Quick question. Your car stops working. What do you do? Well, take it to the garage! They'll take care of it. They'll take care of it because the way things are being built now requires you to take it to them.
Forty years ago this wasn't the case. If you had time, the work ethic and the right tools; you could get a book and fix the damn thing yourself. Sure you had to pay for the parts but you didn't have to worry about labor. The shop was the "I can't get it to work" place where you would spend your hard earned money only after spending your time and effort trying to save it. If you bothered to take the time to learn about the mechanics of a car and applied yourself you could really save money for other things.
Things have changed. New cars no longer have the comfortably large spaces around the engine so you can work on it easily. Some things are impossible to fix yourself either due to the requirement of special tools or due to the onboard computer needing to be worked with. Sometimes it is still possible to fix it yourself but the way the vehicle has been designed requires you to actually remove the entire engine to do it. A fix that used to be a 5 hour fix turns into a 2 day fix.
You see having cars that can be fixed on the driveway isn't good for business. That encourages people to save money by, say, going to a wrecker and getting discount parts instead of new parts. How do you kill that off? Make it very inconvenient or impossible to fix at home. Sometimes this leads to ridiculous situations.
3 years ago my Dad's minivan would not start. Being a fix-it-yourself guy since he was 12, he tried everything he could think of to get it moving. Finally admitting defeat, he has to get it towed to the shop. Why wouldn't the van start? The computer detected that a switch for the signal lights had worn out so it would not start the engine. Where is this switch? Buried within the front dashboard of course!
So the switch cost about 400 dollars (which is insane in itself) and there is also the labor cost of getting to it to replace it. My Dad is still disgusted about the entire situation. Even if he had known it was the switch that was causing the problem and if he had already had a replacement switch... Even if he had gone through the trouble of ripping the dashboard open to replace it himself it still would have needed to go to the shop for the computer to recognize the switch.
Now I'm not saying that things haven't all gone to hell since my Dad was in his twenties. Cars drive much, much, much further without maintenance now. Tires last longer. Oil is better. Treat your car with respect and you can expect it to take you a long, long way before you need a new one. It's just that when something does go wrong, you can no longer take the initiative and solve it yourself.
When I'm 40 I fully expect to have people surprised when I tell them my Dad, until a certain point in the 20th century, almost never took his vehicles to the garage. It isn't just major fixes they're trying to stop you from doing at home too. It is very difficult to change the oil filter in my current car, a 2009 Nissan Versa, due to the way the structure is designed underneath. It's doable but it is obvious that they want me to go pay someone else to do it.
I am disappointed that I won't be able to save my money the way my Dad used to by doing things myself. Yes it would be boring, arduous, sometimes exhausting but I would much rather sweat it out myself and save the extra money. The way my car is designed? Well, if something really stops working with it I will be forced to get it taken to the shop. One could say this is the natural course of Capitalism, always paying others to do something for you. I just don't like it.
TL;DR: Read it. I didn't write it out for you to skip all the way to the bottom so you could comment faster...
Discussion value: What do you think of killing off simplicity or ease of repair in the name of profit?
[sub][sub]Inspired by onesided conversations with my Dad throughout my childhood.[/sub][/sub]
Forty years ago this wasn't the case. If you had time, the work ethic and the right tools; you could get a book and fix the damn thing yourself. Sure you had to pay for the parts but you didn't have to worry about labor. The shop was the "I can't get it to work" place where you would spend your hard earned money only after spending your time and effort trying to save it. If you bothered to take the time to learn about the mechanics of a car and applied yourself you could really save money for other things.
Things have changed. New cars no longer have the comfortably large spaces around the engine so you can work on it easily. Some things are impossible to fix yourself either due to the requirement of special tools or due to the onboard computer needing to be worked with. Sometimes it is still possible to fix it yourself but the way the vehicle has been designed requires you to actually remove the entire engine to do it. A fix that used to be a 5 hour fix turns into a 2 day fix.
You see having cars that can be fixed on the driveway isn't good for business. That encourages people to save money by, say, going to a wrecker and getting discount parts instead of new parts. How do you kill that off? Make it very inconvenient or impossible to fix at home. Sometimes this leads to ridiculous situations.
3 years ago my Dad's minivan would not start. Being a fix-it-yourself guy since he was 12, he tried everything he could think of to get it moving. Finally admitting defeat, he has to get it towed to the shop. Why wouldn't the van start? The computer detected that a switch for the signal lights had worn out so it would not start the engine. Where is this switch? Buried within the front dashboard of course!
So the switch cost about 400 dollars (which is insane in itself) and there is also the labor cost of getting to it to replace it. My Dad is still disgusted about the entire situation. Even if he had known it was the switch that was causing the problem and if he had already had a replacement switch... Even if he had gone through the trouble of ripping the dashboard open to replace it himself it still would have needed to go to the shop for the computer to recognize the switch.
Now I'm not saying that things haven't all gone to hell since my Dad was in his twenties. Cars drive much, much, much further without maintenance now. Tires last longer. Oil is better. Treat your car with respect and you can expect it to take you a long, long way before you need a new one. It's just that when something does go wrong, you can no longer take the initiative and solve it yourself.
When I'm 40 I fully expect to have people surprised when I tell them my Dad, until a certain point in the 20th century, almost never took his vehicles to the garage. It isn't just major fixes they're trying to stop you from doing at home too. It is very difficult to change the oil filter in my current car, a 2009 Nissan Versa, due to the way the structure is designed underneath. It's doable but it is obvious that they want me to go pay someone else to do it.
I am disappointed that I won't be able to save my money the way my Dad used to by doing things myself. Yes it would be boring, arduous, sometimes exhausting but I would much rather sweat it out myself and save the extra money. The way my car is designed? Well, if something really stops working with it I will be forced to get it taken to the shop. One could say this is the natural course of Capitalism, always paying others to do something for you. I just don't like it.
TL;DR: Read it. I didn't write it out for you to skip all the way to the bottom so you could comment faster...
Discussion value: What do you think of killing off simplicity or ease of repair in the name of profit?
[sub][sub]Inspired by onesided conversations with my Dad throughout my childhood.[/sub][/sub]
