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BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

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Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#431

Post by labcomputer »

amluto wrote: post #135
eddieroger wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt similarly recently, and I think those days are fleeting if not gone. Ford recently talked about replatforming their entire range, which would include basic trucks at more reasonable prices, but there's not really a market for work trucks in the way there used to be, and they're gone in favor of the luxury ones with small beds. It is annoying. There is an interesting startup that I can't remember the name of…

> there's not really a market for work trucks in the way there used to be I find this to be a strange assertion. I’ve only asked a small number of contractors, but every one I’ve asked wished they could buy a smaller, lower, practical work truck with decent capacity.

> I’ve only asked a small number of contractors, but every one I’ve asked wished they could buy a smaller, lower, practical work truck with decent capacity

And if you ask Reddit, everyone says they want to buy a brown NA station wagon with a manual... yet nobody actually buys those cars when dealers stock them. This is what economists call "stated" vs. "revealed" preference.

Nissan discontinued the last small long bed, small-cab compact pickup last year. Now you can only get it as a two row. They had a monopoly on this supposedly lucrative market segment that contractors claim to want... yet it was discontinued because nobody was actually purchasing that configuration.

Even for full-size pickups, GM revealed less than 10% of the product mix is single-row long bed.

It's not some conspiracy. People. Aren't. Buying. Them.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#432

Post by Lalabadie »

bityard wrote: post #418
Gravityloss wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porsche had a research program about a very reliable car in the 70s. It has some odd technical choices from today's perspective. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/when-porsch... One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one would assume they could get beefier suspen…

> while most cars nowadays have zinc coating and more plastic and are still mostly fine after 15 years. In your part of the world, maybe. I live in the middle of the salt belt in the US and we get about 10 years out of most cars. That's when you start seeing rust holes in the fenders around the wheels, when most of the frame has flaked away and the floor pans become involuntary structural elements. If you're a car nu…

I live up North (capital N) from you, where we have ~4 months of calcium spread on our roads to manage the accumulating ice every winter. A well-maintained car has the chance to live long enough to succumb to rust from that.

Rustproofing is still a good treatment to get done to delay and minimize damage, but it's a thorough and slightly expensive job.

People who have a hobby car usually retire it in a garage from November to April-May instead.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#433

Post by bradyd »

giamma wrote: post #390
potato3732842 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is the stereotype for "rich west europe" engineering culture. Every now and then you see it leak out into some other environment, like Toyota and their pull-apart ball joints that "aren't an issue" because "the user will just service it on schedule" where it reliably causes problems in all sorts of dumb ways (because like anything else, designing stuff to within an inch of it's life takes pract…

Here is an American example, Fox suspensions. Fox is one of the main producers of bicycle suspensions. Great products, but check their service intervals for a fork [0], 125 hours. Now if you practice mountainbike you may ride your bike 1 to 5 times a week. Let's say you only ride once a week for 4 hours: 125 / 4 = 31, you would need to service your fork every 31 weeks. Add some few more rides and you have to service…

That service interval is pretty common across all bike suspension forks (and dropper posts are usually only around 50 hours).

A SR Suntour fork has a 100 hour maintenance interval, for example.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3730626/Sr-Suntour-Durolux...

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#435

Post by everdrive »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #124

€4000 euros plus tax to replace the module that contains the fuse. Insane. The ford transit custom PHEV costs £4500 to replace the timing belt. Access issues mean dropping the hybrid battery and parts of the sub frame. Compare with the mk8 transit, i've done the wet belt myself on that and it requires no special tools (well, i bought a specific crank pulley puller for £20) and can be done in a day on the driveway. I…

>i've done the wet belt

All that to say that a wet belt should not even be used in the first place.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#436

Post by jandrese »

jacquesm wrote: post #413
jandrese wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the parts situation. As someone who works on my own cars I've become increasingly distressed at the car parts industry. Even OEM parts, when they are still available, seem to have had a dramatic decrease in quality over the past couple of decades. This is even assuming the correct part is shipped in the first place, which is another problem that has become entirely too common, especially in an age where ev…

Plastics. Those are the hard to source bits. Plastic doesn't stay plastic for ever and NOS can be dried out just as much as the bits that are in the car. Most other things are easy to source, and anything made of steel can be fixed (zero rust, so far).

1997 car with no rust? I'm guessing you don't live in an area that knows snow.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#437

Post by ErroneousBosh »

corwinxpro wrote: post #389
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMWs at least up to the mid-2000s are really cheap and easy to maintain. Parts are pennies, service documentation is readily available, and they're reliable enough that they last a long time with basic maintenance. Compared to stuff like Toyotas or Hondas, they practically cost nothing to keep on the road.

> Compared to stuff like Toyotas or Hondas Don't get this. I had a CR-V from 1996 (over 300k), sold it a few years ago, and can still see it cruising around the town. My previous Toyota Yaris was pretty much unkillable, just like a RAV 4 or a 1998 TLC.

You must live somewhere absolutely bone dry where it never gets cold enough to salt the road.

We were putting Toyota Hiluxes back to the leasing company at three years and they were going straight in the crusher.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#438

Post by ErroneousBosh »

apparent wrote: post #395
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMWs at least up to the mid-2000s are really cheap and easy to maintain. Parts are pennies, service documentation is readily available, and they're reliable enough that they last a long time with basic maintenance. Compared to stuff like Toyotas or Hondas, they practically cost nothing to keep on the road.

Eh, I had one from the early aughts and it was pretty expensive to maintain. Simple things that have never broken on other cars I've owned, like the passenger side door lock, broke in my BMW. Headlight issues were expensive, and anything that required official parts was at least 3x as much as a Honda/Toyota/etc. repair.

Some bits can be kind of expensive unless you know a good BMW indy. The nice thing about the older ones - particularly from like maybe E30 to E39 models - is there's a lot of "hacker culture" around them and it's easy to find someone who knows the Easy Way To Do It.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#439

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Gravityloss wrote: post #378
prepend wrote: post #336

It’s funny how I extrapolate car design sessions in my head based on software design sessions. I sold my bmw after 15 years of multiple bmws because their design is so poor for maintenance. I had cooling system problems that required hours of labor to get to just to replace a plastic part that cost $5 where an aluminum one would cost $7. It seems to me that bmw was designing for best case scenarios where everything g…

Porsche had a research program about a very reliable car in the 70s. It has some odd technical choices from today's perspective. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/when-porsch... One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one would assume they could get beefier suspen…

> One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one would assume they could get beefier suspension and transmission and high displacement downtuned engines.

Here in the UK until recently it was all Skoda Octavias, nice simple comfortable cars with a reliable diesel engine. Prior to that, it was all Citroën Xantias - again, nice simple comfortable (really comfortable with their hydraulic suspension) cars with a big reliable diesel engine.

It's not uncommon to see them hit well over half a million miles, often in less than five years.

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