time before some dummy says "lets see if we
> can make that harder to get to"...    ;-)