Laptop to change brake pads?

[Cobbler]

I wouldn't have thought it would harm it at all, it's only for a second or two on tickover, nothing like the valve has to cope with under load, the valve already running at high temperature & combustion pressures. When the decompressor is opened the cylinder won't fill properly & fire properly as there is no induction & compression.

 

[Member 66061]

Rolling down the high street in a clapped out Vauxhall GTE turning the ignition off and on

 

[Rudi McAnichal]

You guys need to drag yourselves into the modern age. I don't hear anyone hankering for points ignition or wooden spoked wheels

Yes, any intelligent person knows that newer means better. Just as a tank of pickled fish or an unmade bed constitute truly great art, whilst those bits of canvas painted on by Turner, or lumps of marble chiselled by Rodin, are simply old junk.

 

[AndyStobbs]

I think we did quite well there.
4 pages roughly on topic.

 

[colnerov]

It won't last.

 

[wookie]

The trouble is that cars are basically now designed by accountants and spotty teenagers, so we get something designed to be as cheap as possible to build but ends up an absolute swine to work on later, that is filled with any flashy technology they can dream up as long as its cheap to implement, for example lets get rid of good old fashioned buttons in favour of a touch screen which means you now have to look at damn thing to operate it meaning your not looking where your driving instead of just having a button which you can remember where it is and use without taking your eyes off the road, what an improvement

Perhaps those of us complaining are just Luddites, after all there are plenty of companies trying to build self driving cars, because they have realised that people are nowadays more interested playing with the phone than concentrating on driving, so why not build cars that allow them to play with their phones all the time and avoid the boring chore of driving altogether ?

 

[keithski122]

I get to work on lots of old(50's-80's) british cars, some of the engineering atrocities that have been designed on them are......well atrocious.

 

[mechman]

I get to work on lots of old(50's-80's) british cars, some of the engineering atrocities that have been designed on them are......well atrocious.

Some of them aren't as good as atrocious( I think the thinking was its good enough for us and was just accepted

 

[wookie]

I get to work on lots of old(50's-80's) british cars, some of the engineering atrocities that have been designed on them are......well atrocious.

Oh I'm not saying older cars were perfect (fair from it) but at least you could work on them without needing a laptop to diagnose a fault or having to spend half a day dismantling it just to get to the problem.

 

[mechman]

Wookie .
I quite agree with your thinking the days when you could sus a prob in minutes were great ( made you feel like a hero) I think I've still got some points and capacitors rusting away some where. I've had the bonnet up on my car a few times to top the screen wash up and I know the engine is in there somewhere just can't see it. EG. MK 2 1600e Cortina cam shaft replaced in the front street in about 6 hrs .good old days and thought nothing of it.

 

[AndyStobbs]

A good fitter can still do a camshaft in 6 hours on a modern car.

 

[the snooper]

A good fitter can still do a camshaft in 6 hours on a modern car.

And get a free bad back with it

 

[Gareth J]

Don't worry, give it a while and we'll all just book driverless taxis for the run of the mill daily hack journeys. Save the spannering for toys/special cars. How long that "while" will be though I've no idea.

In the mean time, I'm glad to be able to plug the laptop into my early '00s runabout. Compared with the maintenance involved with my previous "back in the day" car ('66 beetle) it might as well be maintenance free. An example; the oil service interval in the noughties runaround exceeds the distance I'd ever managed to keep an engine inside the bug.

£30 odd quid for a cable and some software gives quick access to lots of diagnostic stuff that with a good mechanical sense can save hours of messy spannering.

Maybe some more cutting edge cars have gone too far too fast without enough time/money spent on r&d I don't know.

 

[mechman]

A good fitter can still do a camshaft in 6 hours on a modern car.

In the front street and on your first go and not being a mechanic ?

 

[colnerov]

A good fitter can still do a camshaft in 6 hours on a modern car.

Yes because its perched on the top of the engine. A Kent engine camshaft is in the heart of it and you have to hold eight followers up while you thread the shaft in and out whilst having black oil dripping on you.

 

[mechman]

Being green in the day I took engine out and turned it upside down and put new followers in. could of been worse it wasn't raining(that was after taking the head off)

 

[colnerov]

You didn't need to take the head off. Unless you took it off for other reasons.

 

[mechman]

You didn't need to take the head off. Unless you took it off for other reasons.

It had a few other niggles as well so I thought I would take a peek, it was a bit of a learning curve from a 650 triumph to a 1600 ford but there you go .

 

[Pete.]

The trouble is that cars are basically now designed by accountants and spotty teenagers, so we get something designed to be as cheap as possible to build but ends up an absolute swine to work on later, that is filled with any flashy technology they can dream up as long as its cheap to implement, for example lets get rid of good old fashioned buttons in favour of a touch screen which means you now have to look at damn thing to operate it meaning your not looking where your driving instead of just having a button which you can remember where it is and use without taking your eyes off the road, what an improvement

What car controls necessary to driving need to be operated by a touch screen? I can't think of a single one and if there are they certain;y can't be commonplace. In fact, I can recall cars with controls which aren't built around the steering wheel but none of them are modern - hell I remember using a manual foot-operated pump for windscreen washers.

 

[Pete.]

None of what you've listed are essential to the operating of the car.