RANT. What is it with cars and sensors?

Jimbohorlicks

Jimbohorlicks

Joined
Sep 3, 2012
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Cheshire
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MH
C Class Elddis 175
Exp
8+ years
Ok so my trusty 2009 Corsa has been running ok,until that is 3 days ago.
A bit tired starting ( usually first time)..but next start ok. Happened again so thought better do a check. But then started ok ,I had filled up with petrol over a week ago at Tesco so thought maybe some dirty petrol.
Last night ,really chuggy, engine light on ...sh*t.
This morning no start.had to get my son to tow me off the drive (up hill) onto pavement
Checked OBD2 and P0335 error code,
crankshaft ?
Check on U tube , it's the crankshaft sensor..
Could be a 15 min job, Sensor £18.bought one locally.
3 hrs later job done,what a fad.one hand in an angled position,underneath the car over the drive shaft boot.had to pull the old one out with a small mole wrench.a mm at a time..
Why do they put sensors in places that only an octopus can reach. ****
 
Jimbohorlicks said:
Ok so my trusty 2009 Corsa has been running ok,until that is 3 days ago.
A bit tired starting ( usually first time)..but next start ok. Happened again so thought better do a check. But then started ok ,I had filled up with petrol over a week ago at Tesco so thought maybe some dirty petrol.
Last night ,really chuggy, engine light on ...sh*t.
This morning no start.had to get my son to tow me off the drive (up hill) onto pavement
Checked OBD2 and P0335 error code,
crankshaft ?
Check on U tube , it's the crankshaft sensor..
Could be a 15 min job, Sensor £18.bought one locally.
3 hrs later job done,what a fad.one hand in an angled position,underneath the car over the drive shaft boot.had to pull the old one out with a small mole wrench.a mm at a time..
Why do they put sensors in places that only an octopus can reach. ****
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Been one of my gripes for years Jim, access to parts that should be simple to replace. It’s often ten times longer a job to strip away parts you don’t need to touch just to get to the part you need to. Aside from flawed designs which take no account of service life of parts, I put it down to two things. 1.They are designed to be low cost, automated, production line assembled as cheaply as possible. 2. If they make jobs easy, home mechanics do more of the maintenance reducing the lucrative dealer hours. Also, still point 2, if it takes 15 mins labour, they don’t want the job, if it’s a few hours, it’s good business for the dealers.
 
2FC98328-7E84-4619-A222-54B4A949179E.jpeg

Why make major components out of inferior products. Oil filter housing out of plastic. Really.
1 thousand pound job unless you fancy a go yourself on a shitty VW Polo. Did it myself and saved £760.

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Jimbohorlicks said:
Why do they put sensors in places that only an octopus can reach. ****
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It's when an owner who is less competent than yourself has to take it to a garage for replacement they can charge you the labour costs for eight hands on four "technicians" to change it!(y)
 
For many jobs on the Discovery and RR Sport, the first line in the instructions is "remove vehicle body from chassis".
To be fair, it does give more room and isn't that hard, if you have a lift.

Did the clutch slave cylinder on one of my motorbikes a few weeks ago. There, the first line is "remove engine from chassis", which makes it a seven hour job at the dealer, to get far enough in to undo one banjo bolt for the hydraulics and three m6 bolts holding the cylinder in place. One of those bolts is almost directly in line with one of the frame rails, you can just about get in with a tiny ratchet and do it in an hour with little disassembly if you go in from underneath and have some dexterity.

But one thing I do love about modern vehicles - they typically just start in a morning. No more joining the neighbours all cranking your engines on a damp winter morning, hoping it would fire before the battery died. They may be horribly complex when they go wrong, but far more reliable overall.
 
There is no cheap way to run a car , but even as someone who has to pay for mechanic to fix stuff. We on average find old 2nd hand better to run then new on finance, as the finance has to be paid if you’re working or not. Where as if the car breaks and not working it can be delayed for fixing.
 
Landy Andy said:
View attachment 599557
Why make major components out of inferior products. Oil filter housing out of plastic. Really.
1 thousand pound job unless you fancy a go yourself on a shitty VW Polo. Did it myself and saved £760.
Click to expand...
Plastic is easier to make complex shapes, good when space is limited. Lighter. Cheaper. Doesn't rust. Issue is it goes brittle with age, but plenty of metal parts are junk after 15 years of British winters.
 
I suppose there a balance between ease of changing components and the likelyhood of them needing replacement. When I was a kid a journey on holiday was a bit of an adventure in case you broke down
 
Sillious Sodus said:
Perhaps the sensor was engineered to outlast the car and you've foiled their plan. 😁
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That's probably the case as the car is now some 13 years old but only has 32k on the clock.( Due to motorhome use)
I replaced both emission sensors 28 months ago ,the one behind the exhaust cat one really difficult but the one on the manifold was ok.
If I hadn't got an OBD reader ,I would have been scratching my head ,spending hours cleaning up plugs etc when it was just an £18 sensor. A pig to take out but the new one just dropped in and car started First time as usual.checking on line seems like it's a fairly common fault :eek:
 
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Modern engines have incredible power to weight and efficiency. But to manage that, they need a lot of sensors and a lot of features like exhaust recirculation and turbos and watercooled manifolds that make them complex and covered in sensors.
The Wino said:
I suppose there a balance between ease of changing components and the likelyhood of them needing replacement. When I was a kid a journey on holiday was a bit of an adventure in case you broke down
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And generally, cars are a hell of a lot more reliable than they used to be too. Leyland cars used to be scrap in 5 years. Now you regularly see 15 year old cars being used as reliable run-abouts. Yes, when they do break at that age, they are often a write-off by due to the complexity. But 40 years ago they never would have made it that far.
 
3 hours.....
I changed the alternator on my Chrysler 300.......took me 11hours and I know which end of a spanner you write with.
Chrysler build the engine ancillaries with the engine on the bench ......then lower it into the engine bay.
To remove it the 'easy' way involves supporting the engine and removing the cross member then dropping the engine about 8"
 
3 hours.? Yes on tube it was 4 mins 30 secs ,another at 15 mins.
I wouldn't have dared filmed mine ,I was lying on my back ( nose touching the underside)with the car jacked up with stands under for safety. ( Wouldn't start to drive it on ramps), on the pavement ..
Could only get one hand( well some fingers really) up to the sensor it was solid,had to wiggle it out with a short pair of mole grips.pulling and turning at the same time.the grips kept slipping as I didn't want to break the sensor off , plastic,.
The new one just dropped in. (y)
Feel a bit battered and bruised now. :love:

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The engine management light on my Skoda comes on when it rains. Something to do with a sensor in the exhaust pipe. The car drives normally and the light goes off when the weather dries up.

Thankfully the weather was dry when I took the car for its MOT a couple of weeks ago 😀
 
Thats why the whole green issue etc is a big con piece of nonsense thats been on the cards for years.

Cars used to be simple, then they kept making manufacturers try to reduce emissions etc ...so they got ECU loads of daft sensors, dpf , lambdas, egr valves etc etc etc , so many cars have been scrapped not because they are rotten but because of electrical faults and running faults that no one could find .

All in the name of green and environmental change. Where as if they had kept it simple and people kept a car for years like they do in many other countries ,

For decades scrap yards were not controlled , there was oil and chemicals drained on the ground , fires , tyres burned etc etc etc ...

They dont want you fixing cars yourself, they want you paying garages to do everything, even some bulb changes nowadays involve a partial strip down of the car.

Eventually when you get tired of paying big bills you get sucked in to buying yet another new model which will have even more sensors , be harder to repair etc

And thats supposed to be green

Same nonsense they say with electric cars. The only green part of them is the little vinyl sticker on the number plate.
 
Jimbohorlicks said:
That's probably the case as the car is now some 13 years old but only has 32k on the clock.( Due to motorhome use)
I replaced both emission sensors 28 months ago ,the one behind the exhaust cat one really difficult but the one on the manifold was ok.
If I hadn't got an OBD reader ,I would have been scratching my head ,spending hours cleaning up plugs etc when it was just an £18 sensor. A pig to take out but the new one just dropped in and car started First time as usual.checking on line seems like it's a fairly common fault :eek:
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Wellcome to the world I used to work at.
If you are running an old corsa it’s worth having a spare oil pressure switch. They spring a leak quite often so having a spare is a good idea.
 
Guigsy said:
Modern engines have incredible power to weight and efficiency. But to manage that, they need a lot of sensors and a lot of features like exhaust recirculation and turbos and watercooled manifolds that make them complex and covered in sensors.

And generally, cars are a hell of a lot more reliable than they used to be too. Leyland cars used to be scrap in 5 years. Now you regularly see 15 year old cars being used as reliable run-abouts. Yes, when they do break at that age, they are often a write-off by due to the complexity. But 40 years ago they never would have made it that far.
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Most of that was due to corrosion. The simple engines ran forever. Many still do if they had kept the mechanical side simple and just improved the bodywork like they have then the best of both worlds would have been achieved.

No point making super duper high performance engines . Most should never go over 70 anyway. I literally had dozens of 1600 and 2 litre pinto engine driven vehicles. They were reliable and reasonable performance. Jist the bodies they were in that were crap

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dunnah01 said:
Aren't they printed in China and shipped across the globe in huge container ships to be stuck on the new car by Bill in Dagenham?
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More than likely. But government's have decided the electric green lie is the one they want to push so it doesn't matter if they aren't the slightest bit green.
 
Northernraider said:
More than likely. But government's have decided the electric green lie is the one they want to push so it doesn't matter if they aren't the slightest bit green.
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Probably because they have been rumbled on all the ways of taxing internal combustion engines so need a new revenue stream. Moho owners are more astute when it comes to battery power for things so can see the reality
 
I spent all of my working life in the motor industry , so I suppose I'm a little biased.
I see it this way.
Think back to the early JD Power tables of circa 1980's and think of them as a 1 to 10 scale.
Toyota and Honda at the top and maybe Jaguar and Renault at the bottom.
Talking only about reliability , the total spread for modern cars would be from the top 2 scales in 1980.
Reliability has improved that much since then.
Think about when you were driving down the M5 on holiday, there might be 3 cars on the shoulder on the way down. very rare now.
All cars have improved massively.
But, yes when they do go wrong it costs.
 
Recently had a warning come up on the dash on my Citroen car. Lots of warning bleeps and messages, accompanied by the central display defaulting to a local map showing the nearest Citroen dealer locations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Geoff

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Back in the 90s when the A74 was being upgraded to motorway, I sat in my Mercedes Sprinter behind an HGV going through roadworks for 12 miles or so doing 50mph. Once I got to the end of the roadworks I pulled out into the middle lane, put my foot to the floor..... and nothing happened. Soon the HGV was disappearing out of sight leaving me plodding along at 50mph.
I called my service manager and he told me to get to the next services and he would get the Mercedes agent up from Carlisle to meet me there.
Thankfully he arrived at the services minutes after me, I greeted him and said I'd pop the bonnet. No need he said. He appeared with a laptop and plugged it in under the dash, first time I'd seen such a thing! There's your problem he said, you need a xxxx valve. Is it much of a job? no he said, 5 minute job, unplug one and put a new one in.

The only problem is they cost £600 and as they never go wrong we don't stock them :Eeek:
To cut a long story short, I had to drive all the way to Warrington and all the way back to Glasgow at 50mph. To make my night complete the truck that I had to meet at Warrington arrived 4 hours late because of a serious accident on the M6.
One of those nights :doh:
 
I had a Vauxhall Omega with the 6 pot BMW diesel, glow plugs had been gradually dying so I thought nice easy job to change them. Nope supposed to lower the engine I managed without. Started at 8:30 am finished at 6:30pm, the 2 rear plugs were under the scuttle. I managed to get then out by loosing the inlet manifold couldn't take it off without lowering the engine, had to unscrew the plugs about ⅛" at a time.
 
Did the alternator on my Range Rover TDV8 a couple of years ago. Five hours book time, took me seven on the drive. Because it's tucked in, you can't get to it from the top or bottom, you have to go in through the front.
To add insult to injury, a couple of days later my neighbour asked me to check his car as it wasn't holding charge. Popped the bonnet, and the alternator was right there at the top of the engine. Would have taken me longer to dig out my tools than to actually change it.
 
Landy Andy said:
View attachment 599557
Why make major components out of inferior products. Oil filter housing out of plastic. Really.
1 thousand pound job unless you fancy a go yourself on a shitty VW Polo. Did it myself and saved £760.
Click to expand...
Renault make the whole rocker cover and inlet manifold out if nasty cheap plastic...

The injectors seize solid too.

The bodies are good though not rust buckets like transits / sprinters....

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