Phenomena I have noticed... When rational becomes irrational

[carmine]

Something I don't understand and notice on this website as well as some automotive websites I visit... I don't know what to call it, so I'll describe it with a made-up example. I'm curious if others have noticed it (or even have a name for it). I'll use a frequent automatic transmission example, but it could apply to just about any manufactured product. Transmissions are a good example because I can easily think of several manufacturers on three different continents with reputations for "bad" transmissions.

Scenario: The transmission in my 2005 XYZ sedan has failed 3 times now. I've had it rebuilt twice and it has failed again with less than 20,000 miles since the last rebuild.

So here is what I don't understand... I'll buy the first failure. Sometimes there are simply manufacturing defects. Sometimes there are poor designs, and many of these identical units will fail repeatedly for the same reasons.

But how do you rationalize the idea that there are still thousands of XYZ sedans on the road 10-years later? It's not logical to assume they're all having $3000 rebuilds done every 30-40,000 miles. So if that isn't the case, how do you explain the idea that yours has failed at such a high rate?

Does anyone ever consider:

1) Maybe there is something to my particular usage?

2) Maybe the guy who did the last two rebuilds didn't do the job correctly?

If neither of these apply, you start to approach the same odds of hitting a state four-digit lottery number every year... Not quite 6-7 digit, regional multi-state lottery high, but pretty damn rare.

Now if you had a friend who told you he was hitting the 4-digit lottery every year, would you believe he was being 100% honest? Especially if he had some method of influence over what numbers were drawn? Yet we accept the idea of "XYZ has failed X times after several rebuilds" without question?

Perhaps my need for logic, or some explanation beyond luck, just gets the best of me?

 

[arbilab]

Worked with a lady in the mid 70s whose mid 70s Chevy went through 5 transmissions in very short order (maybe 20,000 miles for all 5 of them). Some may have been warranty, I don't remember. Or what she ultimately did.

Case like that, probably economics. That is, owing more on the car than it's worth. Economically difficult to replace it, even though strongly suspecting it will fail again.

Some folk will just go with it. Some will even buy the same brand again. Others write the brand off. Or make strongly-worded contacts with the mfr/seller/shop. Or call their attorney general, or sue outright. Don't think we can narrow down categories of reactions much more than that.

I bought a 1982 VW. Took it back to the dealer 12 times for 3 problems they repeatedly failed to fix. Next thing I did, got a German guy to fly in from Pennsylvania (factory). That fixed it, but damage done and I wouldn't have another VW if you gave it to me.

 

[carmine]

"Worked with a lady in the mid 70s whose mid 70s Chevy went through 5 transmissions in very short order (maybe 20,000 miles for all 5 of them). Some may have been warranty, I don't remember. Or what she ultimately did."

This is pretty much what I mean. I'll give her the first bad transmission, but seriously 4 more transmissions? If the design was that bad, we'd know about it because GM probably didn't make less than 1 Million of any particular transmission design.

The idea of a re-build (vs. re-placement) should rule out a "bad-batch". After transmission #4, shouldn't you begin to question the guy who is doing these re-builds? Or the woman's driving habits? The idea of running into 5 transmissions within a short period of time, each one failing after short mileages, is long odds to say the least.

In your case with the VW, that's just someone who isn't familiar enough with a car to accurately troubleshoot it. It finally reached the engineering level and got fixed. Still a pain I'm sure, but at least it doesn't depend on "odds".

 

[retropia]

I had a vibration problem on a new car that was escalated up to the district level, as none of the local dealers could fix it. They replaced the new tires with a different brand of new tire, replaced the transaxles; nothing fixed it. Finally, they tried swapping the factory stamped steel wheels with factory alloy wheels, and that fixed the problem.

The stamped wheels always balanced just fine, so no one knew why they would be a problem. They just kept throwing different things on the car until something worked.

This doesn't fit the scenario of replacing the same part over and over, but some problems with cars seem to defy diagnosis.

 

[rp2813]

I have two stories.

 

1)  My '88 Audi 80 would sometimes provide a vibrating/rattling sensation and noise that was coming from under the hood.  It would only do it while executing a left turn.  I'd mention it to each new mechanic I tried, but nobody could find the trouble.

 

Finally, while it was in for service at yet another mechanic, I went through the repair records from the previous owner and found he had complained of a similar problem under warranty and that the dealer found the exhaust manifold needed to be re-hung.

 

I called the mechanic and gave him this information.  Problem identified and solved, and it never occurred again.

 

2)  Our 2002 MBZ C240 was in for regular maintenance and some sort of repair at approximately 48K miles.  On the afternoon that it was supposed to be ready, we got a call from the service manager advising that when he personally took the car out for a test drive after work was completed, the transmission had a catastrophic failure (he said it felt like driving over a bad railroad crossing) and that they'd need to keep the car longer to install a brand new transmission, which was under warranty.

 

We still have the car.  When mileage was approaching the 100K mark, I did some on-line research.  I couldn't find a single complaint of transmission problems or issues from other owners of the same model.  Go figure.

 

I think that lady with the mid-'70s Chevy got a lemon, a Monday car, or both.  As I recall, it was poorly built American cars across the board from this period that sparked the "Lemon Law" that's in place today.

 

[whirlcool]

In most states there are lemon laws when it comes to cars. Take a car in three times for the same problem and if they can't fix it, you get some kind of relief.

I had a 1970 Cougar that had miserable a/c. It wouldn't blow air that was very cold at all. I had it back to the dealer countless times over two years. They overhauled the system, replaced components finally just said "The A/C units in those cars aren't very strong, learn to live with it" after spending a ton of money.

Finally my uncle suggested I take it to an automotive a/c specialty shop and let them look at it. I did, they told me to leave the car for the day. When I picked it up that night it had VERY COLD air. When I asked what the charge would be he said "Nothing". I asked what was wrong and he said that the dealer obviously hadn't read the FoMoCo Factory Update Bulletin that said the original belt specs were wrong. The factory service manual said that the belt should be tightened to 1 inch deflection. The update said the belt should be tightened to 1/2 inch of deflection. They tightened the belt and the a/c worked just fine ever since. Why the dealer couldn't figure this out was beyond me.

 

[carmine]

"I think that lady with the mid-'70s Chevy got a lemon, a Monday car, or both."

----

You see, that's the issue. There is no such thing as a "lemon", unless you believe in hexes, voodoo, etc. Even then, manufactured products are inanimate objects.

Someone says they replaced/rebuilt the same sub-assembly 5 times and we accept it, or explain it away with "they were all junk". Really?

I'll accept the idea that a tech can't fix/find a problem. Some problems are tough, some techs are lazy. There are cases of a bad design/spec/process where almost all will fail.

But when a part fails repeatedly for the same person, while thousands of others function without issue, at what point do you look at the tech or the end-user?

 

[norgeway]

My Story..

One of my Grand Dads cousins bought a new 53 Ford Mainline, 6 with overdrive, at 20,000 miles it was knocking...so Smith Crossroads Ford installed all new bearings...at 40 000 it was knocking,,,same thing, at 60,000 he was tired of this, so he went to our local auto parts and bought a Rogers Rebuilt engine and he and a friend installed it, this was 1960, they gave the block to the auto parts store, who found that it was bored crooked from the factory, he drove the car from then until he died in the early 90s with no other troubles, he started in the fall of 60 going to Montana to hunt, and drove it 14 years in a row out there, when he died, the friend who helped him put the engine in in the first place got it, and drove it until he died in 98, it then had 212000 on it and when sold it still ran like a champ, I rode in it and drove it during this time and it was smooth as silk and as tom , the friend who was also a good friend to me, said, You couldnt make it use a drop of oil!.....the oil always used...non detergent Wolfs Head!

 

[washman]

Here's another

Once upon a time we had a 62 IHC 1/2 ton PU. Come with a 304 V-8. Dad was working tons of overtime and I was not quite up to snuff yet working on vehicles.

It needs a tune up, bad. Recall this was back in the day of breaker points, condensers, and the like.

Took it to a local garage. Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, points, coil all replaced. Timing set.

And that was the problem. We got it back and lord, that thing would hardly start when hot. Cold, pull out the choke, do the st. vitus dance with your right leg and she'd fire right up. Figured perhaps the diaphragm in the fuel pump was getting weak, we had that replaced along with the inline gas filter. Still a bitch to fire up when hot. Removed the Delco starter, had it tested, its right on spec. For kicks and grins, we replaced the battery cable. Still groans and moans and hardly turns over when hot. Had battery checked, its up to snuff.

Finally after digging around in a factory IHC repair manual, I learned something I have not forgotten to this day.

On IHC v-8 engines, ALL of them, you time the engine off #8 cylinder, not #1 as is the case with virtually EVERY other v-8 out there! Most mechanics will assume you set timing on #1. That is true most of the time. But not with IHC. I borrowed a timing light and checked timing from #8 cylinder. It was so far advanced, the mark did not even show up on the scale! The Factory setting was 2-4 deg BTDC. Once that was set, she started like a champ, HOlley 2bbl be damned!

Lesson learned................

Trivia lesson:

The firing order on a small block Mopar (and the new Hemi)is
1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

Pet Peeve........its pronounced DEXRON ,not DEXTRON.

 

[rp2813]

Oh yeah, another story:

 

We had an '85 Audi 5000 wagon that we bought with about 50K miles on it.  They were cheap back in the late '80s due to their highly publicized sudden acceleration issues.   This car was just the opposite.  It started doing this thing where it would quit for no reason, and under no particular type of circumstance.  Once it cut out and left Dave stranded midway on a flyover ramp from one freeway to another.

 

Nobody could figure it out.  We always bought the shop manuals for the cars we owned (until DIY repairs meant buying a diagnostic computer system), so while it was in the shop after the ramp incident we combed through the 5000 book and found a reference to an obscure component of the ignition system called the "Hall's Sending Unit."  We called the mechanic and mentioned this part.  They checked it out, replaced it, and we never had the problem again.  We had put over 100K miles on that car by the time we traded it in.

 

[arbilab]

Chevy started using plastic governor gears in the 70s, IIRC was the root of the problem and it went well beyond just that car.

The VW dealer lost their franchise shortly after that incident. I even TOLD them to replace the radiator thermostat; they didn't and that's what one problem was. The thing still overheated with AC on. Turned out that was a model-wide design problem. I just turned AC off for a few min for it to cool down, then back on. IOW, live with it. But the warranty problem happened with the AC OFF, the fan wasn't running at all.

Here's another VW story that defied all explanation until it didn't. Problem was the clutch was grabby. That is, it went "d-r-r-r-r-d-t" whenever you let it out and shook the whole car. Easy enough, right? Replace the clutch disc. Great. But leaving the shop it still did it. OK, lathe the flywheel. Still did it. Flywheel still had some runout, replace flywheel. Still did it. Replace pressure plate, still did it. This time while they had it apart I happened to spin the clutch disc and it was obviously out of round. That's right, the replacement clutch disc caused a whole afternoon worth of problems. They charged me for the basic job, not the 5 times it took reinstalling the engine. Good honest shop, really shxtty replacement part.

Oh, and after I spent Idunno how much fixing EVERYthing that could go wrong with the clutch, the gawdam WELDED throwout fork broke. So did the WELDED brakepedal. Prior to 1967 these were both CAST parts. Jeezus verblongede kraist, anybody knows you can't flex a weld indefinitely before it breaks. Yet VW went "yeah well it will be your problem by the time it happens, not ours".

Fxck me for buying 3 more cars from them, each of which was more problematic than the one before. And I'm a flarking engineer. I just didn't want to think an auto company that USED TO make a good product could be that deviously/progressively incompetent.

So back to the original question, see how that can happen? And see how I wouldn't have another VW if you PAID me? Skuze the marginal/disguised expletives, but the situation just can't adequately be conveyed without them.

 

[d-jones]

As an aircraft mechanic I always found that no matter how difficult a problem was to diagnose, when I finally managed to trace it back to its source it was always something totally logical. Case in point, my Challenger 601 was experiencing intermittent nose wheel steering failures that were driving me and the pilots nuts. It went in to service centers twice for this issue and a nose wheel steering break out box was used to try and nail it down. Both times they came up empty. Finally the pilot insisted that I change the nose wheel steering control box, as he felt that was the most likely source of the problem.(you'd be surprised how many times pilots in a corporate flight department involve themselves in maintenance)

 

I did as he asked, the ops check was completed without issue, and the next time the plane flew the nose wheel steering failed. Of course the pilot was annoyed. This time when I got the plane back in the hangar and everyone else had gone home, I hooked up a power cart and sat in the cockpit slowly flipping the nose wheel steering switch on and off as I listened to the sound of hydraulic system solenoids related to nose wheel steering opening and closing. Finally after about a half an hour had passed I heard something different. I couldn't tell precisely what it was from the cockpit, but it was definitely something real. My buddy Mich lived nearby, so I called him up and asked if he could come down to the airport and give me a hand. When he got there I had him sit in the cockpit slowly flipping the switch, while I stood outside beside the nose wheel steering system hydraulic solenoids and listened. It took another twenty minutes, but I finally heard the same sound. One of the hydraulic system solenoids hadn't opened. Checking the wires coming in to the little cannon plug I found no voltage. Out came the wiring diagrams, and I was able to trace that wire back to a relay located behind a side panel in the cockpit, near the floor by the pilots seat. With the seat and panel removed, the problem finally became obvious. The relay in question hadn't been properly seated in its socket. Most of the time it made contact, but sometimes it didn't. I snapped it properly into place and we never saw that particular squawk again. So here in this case, what many were calling gremlins turned out to be nothing more that an improperly seated relay, and finding the problem required patience and careful troubleshooting. Unfortunately I've discovered that many service techs don't have the slightest clue how to troubleshoot, and instead resort to a rather expensive part swapping process known as shotgunning, wherein parts are simply replaced until the problem goes away. This sort of thing is always a sign of incompetence, and should tip you off that you need to find another mechanic.

 

[gusherb]

We had a 2010 Fusion that had it's transmission start acting up at 6,000 miles it would flare up at gear shifts, starting out every so often and by 9,000 miles the thing was slipping, bucking like crazy and would then put itself in limp mode. Took it in and (after being denied any issue because it had to be warm before it'd start slipping and they had only taken it around the block) they rebuilt it and installed a new throttle body.
A few months later Ford issues a TSB/recall on it saying that there could be excessive bore wear in the throttle body causing fluid to get by when it shouldn't and ultimately lead to a transmission failure. The solution was to install a redesigned throttle body and partial rebuild if a test showed that there was slipping (they just hooked their computer up and brake torqued it in D with the gas pedal to the floor), they also reprogrammed the TCM.
By this point I had seen that numerous reports of the same issue were popping up online, all with under 20,000 miles.

The same problem happened again around 18,000 miles, this time getting the runaround from everyone, eventually went through the BBB and Ford finally offered to send an engineer out to our dealer and go for a ride, he saw it right away and so they did another rebuild, this time a little more extensive then the first. Got it back after a week with a rental and it was PERFECT....for 3 days then I noticed things started downhill again (shift flares, whining, and hesitation). Fought with Ford over the next two months and finally threw in the towel and just decided to put up with it until the lease was up.
During this time between the last rebuild and finally turning it in it had gone on two cross country road trips and put another 30,000 miles on it. The shift flares, hesitation, and whining had proven to be non catastrophic during this time frame. The worst thing it did was on extended trips cruising in 6th gear, it would get stuck there and finally SLAM whenever it'd have to downshift. Finally somewhere around 50,000 miles it was getting much worse and probably read to give up the ghost completely, luckily we turned it in by then.

Also the A/C crapped out summer 2012, 2.5 years into having it, big leak in a crimp in the hot vapor hose between the compressor and condenser. Have a friend that owns a shop and he said he sees this often on the Fusion, Five Hundred, and Taurus (the newer one), as well as compressors getting real weak around 70-100,000 miles to the point of almost not cooling anymore.

I chalked the transmission problem up to a combination of faulty hardware design and subpar engineering on the software side, it always did shift kinda sloppily even when it did work. I think they eventually squashed all the bugs by the 2012 model year.

 

[gusherb]

Wherever I said throttle body I meant valve body! But that reminds me it did have a throttle body go bad causing it to stall on RR tracks, believe there was a TSB on that too. Had to pay out of pocket for that one as it was out of warranty.

 

[carmine]

D-jones, I like to think a guy like you had worked on my plane.

If have the same theory... Every problem has to have a root cause.

I did look into the "GM trans plastic governor" issue. It's really just a nylon drive gear that spins a governor in free-space. They can wear, but I can't imagine the design is the issue, as it's been used from 1969 into the 2000s in both TH 350s and 400s. These are generally considered among the best automatics made (they were used in Rolls Royce cars among others). If that part does fail, it is changed without even removing the trans oil pan, just a small can on the side of the trans. To replace one so frequently, (if it did) there had to be another undisclosed problem... Perhaps the other side of the gear drive was burred. A good tech would have investigated after the first comeback.

 

[arbilab]

RE chevy trans, my source was a horsey female coworker who couldn't have related exact causes even if they were given. Just that the damn thing kept screwing up. She never said 'how, exactly'.

RE aircraft, I'm reminded of the 737 rudder PCM (power control module) that killed a buncha people before someone figured it out. Was a matter of devising a bench test that invoked the failure, had to do with temperatures experienced in flight. Although that event was design-specific rather than installation-specific.

Did I mention that my last real job was failure analysis engineer for Dell, before they decided that quality was the customer's problem and not theirs?

 

[retropia]

A complication, at least as it relates to auto repair, is that mechanics are not paid to diagnose problems. They are paid to replace parts.

If a mechanic spends two hours tracing a malady to a $5 sensor in a transmission, he might get to charge $20 to replace the sensor, according to the "book rate." It is not a fruitful use of his time.

Whereas if he spends two hours replacing a $1,000 transmission, perhaps the book rate will say he should be paid $200 for the job. This skews the system to where it doesn't pay a mechanic to diagnose a problem.

 

[d-jones]

"mechanics are not paid to diagnose problems. They are paid to replace parts."

 

 

If that's true of the shop you've been using you should stop using them. Any decent shop will have a fee structure that allows for proper troubleshooting, otherwise you immediately start swapping parts, which can get very expensive. And if it's the customer that refuses to pay for troubleshooting and only wants to pay for "actual work" then they'll certainly get what they deserve, but frankly, I've never heard of this.