On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 7:09 AM, Peter Frederick <psf...@earthlink.net> wrote: > The problems with all modern automobiles is the replacement of analog > mechanical controls with digital electronic controls, and subsequent gross > cheapening of mechanical design. Programmer's disease indeed. ... > I personally will pass -- all those electronics will fail in use, and > replacement is more than the car is worth. Mechanical stuff can be fixed, > if not cheaply, but a dead brain box is just junk.
Analog electronics are just as fixable as anything mechanical---ask our own Jim C., or GDL, the company that rebuilds CC amps. Digital electronics, too, are fixable by those with the proper training, or can easily be retrofitted with newly-engineered parts that, by Moore's Law, will be simpler and work better. And modern digital electronics can replace analog electronics (or primitive digital designs) with technology unknown at the time the original system was built; for example, the troublesome Mercedes ACC brains could be reverse-engineered and replaced with microcontrollers. As the baby boomers that have dominated the monied side of the old-car hobby for many years move on to the Great Pick-N-Pull In The Sky, there will be a paradigm shift in the hobby, and in the restoration and parts businesses supporting it, away from an emphasis on repair or replacement of mechanical parts, and towards restoration and reproduction of the parts that are more likely to fail in cars from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. That means plastics and electronics. This is already happening in certain segments of the business, in fact; just to take one example with which I'm familiar, check out the magazine "5.0 Mustang" the next time you're at the supermarket, and notice the full-page ads for replacement plastic parts for the interior and exterior of those cars. Or look at the curriculum at trade schools for aspiring auto mechanics: it's half electronics training now. I've been hearing the argument that the more electronics in a car, the less reliable, durable, fixable, and restorable it is, for 20-plus years. (I believe the first time I noticed it was in the British magazine CAR, in reference to a limited-production Italian car that used a V-8 originally from a mid-engine car in the front, with the crank rotating the opposite direction from the original application, necessitating a unique engine management system. The author was worried that the electronics would be irreplaceable and unfixable down the road. Maybe it was the Lancia Thema 8.32?) I just don't buy it. Modern electronics have made cars safer, more reliable, cheaper to produce, more efficient, and less polluting. As they get older the electronics fail with greater frequency, but so did the mechanical parts of older cars (consider that '50s American cars, for example, were ready for the crusher after 50,000 miles or so). Modern cars aren't harder to repair, just different. Alex _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
