[AT] Getting water out of a gearbox/now bearing life

David Rotigel rotigel at me.com
Mon Jun 8 06:21:59 PDT 2015


While I agree with you re Jap cars (Probably the best car I have ever owned is a 2005 Lexus that we purchaced and drive when we are in F.) I think there are few Americans who buy a car new and then drive it more than 150,000 miles. It is those (probably 95%) of the American car buyers that the manufacturer is trying to please!
	Dave

On Jun 8, 2015, at 8:59 AM, macowboy at comcast.net wrote:

> I have been reading this topic with great interest. For the past 15 years I have been involved either on the supplier side providing components to the big automotive assembly lines or on the OEM side for the medical device industry. I have been to most of the major automotive assembly plant across the country and a few of the big truck manufacturers too. One things that was made clear to me that todays vehicles are designed to last 150,000 miles. This is straight from the engineers at the assembly plants. I don't know where this number came from but this is what I was told. The Japanese do a much better job with design and assembly. They use a practice called Probabilistic Design where they take the variability of each component in an assembly and determine what the process capability(defect rate) will be. If it is less than a zero defects, back the drawing board. I have found that the American manufacturers tend to design in the electronic world(CAD) and do not take into consideration the manufacturing capability of the process they have selected. What happens is that when a certain combination of tolerances occur in a assembly, you will have failures. The design guys will tend to put very unrealistic tolerances on their drawing as it makes their jobs much easier. The DFMEA that was talked about earlier is more of a paper work/regulations requirement rather than a good tool to use. Most engineers that do this conduct a top down DFMEA where they look at the assembly as a whole. A better way to do this is a bottom up DFMEA where you look at each requirement on each component. One engineering manager did this and his final product was as close to flawless as possible. BTW, as far as components go I can say the electronics(PCB's) are the worst followed closely by raw materials/chemicals for failures. 
>   
>   
> Jim Thomson 
> macowboy at comcast.net 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> 
> From: "Stephen Offiler" <soffiler at gmail.com> 
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com> 
> Sent: Monday, June 8, 2015 8:09:55 AM 
> Subject: Re: [AT] Getting water out of a gearbox/now bearing life 
> 
> That was EXACTLY the point I was trying to make, Dave.  Thanks. 
> 
> SO 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 8:57 PM, David Rotigel <rotigel at me.com> wrote: 
> 
>> If all the ideas were incorporated into the truck the price would be 
>> upwards of $80,000.00! 
>>         Dave 
>> PS, If I got 250,000 miles out of a bearing (or even my hip) I'd be 
>> bragging about it! 
>> 
>> 
> 
>> On Jun 5, 2015, at 8:36 PM, Steve Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com> wrote: 
>> 
>>> It's amusing to consider what's really being discussed here is a "smart" 
>> truck equipped with "nerves" that will tell you where it has aches and 
>> pains as it ages. 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone 
>>> 
>> 
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