Category: Cars (Page 5 of 5)

Modern convertibles are one touch affairs where you press the down button, on the dash or remote, and the electronics do everything to get your top and windows down and stowed away. This activity is almost breathtaking to watch, the hydraulic and electric dance of motors, servos, sensors and cylinders.

But this array of electronics and motors doesn’t come cheap. Most Saab convertibles (for instance) come with 5 year and 50,000 mile warranties and the factory guarantees your top will work during that period. These top designs are usually farmed out to companies like AST and are not designed in house by the manufacturers. And practically all modern convertibles are done this way.

Now that your car is out of warranty and the top breaks (which it will) what are you facing? Parts are extremely expensive… even aftermarket parts on the internet don’t give you much of a break. Top cylinders are usually $500 bucks apiece, and where they use motors, they are usually more, around a grand apiece, and there are at least 4 of them in the usual top. Potentiometers and sensors are all over a hundred each, and there are lots of them. If you have a tonneau cover that covers up your top automatically, there are more motors and cylinders involved. Then there’s the guy that’s gonna put it all together for you, he usually comes in at a hundred dollars an hour.

I’ve always been a kind of minimalist kinda guy, and I was always a fan of how Fiat did their tops in the 70’s. It took one hand to put it up or down. Nothing to break. Unfortunately there was plenty other things on a Fiat to break. Buying an older used convertible can easily turn into an expensive purchase.

greg

What is VW thinking? I’ve seen a lot of funny stuff from manufacturers but this is hilarious This is not a microbus but a Chrysler town and country minivan with a VW nose hung on it. Not only is the body Chysler stuff but the drivetrain also. I guess this is one way to make the minivan trendy.

Why couldn’t VW’s engineers come up with their own bus. (My own theory is that all the good German engineers already work for Mercedes and BMW, and there aren’t any good ones left over.) Admittedly, Chrysler has got the minivan market down, and do build a pretty good product, but this global borrowing of everybodys stuff is making me woozy. With Ford transmissions made in Japan and Harley engines designed by Porsche, I guess it’s not that much of a stretch to rebadge an old Dodge minivan. But why would VW cheapen their mystique on an old bus?

greg

p.s. I just saw septembers issue of Autoweek, and in it is an add with Brooke Sheilds touting the German engineering of the Routan. The only German engineering I see is the grill.

But it is a nice grill…

I prepped a new 2008 280hp 6 speed Aero X today. Before today I was kind of on the fence about this car.. gas is going up, and the latest offerings from Saab before this car was a 9-7 SUV (Trailblazer). I was kind of thinking that Saab needs some kind of hybrid or electric car or something, but they seem to keep making cars that get worse gas mileage than the one before.
Well. I gassed it up about 5 miles from the shop (57 bucks), and headed back. I was feeling kind of frisky and thought I would give this car a workout. Then a huge thunderstorm blew up, dumping buckets of water on the road. I didn’t even have to slow down, in fact, I just kept going faster… torrents of water or huge puddles or water washing across the road wasn’t an issue. Never once did I slip a wheel (18 inchers), and it was plowing thru some major water barriers.
I think I found this car’s forte. It was like the old Morris Garages motto… “Safety Fast!”

The tailight has undergone a metamorphosis in the last couple of years. From Henry Ford until the new millenium, the humble tailight hadn’t changed. It was very simple, all that was involved was a battery.. a wire to the tailight switch, a wire to the tailight, and then a wire back to the battery. Easy to understand by any human, and easy to diagnose. All you needed was a $20 test light and possibly (but not necessarily) a schematic.

Come the new millenium and the age of the computer and things are different. Tailights (the kind that still use a bulb, that is) now consist of a battery, a wire to the switch, a wire to the bulb, a wire to a computer, and a wire back to the battery. They now work by pwm (Pulse Width Modulation), which means you feed a bulb with power from the battery, and the ground side is pulsed by the computer. The frequency of the pulse determines how bright the bulb is. This does have several advantages, like the brake lites and tailights can all be the same bulb (simplifying logistics.) With the computer involved, you can also have any bulb take over any other bulb’s function. (like if a brake lite bulb fails, the tailight bulb can take over its function.) Diagnosis is more difficult, however. Now you can’t use a testlight because it’s impedence can blow the computer. Now you need $500 Digital Multimeters and a $4000 Scan tool to talk to the computer.

The net effect is that to install tailights in your car, it used to cost the manufacturer about 20 Bucks. Now it costs 500 bucks..

I think they call it progress…
greg