Dave01 wrote:
I think where we disagree is what you are suggesting is a strategy to have cars fail, and so we buy another, I'm suggesting is an economic and marketing strategy. If you were in the market for a diesel vehicle, and they said the life is 250,000 miles with good maintenance, but for $20,000 more it should run for 500,000 miles, how many people would choose the longer life option? Lift pumps and engine alloys and longer duty cycle components cost money to build.
I do respect your opinion on this, and not saying I'm right, you well may be, just has not been my impression. In fact it seems to me that many cars are relatively maintenance free for longer lifespans than a few decades ago.
I think then that our differences of opinion come down to what the two of us consider to be a reasonable life for a vehicle, and the costs required to increase that life significantly.
Lift pumps are cheap to manufacture and are used in most vehicles with fuel injection already; neglecting to add this to the CRD, which had an MSRP that was already higher than it should have been, amounts to penny pinching on the part of Daimler Chrysler. Casting an aluminum head is probably more expensive than casting one in nodular iron; the reason to do this was to save weight on the engine and to introduce a foreshortened life expectancy from the engine. Other longer duty cycle components are expensive, but not unreasonably so.
Cars indeed do enjoy longer lifespans than they did decades ago, but the reasons were not because of planned obsolescence or the lack of it. It has more to do with the lack of refinement in manufacturing techniques, engineering mistakes, lack of development of proper supporting systems and fluids, and other such things.
I know currently that manufacturers have the ability to produce vehicles that can easily last as long as 500,000 miles. They do not produce such vehicles for the reasons I explained above; that being planned obsolescence with the end game of getting you into another vehicle within 6 years. Although, from time to time auto manufacturers have deviated from planned obsolescence by producing vehicles that seem to never die. Dodge pickup trucks with the first and second generation Cummins 5.9L engines are perhaps the best example of this… there are 30 year old D250s still operational after well over 1,000,000 miles accumulated on them. Why is this? Because Dodge didn’t have the money at the time to develop their own consumer grade diesel engine, so they simply borrowed this relatively small diesel engine from Cummins and dropped it in the Dodge heavy duty pickup truck chassis. This engine is true commercial diesel engine… iron head, iron block with gear driven cams; just the way I like it.
Regarding planned obsolescence… employment of cheap parts designed to not last very long is one culprit I can point to. For example, one time I had the driver’s door inside handle of my 2011 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 fail on me when I was trying to exit the vehicle. I got out of the vehicle by lowering my window and releasing the door using the outside handle. When I took the vehicle to the dealership to get this handle replaced under warranty, I was SHOCKED at how thin and flimsy the release mechanism was. It was essentially a VERY thin cable that had a plastic pellet molded on the end of it that pulled a lever to release the latch. This part was sooo cheaply made they did not even use a lead ball in the end of a cable, but a small plastic ball that must of cost GM all of 1/10 of 1 penny. What bothered me was these door handles are essentially a safety item that I should be able to rely on in case I need to get out of the vehicle in an emergency… what if my truck was on fire?
Emphasis on lowering vehicle weight above all other considerations is another culprit, with the manufacturer’s advertising department espousing dubious claims of increased fuel economy with the lighter weight engine and other components. Lighter weight parts can be made quite durable, but then those parts can get expensive. Auto manufacturers tend to simply make the parts lighter and allow the consumers to put up with the shorter life expectancy of that part. I’ll take the heavier, longer lasting part; thank you.
There are three upgrades or features available to any internal combustion engine that can be employed to double or triple the life expectancy of those engines. To this I will add the caveat that these engines are of good design, are operational and have no pending failures to contend with. The technologies for these upgrades already exist, are readily available and are relatively inexpensive. All of these upgrades are already commonly found on those million dollar industrial engines I posted about earlier…
1) Install an engine preheater of some kind to preheat the engine before starting it up.
2) Install a bypass oil filter or an oil spinner to keep the engine oil perpetually clean using super fine filtering media, (good), or by separating pollutants out of oil using centrifugal force, (better).
3) Install a 12 Volt, 100% duty cycle oil pump to pre-pressurise the oiling system before starting it up.
The benefits of the above three upgrades should be apparent to all gear-heads. These are researched and well established technologies that are readily available and inexpensive to employ in all vehicles that would not increase the price of a vehicle significantly. Certainly not the $20,000.00 you were referring to, and probably not even as little as $3000.00.
The support systems I believe that would greatly extend the life of any internal combustion engine and should be mandated by the EPA to be designed into all vehicles are...
1) Fuel fired engine coolant heaters. Preheating an engine before starting it will significantly increase the life of the engine. A hot start every time is very good for your engine. Engine coolant heaters will cut down engine idling for warm-up to practically zero. Idling is currently necessary to warm up your engine before placing a load on it, but there are negative side effects of this… wear on the engine being the worst. Reduction of idling will also reduce overall emissions and fuel consumption because running a coolant heater is way more efficient than idling the engine to warm it up. Engine oil life is also extended.
Currently a Webasto Thermo Top C in the 923369 universal installation kit can be purchased for well under $1000.00 retail; if they are universally employed in all vehicles that price would drop by at least 50%; perhaps significantly more. They would also already be installed in vehicles. The EPA and CARB already recommend them, why have they not mandated them to be in all vehicles?
https://www.webasto.com/fileadmin/webas ... -top-c.pdf2) Super fine media for filtering oil has been around for many years. Oil spinners have not been around as long, but similar devices have been used in other industries and in medicine for decades now. Kim Jong Un uses them to create weapons grade uranium, (an admittedly cheeky example). The benefits from installing either system are significant and numerous. You get much cleaner oil lubricating your engine and a better method of carrying away and trapping wear inducing pollutants out of your engine. There are far fewer oil changes, thus saving the owner money. There is also a smaller burden on the environment, and therefore should be something positive for the EPA to mandate, (for a change from the B.S. legislation they currently push!). A bypass filtering kit can be purchased from several manufacturers for well under $500.00. If kits were already installed from the factory, I suspect these parts would retail for about 30% of the current retail price.
https://www.amsoil.com/bypass/how-it-works.aspxOil spinners or centrifuges are between $400.00 and $1500.00, depending upon the size. The smallest spinner is a Model 25 manufactured by T.F. Hudgins Engine & Industrial Products, and its price is $452.99. However, oil spinners are currently not made for engines that are under 4 L of displacement. This makes it difficult to use them in most passenger vehicles, as spinners are designed to use the excess capacity of the engine’s lubrication circuit to run them. Go too small on the engine, and there is not enough excess capacity to run the spinner – or worse yet – you run the risk of starving your engine of needed pressurised oil. However, you CAN design a separate engine lubricating circuit to run the spinner using a 12 Volt 100% duty cycle engine oil pump that does double duty as the engine pre-lubrication pump I describe below.
http://www.spinnerii.com/index.cfm/lev1 ... fuge.Workshttps://www.iowa80.com/pd/spinner-ii-25 ... ps/154022/Oil spinners would be made in more sizes to accommodate more vehicles if this were mandated by the EPA to be put in all vehicles, with the environment’s best interests coming into play. The price would then drop dramatically due to a much larger economy of scale.
Of the two systems, the spinner is superior and does not even require the changing of filters, just the removal of the “cake” that forms on the inside of the spinner’s cover.
3) 12 Volt, 100% duty cycle engine oil pre-lubrication pumps. The benefits are obvious… pressurizing your engine’s lubrication system before it even starts eliminates a good deal of the wear on your engine. As gearheads, we have all had it drilled into our heads that most of the wear on an engine happens at start up because the bearings have no pressurized lubrication until the main oil pump has had time to deliver said pressurised oil to the bearings. A pre-lubrication system eliminates that concern.
If you are using a bypass filter, your 12 Volt pre-lubrication pump does not have to be 100% duty cycle because it does not need to run the oil spinner. The pump price can therefore be significantly less… about $250.00 for a good one. If you are running the spinner, you are going to want a 100% duty cycle pump, and they go for $400.00 to $500.00. Again the principle of economies of scale can be applied to these costs if manufacturers were to be forced to install them on vehicles, and the prices you see would drop dramatically.
http://50.62.235.225/files/pump.pdf There you have it, Dave01; three significant upgrades that can triple the life of your CRD engine. Even with the most expensive case scenario, these three upgrades would cost you no more than $1952.99 if you are willing to do the work yourself. There are other parts to purchase, like the Sasquatch Parts battery tray that allows you to install the Webasto heater underneath the battery, hoses, a solenoid driven oil switch to re-route oil from pre-pressurizing the engine to running the spinner, some wiring to run a circuit to operate the solenoid… but I am quite sure the bill would be well under $3000.00. And that is without the benefit of economies of scale. You can half that price if all of these upgrades were already designed in to a well thought out long lasting vehicle that you could rely on to last a full 25 years.