Buck Compton said:
cbr said:
Hungry Ojos said:
Picking up my underpowered, inefficient, brake eating, mall crawling death machine today.
Sorry didnt mean to rain on anyone's parade. I hope you love it and it works great for you. My standards are way high, and really have different criteria than many people, and no new car is going to meet them very well. I get frustrated because they could. They could so easily.
And they wouldn't sell nearly as many. No one over-designs for niche markets. It isn't good business. Are you expecting a stock bronco to have a 500/500 v8 in it or something?
i am not sure they would sell fewer. not to smart people. if so, only because they would last four times as long.
my contention is that most of the money spent on crap like big touch screens, emissions (and def especially), warnings, alarms, body control and a million other logic modules that make automatic adjustments to stereo, wiper, light, window speeds and volumes, etc., door locks, electronic brake modules, multi-signal wiring circuits, real time satellite connections, automatic tailgates and hatches, ride leveling, warning lamps and cameras, lane change and self stopping bull****, etc., etc., etc., with tons of modules all over the inside of the dash, and wiring strung out like a rat's nest all over the car, etc., with switches all over the place, are actually counterproductive and expensive.
some of that is government driven, much not.
if car makers would make their cars simple and clean like i did they could do it so much better than i could.
my last effort -
solid state PDM,
stand alone ECU,
stand alone ABS,
stand alone dash display,
a simple bluetooth screen only that interfaces and adapts with the customer's sequence of new phones they buy over the vehicle's lifetime, for stereo or maps, etc.
one nice billet switch bank in one central location,
modular wiring harness with logical accessible routing
and then just use one CAN signal for the few things you want to communicate between them
the cars' wiring and electronics would last forever, and if you put all those modules on a bank under the passenger footwell, you can access, troubleshoot, replace, or repair them literally almost immediately at almost no labor cost.
use the cost savings from that to go way up in brake size and quality, more durable drivetrain and suspension parts, and the car would cost less, last longer, be easier to service, and more convenient.
by going too light on brakes, they are saving their money and costing you yours.
For example, tracking a c6 z06 vette - a full set of factory pads, rotors, and calipers was around $3200 IIRC.
you could get about 4-8 track hours on pads, maybe 12-20 on rotors. caliper life was completely variable from 1 hour to about 30. sometimes the damned calipers flexed and spit the pistons out, trying to kill you (combined with their design defect diagonal hydraulic isolation at the ABS module, which means if both fronts spew fluid it can kill pressure to all four corners).
go up from $3200 for components to $7000 and that want to about 20 hours on pads, 80-100 on rotors, and calipers i never killed in 10 years. and that is comparing GM mass produced price versus low volume aftermarket. frankly those rotors and calipers were much lighter than the GM stuff. Just higher quality materials and design. (the cast GM rotor was about 13"x1" iirc, and weighed over 20 lbs in front. Aftermarket was not any bigger but had an aluminum floating hat, saved about 8lbs a corner).
GM could probably have sold that brake package for under $4000, or a very incremental cost increase.
back to trucks, if they'd have not wasted money on crap i actively hate and is demonstrably dangerous, they could have spent a little bit of money on better brakes and drivetrain and sold me a much better truck at a lower price.
as for power, yes, i like power. not everyone wants to pay for it, and probably not really a good idea to sell it to everyone. but i like the option.
v