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From: Brent P on 2 Nov 2007 14:22
In article <1194026671.938899.302690(a)o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, N8N wrote:

> This is why people have a negative opinion of GM cars... if they can't
> get blatantly obvious details like light clusters right, what does
> that say about the engineering that went into the rest of the
> functional bits of the car?

GM I am going to guess isn't much different than a large US corporation I
once worked for. Basically the 'engineers' who were in engineering
because they were good at school but couldn't design their way out of a
wet paperbag become engineering management, while those who can design
are stuck at the lower levels.

It the decisions that these boneheads make that cause these sort of
things to end up in the products. Somewhere, there is an engineer who
said they shouldn't do that. Somewhere there is a test report with the
browning labeled a failure. Elsewhere is the spin job put on it by
management and the business decision by upper management to let it be
that way.

The fastner thing, well, with GM you're damn lucky it wasn't security
torx. (torx with the pin in the center that requires a special set of
drivers with a hole drilled in the center of the torx driver bit)





From: N8N on 2 Nov 2007 14:37
On Nov 2, 2:22 pm, tetraethylleadREMOVET...(a)yahoo.com (Brent P) wrote:
> In article <1194026671.938899.302...(a)o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, N8N wrote:
> > This is why people have a negative opinion of GM cars... if they can't
> > get blatantly obvious details like light clusters right, what does
> > that say about the engineering that went into the rest of the
> > functional bits of the car?
>
> GM I am going to guess isn't much different than a large US corporation I
> once worked for. Basically the 'engineers' who were in engineering
> because they were good at school but couldn't design their way out of a
> wet paperbag become engineering management, while those who can design
> are stuck at the lower levels.
>
> It the decisions that these boneheads make that cause these sort of
> things to end up in the products. Somewhere, there is an engineer who
> said they shouldn't do that. Somewhere there is a test report with the
> browning labeled a failure. Elsewhere is the spin job put on it by
> management and the business decision by upper management to let it be
> that way.

I hear ya, but... don't these people own and drive their own
products? You'd think this would be obvious to any owner of a car
that had reached "a certain age" during the course of a normal wash
and wax. Lenses that look worse than those of a "normal" car decades
older at only three years is a definite failure in my book, no matter
how you spin it.

>
> The fastner thing, well, with GM you're damn lucky it wasn't security
> torx. (torx with the pin in the center that requires a special set of
> drivers with a hole drilled in the center of the torx driver bit)

Actually that would still have been OK, as the product line that I
deal with on a day to day basis uses Torx head screws a lot. OK for
me, that is, not for the average consumer.

nate

From: N8N on 2 Nov 2007 15:37
On Nov 2, 3:22 pm, Ulf <a...(a)asdf.com> wrote:
> Arif Khokar wrote:

<snip>

> I've never experienced a problem with my turn signal DRLs.

Other than signal ambiguity... a good enough argument in and of itself
for disabling them.

<snip>

> > What would really be nice is if the car companies lost a class action
> > lawsuit over the glazed polycarbonate headlamp assembly lens issue that
> > affects practically all vehicles that have them. Or better yet, the
> > NHTSA should have to pay out (if they didn't have sovereign immunity to
> > such legal action).
>
> Don't buy a vehicle with plastic headlight lenses. I haven't.

Impossible in the US, unless you buy a vehicle with sealed beams.
Unless I'm behind, the only glass lenses allowed are on sealed-beam
type headlights. Aero-style *must* be polycarbonate. ECE regs allow
replaceable glass lenses for headlights, so you can blame NHTSA for
this one.

nate

From: Garth Almgren on 2 Nov 2007 16:13
On Nov 2, 11:22 am, tetraethylleadREMOVET...(a)yahoo.com (Brent P)
wrote:

> The fastner thing, well, with GM you're damn lucky it wasn't security
> torx. (torx with the pin in the center that requires a special set of
> drivers with a hole drilled in the center of the torx driver bit)

I picked one of these up last weekend so I could clean out my IAC,
which is held on by four T-10 security screws:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91310
on sale for $5.99.

Jeeps have an unbelievable mix of standard, metric, and torx
fasteners, and I'd never needed a T-55 or T-60 before I got the
Jeep. :)


--
~/Garth |"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
Almgren | I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
******* | And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."
--H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

From: Matthew T. Russotto on 2 Nov 2007 17:22
In article <3PJWi.20257$B25.19510(a)news01.roc.ny>,
Arif Khokar <akhokar1234(a)wvu.edu> wrote:
>
>You think that's bad? I need to use a torx bit to remove and replace
>the headlamp assemblies in my Audi. On top of that, I need a security
>torx bit to remove or replace the ballast unit (for the HIDs).

Ahh, liability. They didn't want you fingerpoken and mittengrabben
near the high voltages.
--
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
result in a fully-depreciated one.
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