> I once had a white Ford Fiesta that was giving me engine trouble. Can someone > send me an *informative* list of problems in Ford cars (preferably white) and > how they solved it? >
Sure, here's my list from my Ford. It's a Focus, though, not a Fiesta: • Front seats recline with dial: cannot be moved quickly. • Cannot lock doors from inside when leaving car. When trying to manually lock with the driver's door open, the doors automatically unlock. Apparently this is a case of Microsoft-type engineering: the car assumes that the user is an idiot and prone to locking his keys in the car. Thus, the car can only be locked with the key, from outside. Forget the fact that there are many valid reasons for locking the doors with the driver's door still open. I often have many packages to carry, so it's easiest for me to lock the doors, grab the packages, and then shut the door with my foot. Not with the Ford Focus. With the Ford Focus, one can never carry two armloads of packages away from the car. One must always leave a hand free to lock the doors. • When the passenger||driver puts the passenger window down, and the driver||passenger pushes the button after him, the window stops going down. • The radio's volume knob is so shallow and slippery that it is impossible to operate. Also, pressing CD || Radio does not turn the radio on. This is in contrast to the UI of the air conditioning unit, in which any button will start it. Even "off". • The trunk is so small that the baby stroller would not fit until I ripped the plastic moulding off. The light is tucked away in the far right corner, and does not illuminate the middle of the trunk even when the trunk is empty. • No map lights in the back! No lights at all in the back! • The gas gauge was strategically placed behind the steering wheel. There is no compromise between comfortable seating position and a visible gas gauge. Same for the temp gauge, the tach between 3000 and 5000 RPM, and the speedometer between 90 and 150 KPH. • The trunk must be slammed down to close. Even then, it often seems closed when it is not. • The trunk release is electric only. No manual override. How are you going to open that when the battery dies? I hope that you don't keep your jumper cables in the trunk... • Huge glove compartment. Too bad it's one dimensional. It seems deeper than my arm is long, yet so narrow that one's fist barely gets in. Yes, I'm exaggerating here, but the glove compartment really seems to have been designed by some burrowing creature. To make matters worse, it seems to go in the up direction, so every time it is opened the contents spill out onto the passenger's feet. • The stiff plastic lanyard on the filler cap is too short. The cap must be twisted _just_right_ so that the cap hangs on the loop and does not drip gas on the paint. That's difficult for those of us with manual disabilities. • The fuel filler door cannot be opened when the doors are locked, nor can it be closed when the doors are locked! This means that one must refuel with the doors unlocked, which is a potential security hazard. • Need the key to open the engine lid. That makes a lot of problems: 1) One cannot open the lid with the engine running without a spare key. 2) One cannot open the lid with one hand. One hand must be twisting the key while the other hand lifts. • Washer fluid: The washer fluid reservoir was probably the most over-engineered component in any Ford vehicle. It sits inside the passenger side fender, completely hidden from view. This presents several challenges to those tasked with maintaining the vehicle. For one, there is no way to determine how much fluid is inside the reservoir. Secondly, in order to replenish the supply, fluid is poured down a pipe with such a sharp bend, so close to the mouth, that all fluid poured in immediately splashes out. Liquid must be poured in at about the rate one would fill an ice cube tray. Without knowing if it will be 100 ml, a full liter, or maybe five. As the liquid splashes in all directions at the (unexpected) moment that the reservoir is full, either panther-like reflexes are required, or an apron. • The vehicle is very, very loud. I know that this is not a luxury car, and I know that instead of a timing belt it has a durable timing chain, however the vehicle is unacceptable noisy. At highway speeds, the passengers must scream at each other to be heard. At rest and idle, the exhaust is so loud that it too disturbs conversation near the trunk. • The turn signals have a feature where a light tap on the stalk sets the signal to flash three times. There is no option to disable this feature, and no way to stop the blinking once it starts. At 100 KPH (60 MPH) those three flashes mean that I'm signalling for about 15 car-lengths of distance. That means that one must often signal left when one intends to travel right, and vice-versa. • The power window switch has two operational positions: a light tap for manually guiding the window up or down, and a hard tap for full close or open. Well, that is an idealization. In reality, there is so little difference between the pressures needed that manual guidance is impossible. The driver must take his eyes off the road to stop the full close / open procedure should he desire an intermediate position. • The air conditioning vents are shaped like whistle. Guess what sound they make. • The CD play has no anti skip, in fact, it skips constantly. • The rear view mirror is placed too low: it obscures when making right turns on accents and descents. I live on a mountain. Everything is an accent or a decent. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
