Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 17:06:27 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: vanagon difficulty
In-Reply-To: <333929.71368.qm@web82701.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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Hi David --
At 04:21 AM 9/7/2009, David Kao wrote:
>Comparing to a 2001 Passat that I currently own in my opinion the Passat
>is a far more difficult vehicle to own despite that it is only 8 years
>old. The first time when the check engine light came on I could never
>solve it myself. Eventually it was fixed by a dealer under warranty
>by reprogramming the ECU. That's something I will never be able to do
>myself. That was almost 5 years ago. It just got a smog check yesterday
>and it passed thanks god.
I think this sort of thing is a huge problem. Reprogramming the ECU
itself is trivial if you have access to the gear, which undoubtedly
could cost considerably to enormously less than whatever the dealer
uses, depending how fancy/volume-oriented they get. Any modern
computer will reflash it's own BIOS if you simply download the file
from the maker's website and say "please do." Computer makers have
found that this is a useful and simple answer as various obscure
issues are uncovered with the hardware, since otherwise if you ran
into one you'd simply toss the thing , swear and buy a different
brand. You'd Really Rather Not have a power failure in the middle of
the procedure, of course, since it's working on its own guts and
won't run again if you do.
Something PC-based (overkill, but you have one!) would amount to a
chunk of software and a cable, and how fancy it was would depend
entirely on the software + car maker proprietary data. All you'd
need would be to watch the tech bulletins and for the maker to
release the code on a website. Depending on how vehicle-specific a
problem was you might even just routinely keep the thing up to date
and never worry. [A subsidiary issue is the truly astounding number
of things running on code in truly modern cars -- well over 100 in
some I believe. No idea how many are reflashable. And just
wait. 48-volt or higher system voltage and One Big Wire (power and
data both) in the car (impractical at lower voltages) are yelling and
screaming at the door. But we won't worry about that just yet.]
But the car maker has powerful incentives to keep this Pandora in the
box, and little-to-no motive to change except at gunpoint. Keeping
the dealers happy is one, and that fight has been going on as long as
there have been cars, I bet. The (US) government has them at
gunpoint to not totally screw the independent shops, but owners don't
have a big lobby in Congress. Also as things stand now, as soon as
the code got out in the open the question of who is licensing what to
who, who pays for upgrades etc is a potential nightmare. Don't be
surprised if there's an End User License Agreement next time you buy a car.
But whether they've realized it yet or not, the big deal is
liability. If this stuff isn't considered Critical Life Support code
(and hardware) yet, it will be soon as things become even more
integrated. The day is (potentially) quite near when an ECU bug
*could* cause very interesting effects all over the car and a faulty
taillight module could cause abrupt catastrophic system failure
(probably not kill the vehicle, but kill its operation right then and
there). The throttle on my brother's 36-foot Freightliner chassis is
"fly by wire" so at the very least it depends on system voltage even
though the diesel will keep going fine. These things can be planned
against and will be, but not necessarily before they happen; and the
economic incentive to both keep the equipment simple and not muddy
the waters legally is strong. To get the new software you might have
to sign in blood to accept total liability for random operation or
abrupt simultaneous failure of lights, wipers, steering and brake
assist, handling control, traction control, engine control,
transmission control except for Park and mechanical overspeed and
sudden-reverse protection; and ABS. And oh yes, your airbags might
deploy before your stout vessel actually crashes. Would you
sign? Some yes, some no, and some of the nos or certainly their
relatives would try to weasel afterwards. That Continental-Tire
liability case that was described on here some months ago was to my
mind definitely a bad verdict in terms of who was really responsible
for the accident.
Anyway, the Makers really don't want your hands on their code.
>me $3k to replace both catalytic converters.
Social and regulatory cost...plus ADP.
>kept my Vanagon for 25 years. The only answer to this is there is no
>such a thing as Vanagon difficulty for the 25 years passed. My total
>cost of owning it for 25 years excluding oil and gas is less than $1k
>per year. So to me there is really no such a thing as Vanagon difficulty.
My sister paid UKP3000 to a Scottish dealer in 1991 to have
transmission and clutch replaced (~85k) on D-P just before I got
her. 091-1 3-4 slider failure. The clutch was from driving the
thing 40 miles through hilly Scottish town centres -- in 4th. Seemed
like a good idea at the time.
My local dealer replaced (good folks, incidentally) replaced R&P
maybe 30K later, another user-aggravated failure.
>I remember been warned by someone that the wasser boxer engine is
>so unreliable that a trip to Yosemite will break it.
That's just silly. Not that you couldn't get one into that condition
maybe, but <shrug>. These are modern vehicles in my terms, sold in
reasonable numbers all over the world. In the '80s the most
repair-intensive vehicle in the country was the Omni/Horizon, though
the total repair cost was less than you'd think. The only reliable
thing on it was the paint. Literally, they had great paint. But --
I won't go into the litany completely. Have you ever heard of an
engine that would wear the suspension ears off the carburetor float
in under 100k miles? Or routinely *break* alternator mounts (early
ones anyway, they had less trouble after they changed from a Rabbit
to a Renault block). '78 Horizon is your man. Comfortable, kinda
cute, and great paint. Huge interior-plastic shrinkage problem (how
many split steering wheels have you seen, on a 6-7 year old
car?). Negative damping on the steering, so you definitely didn't
want to give the steering a pull and let go (this is why CU rated the
early ones Unacceptable, and they fixed it eventually) and kinda
twitchy feeling even over longitudinal highway strips. But go to
Yosemite in it? Why not?
> Well, In the past
>several years I have driven my Vanagon to Yosemite something like 5 times
>a year. I am totally confident that the engine is in fact incredibly
>rugged and reliable.
Given particularly that it's a fairly small motor pushing a big
heavy-duty vehicle around I think it does pretty well overall, and
tends to "fail soft" rather than just drop you in the cacky. The
cooling system is intolerant because it's aluminum, Subaru's the same
way. I think that having most of the system external to the engine
is a definite reliability, even though (and maybe partly because) the
VW hoses are of incredibly high quality. Definitely compounded by
German vs American expectations about a) actually knowing the
maintenance schedule and b) keeping it rigidly. And what we're all
dealing with now is vehicles that have been owned under American
conditions. I bet there isn't one in the country that has had every
scheduled maintenance performed fully, correctly, and on time. I
wouldn't be at all shocked if there isn't one that has absolutely had
its brake fluid changed every two years.
Yours,
Other David
