Bad news and Good News

In a previous season of the show "American Restoration", the trailer to it had Rick Dale saying "Do you remember when things were made to last..and people took pride in their work?" or something almost exactly that.

I think that says a lot of it right there. I've driven GM cars with near 200k on them that didn't need half the work my 5 year old truck did. My old Chevy Celebrity got me through most of my college years and then some..and I had another one prior to that which had rust all over the place but the darn thing needed front brakes and a tire over 2 years and 30k miles.

 

All luck of the draw. I had a 1996 S10 for 12 years with very few issues, my Tacoma on the other hand eats Power Steering pumps for lunch.

 

The issue isnt the manufacturer itself, it's the manufacturer's business practice.

Some practice low quality (with short design life) 'disposable' vehicles, that they can then continue to manufacturer parts for, and employ mechanics to fix. Which brings cash flow in maintenance, not only car sales.

Whereas other manufacturers practice high quality (long design life) vehicles that require less maintenance and parts, but they make more on sales.

I'm sure the big 3 can manufacture vehicles/parts as good or better than Toyota or Honda, but they choose not to because of economics.

 

Even minor repairs is one thing, but to tell me it's common to need $5000 of engine work on a 5 yr old truck..well you won't sell me that one all day or most of the night. My reply was "well yes it's not, you put a defective head on there..which you acknowledged..and instead of doing right and recalling them you rolled the dice with this 'warranty'..and if there's ancillary parts damage, hey it's $$ for you fixing it"

 

No doubt they could


The UAW also has something to do with that too. The throwaway cars means steady work for the UAW which pretty much run the show at the big 3.

 

There's an easy fix for that to adjust perception. Offer the dumb consumer an extended warranty to cover the repairs and finance that into the loan. The consumer thinks to themselves... "Well it doesn't come out of my pocket so I guess I can put up with taking it to the dealer every other month." But in reality, they're adding even more negative equity to the deal with a worthless warranty that they can just finance into the new vehicle they buy 3 years from now.

 

sig'd

 

I love these type threads

I'm currently driving a 17 year old AWD Explorer with a 5.0 V8 that has had the radiator and exhaust replaced + a rusted out brake line. Not bad for 17 years. It gets better gas mileage with a 5.0V8 then my POS 4.0V6.

Reason I'm driving it is because my 08 Tacoma has a blown engine from either a faulty oil pump or bad rings. Cause will be determined as soon as I yank it out, but it sure as hell was not owner miss use. I always babied it and ran Mobil-1 in it from break in up until 89k when it imploded.

Other issues my Tacoma has had:
bad blower
bad pulleys
POS rusty frame
bad tie rods
bad wheel bearings
bad starter
gauge lights blown out
bad/horrible 3 leaf POS springs
bad LCA bushings
bad LCA ball joints
bad rad fan

Before the Tacoma I had a 99' Explorer for 10 years 200,000 miles. The master cylinder blew up at 95k (covered by warranty) and I had the transmission rebuilt three times (covered by warranty). I used and abused the tranny by hauling 10,000# boats around out family's marina and grading the roads by dragging steel I beams along it.

IMO Ford > Toyota any day

 

I dont have a 2nd gen but I have owned Fords before and in my experience I would say my tacoma is 10x better. So far at 106k miles I have replaced nothing due failure. So maybe its just....

1st gens > Ford > 2nd gens

 

Sorry to hear that. Not normal for a Toyota.

I'm at 121k on my '07 now and All I've done is:
Changed fluids at recommended intervals
Replaced OE battery ~50k miles
Front brake pads and Rotors ~60k miles
Rear driveshaft U-joint ~111k miles
Front brake pads again at ~115k

Other than that, My blower motor acts up sometimes, a swift kick solves that. Then my throwout bearing has been squeaking for years but I'll replace that eventually when it fails or my clutch goes out.. whichever happens first.

I bought the truck used w/ 42k miles in '09. The previous owner had zero problems with it. Only normal fluid changes. He had all the oil changes done at the local toyota dealer by my house.

 

lol

thank you sir

 

True. What happened was the 2004-06 Colorados had a high rate of cylinder head failure, some as early as 20k. When they realized this was a common issue and that the head was defective, they placed a 7yr/100k "extended warranty" on the head.

 

I would like to meet the engineer that thought that was a good way to stow a spare tire. I didn't discover until a blow out on I-95 in Miami. What a wonderful surprise!

 

What method is that?

Dumbest thing I can think of is my brother in law's dad with his Chrysler 300. Battery in the trunk. It has no key lock cylinder to unlock the trunk, just a power release. So if that battery is stone dead he can't open the trunk to get in and replace the battery.

 

honda and toyota are the better companies but each company has there strengths and weakness.

 

almost 250,000 on my tacoma and nothing major fixed and i beat the living shit out of it.

 

Which brings me back to that in my mind it's not so much what they sell as how they back you up.

If the head on my truck died and they took care of the other parts it caused to fail I'd have no issue with GM at all..just shrug it off as I got a bad one but they made it a good experience, versus being lied to several times.

 

I believe if you define quality as conformance to specification, then you need to look at the specification which is determined by a number of factors. On a macro level, one of the major factors is cost. Some of the other major factors are design, engineering, assembly, quality control and culture. What affect does this have on the reliability of a vehicle? I feel that the answer depends on the expected design life of the vehicle by the manufacturer, preventive maintenance and MTBF of the components.

 

Chrysler did it to make room for the stow-and-go seats, simple as that. The Honda Odyssey stores the spare in a well in front of the 2nd-row seat, accessible from inside the vehicle. With the Chrysler vans, the 2nd row seats also fold, leaving no under-floor space. A solution exists in the form of run-flat tires like the Toyota RAV4 Sport, but it was probably too costly for the bean-counters to offer as standard equipment.