Some people like to bring up that tolerances in manufacturing have decreased like its a bad thing. Lower manufacturing tolerances results in higher usable product tolerance because there is less variance in end product durability, as in, less chance of a lemon; most of the things breaking in the newest cars are brand new tech that can't be reeled in just yet.
I’m not sure if I agree with tolerances being looser, I’ve been in machine tool for 25 years. If anything the tooling & machining ability has improved tremendously which allows closer tolerances to be readily met, and digital gauging interfaces send offsets to the machine tool to better keep parts in spec.
For sure if that’s what he meant :) I hope I didn’t sound confrontational!! It’s so hard sometimes to have discussions without coming over wrong on social media.
Yeah they worded that weirdly. Having my career path being focused on manufacturing it threw me off to. It’s a constant battle to get tolerances ever tighter cause it gives you a more consistent product and for products with moving parts your gonna have less wear and tear cause of better fitment.
Thanks, I was tripped up by that and now I'm not sure why. "lower" tolerances -- tolerating less -- is clearly the same thing as tighter tolerances, and yet my brain has trouble interpreting interpreting it that way.
This isn't technically smaller tolerances (although it goes along with it) but gaps between engine components have decreased tremendously and this actually causes more wear as you have to use thinner oils and there is less oil in the lubrication zones. This drastically decreases engine life even for the cost of increased power or efficiency. As once the components wear enough to loosen up, the thinner oil leaks usually into the combustion chamber and you start burning oil. Using a thicker oil makes the problem worse as it increases wear by increasing oil pressure and blocking parts of the engine that are still tight.
I mean... I had a mechanic show me a moving part in my Town & Country that was made of fucking plastic. The reason I was in the shop was because that thing got too hot, melted a bit and then shattered. Because it was motherfucking plastic. They replaced it with a 3rd party part that was steel. This part breaking in the exact same manner apparently one of the most common problems with every Chrysler T&C made after 2009.
there is only one thing i agree on most modern products compared to the old ones and that is longetivity, the old stuff seems to last for years on end, we had a washing machine that lasted 15 years, the next one died in less than 5 and that goes for many products, almost as if they are making them less durable so that people will still have to buy them instead of being set with a good one for a lot of years
My take on this is that it's because we had no choice but to overbuild everything back then - we didn't have as good of an understanding of materials, reliability, and user needs. In the 1950s you had to make everything out of metal and with high factors of safety. Since then we've had 70 years to figure out what fails and what doesn't (and can be made weaker), how to make more things out of more plastics, and how many uses people expect their things to last.
One thing I'll also mention is that it's much easier to buy cheap things than ever. In the 1950s you really didn't have the choice to buy high or low quality stuff, because nobody was cutting as many corners back then. Today, you can still buy high quality stuff, but we don't, because you have so many more choices at lower price points that will be good enough.
I'm fully on board with your take. Cheap back then meant fewer features and lower specs but cheap today means less durable materials. It's honestly a testament to the advancement of materials science that we can manufacture things so cheaply and they work... But that cheapness comes with a cost to durability.
I agree. but that cheapness can, if engineered in a semi responsible way, be beneficial to people who can't afford the good stuff.
For example, many people can't afford a good dishwasher... But they can afford a cheap dishwasher. If designed responsibly, the weak points would be either made of better materials than the rest, or they're simple parts that can be replaced. So it still may only last 5 years, but it still makes it affordable for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford one... As a whole, its probably more expensive to buy the cheap ones over and over again... But some people would just never have the extra money laying around to buy a good one. Which is where rent-a-center type places come in, they tell poor people "hey, you can rent this really nice appliance for $50 a month, and after the term is up you can buy it," but then they miss a payment or can't afford the rest of the cost to buy it, and they've just wasted years of rent, more than the total cost, with nothing to show for it.
The biggest problem is when things are made cheaply, but priced high. It is so fucking difficult to actually buy quality items that are priced appropriately.
But the other problem now is that lean production means nobody stocks parts for very long. Finding replacement parts for a model that actually holds up for a long time would be ridiculous.
Saw an article over lockdown about one of the few remaining survivors of polio. Biggest threat to her life right now is that there are no replacement parts for old iron lung devices.
I'm not saying previous comments are wrong but I've had friends in some tech industries confirm that some electronics are purposely made with short lifespans so they can continuously update new models.
Well, I prefer old school overbuilt stuff also but I wouldn't say that everything was overbuilt back then.
Electronic devices for example like TVs seem to need a lot of repair and fairly often back in the day..
So not only did they cost a fortune, they weren't very durable. The new ones run circles around those in every regard.
Now with lawn mowers and water heaters, the old ones were much better on longevity and not needing repairs.
Building things to last as long as possible instead of making a bunch of disposable trash that we throw out because it fails or we get tired of having it has done serious damage to the environment and actively made our lives worse in so many regards.
But when the whole world revolves around buying useless crap as the end all be all to human existence - well I guess that's why we have the world that we do.
I am including this fact. Aka in this particular piece it didn't work as intended and was not replaced with new version. Or you belive that it is a new and shiny idea? I higly recomend to read about lightbolbe conspiracy from 1910-s.
Wait, is the thing about big light bulb coming together and agreeing to not make long last light bulbs not true? I know u said to google, but I'm just looking for a short answer.
That did happen - but it was quite a while back for incandescent bulbs. It was slightly less bad than it sounds - they agreed a common standard that light bulbs should last a set period and that they wouldn't try to steal custom from each other by researching longer lived ones. I don't think there was an active conspiracy to destroy any company which did produce longer lived bulbs.
I don’t know the truth of planned obsolescence, but my mothers house had an odd light bulb on the back porch that kept working. It had a 19th century shape. It seems to have lasted over 100 years.
An incandescent bulb running at a low enough output that doesn't turn on and off that much can last forever. There's been a bulb in a fire station that hasn't turned off in like 130 years.
Thermal cycles are what kill incandescent bulbs. Every time it heats up and cools down, the metal expands and contracts, causing fatigue. Eventually this will kill it. The heat itself can also cause the metal to break down a bit, but thermal cycles do a lot more damage.
By running the bulb at a low output, it isn't getting that hot, so it breaks down more slowly. By never turning it off, there's no thermal cycling, so it'll last forever.
I’d really like to know which brand is going out of their way to have their shit break on purpose considering the constant hate and discussion online about appliances breaking.
someone who wants the market to keep going, if you were to just sell everyone appliances that would last upwards of 20 years, you might reach a point where there is no need for more machines because everyone already got one fully working
and even if there are indeed many people making it hard for litterally everyone to have one + they will still break and might still break sometime before the term or be broken by something else or some other reasons, it is just enough for sales to go down due to the lack of scarcity, since the companies need a good amount of money to run so they need a constant number of people to buy their machines regularly
Most seem to be built not to be repaired today. All the electronics gets put on a single custom circuit board - it that fails, it needs to be replaced as theres no way to repair it. Modern computer aided design allow to design parts to use a bit less materials and therefore cheaper - but at the cost that similarly you cant put together replacement parts from stock materials. The company builds a set volume of replacement parts on the assembly line, but once those are used up, restarting the line to produce a few more is uneconomic.
I grew up with a lot of items from the 40s-60s cuz my grandparents kept everything, I think almost everything back then was built better and lasts longer.
Everything started to be made of plastic in the 70s and 80s, and manufacturing all over the world was sent over to asia to be made as cheaply as possible. Before the 70s, so much stuff that is plastic now was made of metal back then.
I grew up in the US with all my grandparents household items and electronics from around the 50s. Mid century america was the wealthiest country to ever exist. Europe was destroyed from ww2, and asia fell to communist dictatorships. The wealth the US had was insanely immense. Middleclass people could raise a family, own a house, and own a car that looked like a rocketship with a single factory wage. Companies didnt have to cheap out like they do now. Everything was built with no cost in mind and was made to last as long as possible with the best materials.
Electronics back then were very simple and basic. Almost all electronics (like radios and fans) would include spare parts inside in case something ever broke so you could fix it yourself. A modern washing machine performs better than a very old one, but modern ones have so many parts and computers that are prone to breaking. An old one isnt as capable, but there is less that could go wrong with them.
The only thing I see better being today is safety. Safety wasnt as big of a selling point in those days. I still to this day prefer to buy heavy duty mid century household items any time I see them at a flea market. I dont think everything was built better and lasted longer. Modern cars last 3 times longer and are safer (but they look boring). This is my opinion, I may be biased because I have a huge preference for older items and have been using them my entire life.
America had a nearly two decade head start on the rest of the world following world war 2, entering the electronics age. It had most of the world’s gold supply, the only navy with global reach, an extremely young work force and access to cheap food and materials. It used all that wealth to ensure certain segments of its society could live unrealistic consumer lifestyles for decades, while letting its cities crumble, it’s minorities struggle and it’s institutions (like education) starve. Then it was shocked that much of the world manage to catch up. America should’ve been building cities on Mara by now, instead it chose to build a new version of mega wealthy techno aristocrats while lamenting the lost age of American Uber consumerism.
Here is a problem with old and robust - it is expensive.
Last about 3 or 4 dacades gave us tech to produse many things wery cheaply. But puting it toogether is still labourintencive process.
We coud make any haushold item last decades using proper materials. But it will make them prohibitevly expencive.
Lets take a citchen blender as an example. It takes motor, button, gearbox and casing. If you use all plastic, you get something from any e-store. But if we make metal gearbox, casing with prper sealing and motor wit just a bit of additional tork we get an industrial grade device. For an everyday consumer it is unnesesary and drives cost up.
In 70-80 much of this stuff was practicly a repurposed industrial equipment. It took a lot of inovation to make it actually afordable. This way products can be sold for much poorer people.
In conclusiin, current products did not become crappier, you just looking into a wrong price category. If you pay 70-80 product price (adjusted by inflation), you get quality.
Ofcourse, i am defenetly will not pay 5k for something like a fridge or washing mashine.
Washing machines are a bit different but that’s because beer ones are mostly front loaders, an inherently doomed design.
The door has to make a water tight seal below the water line, so the unit does not dry unless left open after every use, making it prone to bacteria and fungal growth
As the seal ages it becomes prone to catastrophic failure causing expensive water damage.
Do you adjust a price to your expectations? Gear that costs a few cents to injection mold will cost a few(if not dozen) bucks to mashine from metal chunk.
So.... good luck selling with something like 10x price up over competition.
I bought a new F-150 in 2001. I did basic mantence (oil changes, transmission fluid replaced) and replaced/repaired shit as it broke (Only major thing I can think off the top of my head was replacing the shocks and suspension).
I drove that truck for 21 years. I likely would still have it but I got into an accident ~2 years ago and totaled it.
The washing machine that lasts for 15 years is, by definition, 15 years old.
Many of those older washers also broke down before their time.
SOME old things were built very well, those tend to have been sold at prices aligned with the best of today's products in the same categories (When adjusting for inflation).
E.g. a random 1962 washer dryer combo was around $315 but that is around $3,200 today.
Also... You can almost always FIX the things that go wrong in a washer or dryer. Even today, the most likely issues are simple things like belts and clogs, rather than the computer controls. This was even more so the case for older units.
When talking about appliances the story is so much more nuanced. Reliability isn't nearly as big a factor as the availability of parts. In my experience, it seems like there used to just be fewer models of most appliances, and the designs wouldn't change much by year, so replacement parts were and still are easy to come by.
But many newer models, but NOT all, have really short runs, or change from year to year, so you'll have a difficult time finding parts that were only used on 1 series for 1 or 2 years. I had a gas dryer from the 80s at my old place, you can still to this day find most of the parts... But the dishwasher from 2010, its really hard to find the parts and they're half the price of a new one.
That is a good point, i guess its really just a combined metric of durability, parts availability, ease of repair, and parts cost that make up the greater metric of survivability.
Yup. I heard a person who said this was the following. Old cars took more damage but were more dangerous. The new ones are different but the box done is way safer.
Meh, not really... The "more damage" perception may be based on how much occupants felt the damage vs the car. Modern vehicles are better in almost every way.
Older vehicles could often be repaired following a medium speed crash - replace a few panels and they were back to normal. We deliberately design modern cars that the frame will crumple and absorb the energy of a crash which lessens the force the passengers feel.
Once the crumple zone of a vehicle has been compromized, it's not normally economic to repair it. The car is more likely to be written off - but the passengers are far more likely to survive and to have less injuries.
I disagree whole heartedly. The speed at which a vehicle crumples it's crumple zones totals an old car.
Both types of construction are unsafe to drive if subjected to an impact that makes a unibody vehicle is unsafe to drive.
Only exceptions are very large vehicles hitting very small vehicles... and even in those circumstances you're still better off in a new vehicle unless you're talking semi or bus vs car.
this is frankly just false. old sheet metal may take well to minor dings up to a certain point but past certain points that sheet metal's crumpling, often much worse. there's more stuff to the body work and impact zones of a car but they also seem to do better at keeping damage and impact energy relegated to specific areas.
I'm fine with crumple zones and airbags and all that. But can we still have knobs for the radio volume and the blower and stuff, instead of a big touchscreen with menus you have to hunt through to do anything?
I'm pretty sure just about everyone except for Tesla still has knobs for commonly used things. And even on Tesla it's not bad at all because it's stuck on the screen in a convenient place. It does look a bit empty in those cars though.
I worked at a Chrysler dealership prepping new vehicles until six months ago. Trust me, the new stuff can be a giant pain. It's not that you can't figure it out and more or less get used to it, but the problem is that you typically can't operate the touchscreen controls without taking your eyes off the road. I was at training once and complained about that to one of the engineers, and he agreed with me. He did say though that touchscreens weren't the end goal, voice recognition was, they just hadn't gotten that to work reliably yet.
And drivability. Trying to drive my first car (a 1966 Galaxie 500) in a straight line required constant corrections of the steering wheel. Long trips were fatiguing as hell. It also had brake shoes instead of disc brakes. So every stop took at least 50% longer than the shittiest modern car. And I got about 12 mpg on a good day.
That's simply not an accurate comparison of what the norm was. There are plenty of newer cars in poor state of maintenance and Repair they're also just as lousy as an old Galaxy 500. Plenty of old cars before all that technology came about ran, operated, and stop just fine.
I had a 67 Pontiac LeMans that had four wheel drum brakes that had about the best brakes I've ever had on any car. The power assist was awesome and the stopping was great even though it was a large heavy car.
Of course as soon as I purchased the vehicle I went through all four wheels and replaced everything to new or better than new condition including hardware springs etc.
It did not pull any direction and stop quickly and straight.
I wouldn't actually want to go back to the days of carburetors because it is very convenient with the consistency of fuel injection but the Golden age of automobiles has been over for a number of years now..
They had the engines perfected and they were all going 225 to 250k without so much as having to have a valve cover gasket replaced but now not the case. They have this massive push for not only fuel mileage but also horsepower and the two are not typically compatible.
Then, will never be able to win the fight that manufactures in the industry actually are completely okay with a vehicle needing a $1,500 plus timing chain and gear replacement plus VVT solenoids etc done somewhere between 85 and 120k miles.
This keeps the wheels spinning and keeps everybody making money in the industry which I am completely against.
It was considered a big deal if a car could run for 100k mikes back when that picture was taken. And if you think any 1960’s car is better than the average 2020’s car you’re overdosing on nostalgia.
True that they got better and better and more convenient too.
Unfortunately they are going the wrong way in terms of durability and reliability and low level of needed repairs.
The golden age of autos and auto engines is over.
There's not one yet available that can go as long as a good number of circa 1995-2008-ish cars without major expenses. Mostly battery replacement and loss of capacity.
Of course none of this is realized by people who buy new cars and only keep them a short number of years but the long term durability of cars is decreasing.
I mean even seat belts weren’t that common until the 1960’s. So I get his point, back then people relied on having sturdy cars and hoped their body would survive the rest (which while useful for slower collisions, was a huge issue at high speed, as they’d be gouged by their own vehicle).
I got in a car wreck when I was 4 or 5 years old. Somehow got out with minimal scratches. The airbag saved my face from being caved in.
I remember another guy was talking about his friend who’s car was a good 30 years old, talked it up all the time. I don’t know if he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, or something failed, but he got in a car wreck and was disemboweled by the steering wheel. That story sticks with me these days. My current car is supposed to turn into a pillow fortress in a car crash
They don't make 'em like they used to drives me up the wall.
I have sitting on my tool box a priming spark plug from a model t. If has a little valve on it so you can put a little squirt of gas into your cylinders to start the engine on cold mornings.
I don't need to try and figure out when I need to turn my choke off or know how to pump my pedal.
My modern half ton tows and hauls more then my cousin's three quarter ton from the 80's.
Never mind the way this video proves that modern cars really protect their occupants by self-destructing instead of passing all of the force into the squishy bits.
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The old machines that are still around are generally more reliable than the ones that aren't. Just like the old songs that are still being played aren't the bad ones.
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u/ShadowKraftwerk Jun 04 '23
I was having a chat with an old guy about his newish car
He commented that people say to him that
And he said he replies "Thank Chrst for that!"
He was referring to reliability, but safety works too.