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Car Forum / GMC Cars / December 2005First Thing I'll Do is Get Rid of the Plastic Engine Covers!
Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out your wretched concern. Doesn't anybody at General Motors have any sense? Plastic engine covers serve no purpose other than to make servicing more difficult and more expensive. Services not done indirectly lead to reliability and safety issues, because on out-of-warranty vehicles, the more expensive the service, the less likely it is to be accomplished. The Government needs to step in and make some design rules, since GM, Ford, and Chrysler refuse. They think these plastic covers somehow make the machinery more "exotic," or more likely, more "intimidating" to do-it-yourselfers, leading to higher dealership service department volume. Well, its all backfired. You are almost in Chapter 11. A revolution at GM headquarters will be needed to save this basket case. First on the agenda is a powerplant layout which ensures five minute R&R of all common servicing components: alternator, fuel injection, starter, water pump, battery, ignition parts. On conventional transmission cars, I want to see a "drop-in clutch plate". That's for a start. The chassis and accessories need equal attention for servicing. A good standard to use is Air Force aircraft servicing specs. My understanding is a jet engine can be R & R'd in 45 minutes flat using a four man crew. On today's cars, once a car is out of warranty, its not economically practical to replace an engine; that's how labor intensive it is. Any decent engineer could write a book on GM cars and what absurdities they are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. If you think you can do so much better, make up a design for your 'perfect' car and get someone to start producing it. GM is not going anywhere, so piss off. >> Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out >> your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] >car and get someone to start producing it. GM is not going anywhere, so piss >off. ooops you must work for GM, but the post makes a lot of good common sense.. > >> Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > >> your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 38 lines] > ooops you must work for GM, but the post makes a lot of good common > sense.. Yes, and anybody that has worked much on vehicles has wondered about the lack of forethought to repairs as well at times. The fact is they plan on about 100K miles or so and don't worry about long term repairs needed beyond warranty. I'd love to see something like a drop in clutch plate and I can envision a couple ways it might work. Such things could be done, but they are of little interest to carmakers. If everything were the way I like, they wouldn't sell as many new cars and what would that do to the market but kill it. >>> Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out >>> your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] > ooops you must work for GM, but the post makes a lot of good common > sense.. Nope, I do not. But, I do live in Oshawa Ontario. You know the place. It has the NUMBER ONE car plant in North and South America. So, you will excuse me if I get a little pissed when idiots like this guy come here and bitch the way he did. What a freekin idiot you are. Stop with the uninformed opinion and research the facts then come back. By the way Skippy, there is a big difference between a 25 million dollar aircraft and a 25 thousand dollar car. The aircraft is for our national defense and the car for leasure. Can you work on your TOYota or VW or BMW? No different than GM. ALL THE SAME! > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > issues, because on out-of-warranty vehicles, the more expensive the > service, the less likely it is to be accomplished. They put those on because all the little imports do so the car magazines fault them if they don't do it. Same with changing the dash to the non-ergonomic center stack design. It takes all over 5 seconds to remove the engine cover from my cars. The water pump is about a 35 minute job, the alternator is about 15 min and the starter is maybe 30 minutes. No way is it going to take 5 minutes on these type of items, maybe a coil on 67 Malibu could be R & R'd in 5 minutes. Harryface 05 Park Avenue, 32,391 91 Bonneville LE 304,555 > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. Well, just about everybody uses them now, so it's not just a GM fault. I've never removed one of those covers, but I've assumed (I know, a dangerous thing) that they contributed to noise suppression. I, like you, would just like to see the engine when I lift the hood. On the few designs that I've looked at, the covers are held on with only a few bolts, so it's probably not a major problem as far as accessibility goes. As far as your insistence that GM provide for easier to repair components, I agree to a point, but in the real world, it's not really practical. Cars are far too complex for that, and that's only going to get worse as time goes by. You could still buy a, say, 1954 Chevy and get a car that's easy to work on, with no plastic covers. But except for a nice Sunday drive to the car show, you would probably not want it for transportation. I do share your concern for GM's financial difficulties. However, that may be because I'm older and I'm influenced by tradition. I'm not sure the younger generations care much about whether the domestic manufacturers will be around in another ten years. It's a changing world and the U.S. economy has shifted from a manufacturing base to a service oriented base. Most of the hot rodders and collectors of classic cars are of the older generations. It would be sad if GM, Ford or Chrysler went under, but if they do, it won't be because of plastic engine covers! Those of us who are older need to adapt to a changing automotive world, and realize that what is under those covers has a lineage traceable back to what we used to know. WW The cover on my 2002 3800 series II comes off in about 2 seconds. The one on my mother's Prizm (really a COROLLA!) takes longer (4 little bolts). What's the big deal? > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. Oh, please - it's obvious just how much you don't know about modern automotive design. Plastic engine covers provide three basic functions: Reduced noise Restrict exposure to moving parts Restrict exposure to hot parts And they cost next to nothing. They do not get in the way of making any repair, accessing any user servicable part or impede any user checks or maintenance. If someone doesn't check their oil or brake fluid, then it's not the fault of a plastic cover. And unless plastic really, really scares you then it doesn't intimidate anyone from doing anything on their car they wouldn't do without a cover, or increase the cost of maintenance. And the last thing we need is more trivial government regulation like regulating plastic engine covers. The next time you try to connect something as silly as a plastic engine cover to the downward slump of GM, try looking under the hood of a new car from any other manufacturer first. Your argument is spurious at best. Of course you can R&R an engine from a fighter in 45 minutes with a 4 man crew. At $30M per plane I'm surprised it doesn't come with candy and a stripper also, but at $25k for a car you get what you pay for. The only good thing about your rants is even though they are not well thought-out, they are at least on topic. However, I would strongly suggest that you take your high blood pressure medication as the doctor instructed. > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. How about them starting with something simple - like using all metric or all SAE fasteners. When I work on my wife's Honda, I know what set of wrenches I'll need when I crawl under the car. Al > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. > How about them starting with something simple - like using all metric or > all SAE fasteners. When I work on my wife's Honda, I know what set of > wrenches I'll need when I crawl under the car. > > Al my Chevies are all metric, don't even have a set of SAE wrenches. > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. > > Doesn't anybody at General Motors have any sense? Plastic engine covers > serve no purpose other than to make servicing more difficult and more > expensive. That depends on how the cover is attached. Services not done indirectly lead to reliability and safety > issues, because on out-of-warranty vehicles, the more expensive the > service, the less likely it is to be accomplished. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > machinery more "exotic," or more likely, more "intimidating" to > do-it-yourselfers, leading to higher dealership service department volume. anyone intimidated by a plastic engine cover shouldn't be working on their own car. Ted Nice complaints. Problem is that they apply to virtually all the car companies and are most certainly NOT the reason for the Big Three's problems. Wrong tree, mate. > Chairman and CEO Rick Waggoner, I want your job!! I can straighten out > your wretched concern. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > are. Up one side and down the other, they are monstrous from the word go. > Too late to save GM, I'm afraid. >accessories need equal attention for servicing. A good standard to use is >Air Force aircraft servicing specs. My understanding is a jet engine can >be R & R'd in 45 minutes flat using a four man crew. On today's cars, >once a car is out of warranty, its not economically practical to replace an >engine; that's how labor intensive it is. It depends on which jet engine you look at. They aren't all the same in time requirements. Besides, military jet engines and car engines, aside from converting fuel into motion, have few design goals in common. Airmen are highly skilled and trained but work cheap. I wonder what it would cost to have equivalent levels work done in a car dealership. |
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