And who are the people that are the reason for this having to be in the manual. Its the people that were born 50+ years ago…
This implies it was the previous generation that drank the content of the battery
Right, or that back then they just didn’t care if you drank the battery because there wasn’t a hugely well-developed culture of lawsuits like we have now. Those fuckers in 1914-1950 were definitely down for a battery party, no doubt. The ones that made it now think that everyone had common sense because only the ones that did made it through.
Torpedo juice.
They drank anything that would get them intoxicated
And who put lead in the gas? Cars aren’t that simple anymore anyways.
Which generation can’t let go of power?
Nah. I call bullshit.
Are we boomer posting today?
Boomer-est image I’ve seen in a while
Proper fucking boring boomer banter that.
Taking away the instructions on how to service and repair a car was a result of capitalists wanting to make more money by forcing you to get your car repaired by them.
Adding instructions not to drink battery acid is likely for companies to avoid getting sued because people will always argue that there was no warning about drinking battery acid so the company owes you compensation.
This is a false comparison.
Also helps them get away with hiding shoddy/cheap parts.
~2018-2020 Hondas have defective air condensers. They aren’t rated for the refrigerant. They are basically guaranteed to fail. You also have to go to a dealership to get your AC serviced. There’s a warranty for the AC, but it’s that dealer that checks whether your AC meets the warranty or not (amazing how easy it is to find bits of debris and deny the warranty when no third party can double check.)
You could crack open an original Xbox and do a lot of modifications with it. The Xbox 360 was designed to be as annoying to take apart as possible, possibly to hide the cheap components that lead to the red ring of death…
The Xbox 360 was designed to be as annoying to take apart as possible, possibly to hide the cheap components that lead to the red ring of death…
actually, this was probably to fit it into the very weird and particular form factor that microsoft wanted it to fit in.
The red ring of death issue was actually due to faulty chip manufacturing, rather than bad cooling, it was an inevitable flaw due to manufacturing defects, rather than design failures. The heating and cooling cycles just greatly exaggerated the effect of the problem, that’s why it’s so closely linked.
Also you could’ve mentioned the update fuses in the CPU, IIRC there are fuses that are blown when the system updates, to prevent you from going back, no matter what you do.
I mean I do agree with you. Planned obsolescence and whatnot is very real.
But also, fixing a car from 70’s is very different than trying to fix a car from this millenium.
As technology improves and becomes more detailed, it might also get harder to repair. This isn’t to be taken as a defense of companies which have used planned obsolescence. But even if there was a very user friendly car company, I think it would be more complex to adjust your valves today than it was 30-40 years ago.
I mean I do agree with you. Planned obsolescence and whatnot is very real.
it’s complicated, a good example, actually probably the ideal example, of planned obsolescence is airpods. Designed to not be repaired, thrown away, and then replaced.
It can also apply to things like “lifetime” designed products, you may design something to mechanically wear out, before it needs to be maintained, or perhaps, require no maintenance, until you need to replace it. It’s harder to say whether this is strictly planned obsolescence, or just cost cutting engineering, which in the long run, probably doesn’t change much.
i think the most semantically accurate version of this would be releasing a product that is 100% good, and then a year later releasing a product that is 200% good, surpassing and replacing the previous product entirely, removing the previous product from the product line up, and only supporting the most recent product. I.E. it’s planned to become obsolete, shortly into the future.
Vehicles are also a weird market segment, they’ve gotten considerably more reliable since the early days of the automotive industry, they’ve gotten significantly more comfortable, they’ve gotten significantly more safe. They’ve also gotten several orders of magnitude more complicated since than as well. To deal with the aforementioned advances. Though there have been a lot of issues in recent manufacturing leading to parts that are just, bad.
Downvote because OP is just a boomer, not a shitposter.
Or just don’t vote and move along
If I’m not gonna quickly form an opinion on something I just saw for the first time and immediately proclaim it to millions of strangers in a way it can never be deleted, then what’s the point?
Old cars could actually have their stuff adjusted, though. You’d have to tinker with the carburator if the weather was significantly colder/hotter, etc. to get it to run properly.
Even cars in the 90s started getting too complex - electronic fuel injection, variable valve timing, and more. There’s no need to adjust the valves because the computer does it, and better than you could.
I wouldn’t say the computer adjusts the valves, variable valve timing serves a completely different function than an old fashioned valve adjustment.
It’s true that most lifters are hydraulic nowadays, and self-adjust by filling with oil. So your point still stands, it’s just mechanical, not computer controlled.
My 2017 Honda V6 does require valve adjustments, but I doubt many people actually do it themselves though. And most people probably don’t have it done at all.
(I’m a hobbyist, not a mechanic, so anyone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong)
You’re correct.
Also, cars became pointless after they removed distributors.
This isn’t the flex you think it is. The reason why they warn you not to drink the battery is that someone did it.
I assume that’s why it’s posted in shit posts. So one doesn’t know whether to upvote for it being shit, or downvote for it being dumb.
Exactly, and it probably took several instances of this happening going back to 1950 before they finally decided to make that warning label.
To paraphrase an answer I once read: yes, we tend to introduce warnings against bad behaviours we detect and deprecate obsolete information.
In this case: I don’t need to tinker a valve in an engine nowadays. The fuel injection is done through an incredibly precise system, controlled by a computer. Even mechanics require specialized tools and equipments to fiddle with that part of an engine.
Car batteries have been built more and more to be maintenance-less; you buy it, run, when it dies you replace it and that is it. Battery acid is a thing and it is dangerous, hence the attempt to divert people from messing with it.
But because less and less people are prone to go into mechanics, the need to advise against tinkering with your battery really needs to be reinforced.
Warning labels are often first written in blood before taking form of paper and ink.
::sigh:: Old cars had instructions on adjusting valves because you needed to. Improvements in manufacturing processes means that valves and valve seats simply don’t wear the way that they use to. You may still need to change valve shims if your clearance is out of tolerance, but on most cars that’s going to be well over 100,000 miles before service is needed. It’s also a really tedious, long job, and takes tools that most people aren’t going to have. (I have done it multiple times on a motorcycle; that’s a 10,000 miles service interval b/c the engines on the bikes I ride redlines at 18,000rpm, which means significantly more wear on engines, and higher chances of thing like valve flutter.) Cars are vastly more complicated than they used to be, because they’re also far, far more efficient, and last far longer; it used to be a big deal if a car made it to 100,000 miles, and now a car that dies at 100k is considered an unreliable lemon.
Well, they don’t last far longer as a whole, but the advances in machining tolerances and material science, the mechanical internals can go far longer without anything more than fluid changes.
As far as longevity, soy based wiring harnesses, poorly shielded ECUs, and borked software updates are what are killing cars these days.
As a whole, they def. do last longer. I can look on FB Marketplace right now and find cars that are in fairly good, operational condition with 250,000 miles. The issues you’re talking about aren’t the kind of major mechanical things that become improbably expensive to repair, e.g., a broken timing chain with high interference valves & cylinders. Although yeah, replacing a main wiring harness on a car is a PITA and very expensive unless you can find a functional used one on eBay.
Also, there’s not great empirical evidence that the soy-based insulation is significantly worse than its petroleum based counterpart. There’s a ton of anecdotal claims about it attracting rodents, but no direct evidence AFAIK. The class-action lawsuits over rodent damage have been dismissed. And, TBF, I’ve had older cars that had wiring chewed by mice. Part of the difference with newer cars seems to be that there’s just more wiring packed into smaller areas, areas that look like great nests for rodents; you didn’t see that kind of wiring density 20 years ago.
Who’s job is it to teach common sense? If you find the future generation lacking, that’s probably your fault.
When I was a teenager, my dad gave me shit for not knowing how to change brake pads, and my response was “Who was supposed to teach me?”. Like, it’s not like I could afford a car working weekends, and he was always too busy to have me around whenever something went wrong. So next time he changed the brakes, he actuality taught me.
PSSSHT
BACK IN MAY DAEEEYY
Go off, let’s hear it!
Sometime, you grab the manual of some old piece of junk, there’s all the electronic schematics, parts list, all adjustable things that should never face end user, etc. described in it.
Now, it’s just “push button. if led not go vroom vroom, call support”.
There’s owners manuals and there’s repair manuals.
They where the same thing. That’s the point.
And i still miss those old manuals… Just let me fix my car mate
You can’t, because the previous generations allowed capitalism to ruin consumer goods with regulatory capture and planned obsolescence.
It’s time to resurrect the corolla in the backyard.
I mean, I’m pretty sure cars’ lifespans have generally increased over the years, despite not being able to easily tweak valves or what have you. So many older cars don’t have a 6th digit on the odometer because it was so common for a car to die after about 100,000 miles anyway. Now you might hit some issues, but that kind of mileage is basically your car’s equivalent of a person’s 40th birthday.
You can find service manuals online. I found the full blown 1,397 page OEM service manual for my '97 Prelude. For free. And failing that, there’s probably a YouTube video for it, especially if it’s not something incredibly rare.
The keyword is right there: 97. Anything after ~2014 and it’s a mess to find manuals, for older stuff i was able to easily find manuals and fix them no problem
You totally can. It’s just usually not cost effective. Buying the tools you need to do major mechanical work is a few thousand dollars, a full service manual runs 400+ pages (if available; i think that the manual for my GTI is only on-line, and is a subscription from VW; IIRC it’s several thousand pages), diagnostic electronics are $200-2000, and so on. Plus, you need a good place to work, like an enclosed garage. I’ve replaced an engine in a Civic after bending valves (timing chain failure), and yeah, a k-swap is def. in the realm of something you can do on you own if you want to spend more than the value of your car getting a shop set up for yourself.
I’llbe 100% honest, bud, but if you can’t find a service manual on the internet or simply ask at the dealership I probably wouldn’t trust you to do the work. They’re available, just try even a little. And boy if you trust what little information may or may not be in an owner’s manual…
Besides, the only reason that info was in there was because the valves needed much more frequent adjusting. You really shouldn’t miss not needing to have that information so readily available.
