Really ?

[slow-poke]

Interesting video. Horrendous service, not my experience at Lexus.

Some of these cars are sophisticated well beyond the capabilities of the technicians.

 

[slow-poke]

The moment the revelation that the car was in an accident was announced you can assume the shoddy repair is the problem. I was expecting an unplugged plug, but no it was just a missing bulb.

My Lexus tells me when a bulb is out, at one point I had an intermittent filament in one of the small marker lights, annoying but the marker light finally decided to stay unlit for long enough that I could spot it. My Lexus is a 2005 and I have done one trivial repair. I don't want to drive anything else simply for the peace of mind.

 

[trevj]

Enjoy this...

Bah! Managed to post my reply in Post # 280, as if it was part of Susq's post...

Which was... "You should trust me on this, but as the victim of several general design Day-Glow abortions, in the few aircraft types I worked upon spanning early 1950's tech, up to reasonably present day, nobody I ever dealt with thought Engineers were seeking fame, as much as showing their absolute ignorance on the day to day issues of being able to maintain that aircraft! the going opinion was, that these guys had not so much as seen a wrench, let alone laid hands on one..."

 

[YotaBota]

You can't blame the engineers for lazy technicians and greedy shop owners. I hope Toyota head office got an earful, reimbursed the customer for all the cost and then charged that cost back to the original dealership for their ineptitude.

 

[Elektrishun]

Interesting video. Horrendous service, not my experience at Lexus.

Some of these cars are sophisticated well beyond the capabilities of the technician.

I was watching an episode of Restoration Garage the other day and a couple of guys were troubleshooting an older model Jag's wiring harness. Supposedly it took 3 weeks to get it all sorted and to determine what was salvageable and what needed replacing. No average person could afford that level of service and likely no average garage would want to go to that length. But for those restoration guys 3 weeks is nothing when it might take several years to restore a car to the level that their customers are paying for.

At a typical shop it might not be beyond some tech's capability as much as it comes down to a balance of "how far do we take this before it no longer makes sense financially for the customer".

Then again, I heard a first hand account of someone's experience with their modern Volkswagen's engine leaking significant amounts of oil. I believe it was in the dealership's service center 5 times. The last time it went in they replaced the engine. I suspect that after the first couple of times it went back he was thinking "this has to be the last time". Then it becomes a matter of do you cut your loses after committing x amount of money or keep going? He decided to keep throwing money at it. Fairly certain the total bill was getting close to the value of the vehicle by the time it was finally fixed.

 

[slow-poke]

Some people excel at troubleshooting, while others never master it.

The poor troubleshooters often take a scatter gun approach instead of following a methodical path. That being said if you don't truly understand how the defective machine/circuit works you probably will by the time you fix it.

Perfect example is the Lexus video. The problem was a missing light bulb. The guy that found it had a logical approach to finding the problem, however it took him a while because initially he didn't understand how that system worked. He wasted time disassembling an entire bumper when those "bird brain engineers" went to the trouble to make a little under the hood accesable flap to access the bulb in 60 seconds.

I have no clue how well the dealership technicians are trained by the manufacturer on all of these new (sophisticated) systems? I would imagine the training is available, but to what extent the dealership is willing to pay for it and to what extent the technicians they have hired are capable of absorbing that material is the wild card.

I paid my way through college by fixing hundreds of (not worth fixing) color TVs, troubleshooting down to what was usually a $1 component. In the beginning I had a pretty limited understanding of how a TV works, by the end I could find the root cause very quickly most of the time.

 

[trevj]

Interesting video. Horrendous service, not my experience at Lexus.

Some of these cars are sophisticated well beyond the capabilities of the technicians.

Thus forms the basis for my not wanting to be the guinea pig, at the bleeding edge of new tech. I would much rather see an established reliability rating in place, long before I look at involving it in my life! I recently bought myself a Toyota Tacoma. While I could have afforded the new model, it has a brand new engine in it, that is both turbocharged, and pretty heavily loaded (IIRC< 275 or so HP out of a 4 cyl motor), and frankly, until it has Years on it, I am not interested...

Crash damage or no, that the dealership techs were not able to change a frikken light bulb, is both on the Dealership for hiring the stupid, AND on the Designers, for making it far more complicated than it needs to be, if the owner is not able to do the job intuitively, without any more reference material than a basic list of the Light bulb numbers, in various locations, it was poorly thought out or designed, IMO.

That does not even begin to touch on manufacturers making poor and unsupportable decisions in regard to their products. @jcdammeyer could tell you of his torturous experiences... Or maybe he has, given that he was going through them before I knew of the existence of this site. The rough outline was that he had spent a considerable sum on a diesel car, that the failed parts were simply unavailable for, with expected waits ranging from months to years, if at all. while it was still in Warranty... His experiences, and others like his, leading directly, to the opinions stated in the first paragraph...

 

[Susquatch]

Some people excel at troubleshooting, while others never master it.

The poor troubleshooters often take a scatter gun approach instead of following a methodical path. That being said if you don't truly understand how the defective machine/circuit works you probably will by the time you fix it.

When I bought the farm here, I needed a row crop tractor. A salesman at the local Deere dealer knew me through his dad. He told me that they had this tractor from hell. It chewed through batteries intermittently. Every repair guy's enemy is intermittent problems. They had tried to fix it for months and ended up putting the previous owner into a new tractor.

He said I could have it for half what it was worth if I could fix it myself. Best of all, he said they would take it back if I couldn't.

I was newly retired and full of piss and vinegar back then so I took it.

My first clue was some black magic smoke on the AC compressor housing. Classic high current shorting. But to what? A hanging lighting wire from the hood hit it perfectly - sometimes. Open the hood, no short. Close it, and "sometimes" magic smoke. I fixed the wire and properly dressed it. But still no joy.

On a hunch, I checked all the fuses. It's the obvious thing a farmer would do. Change fuses whenever the wire shorted, then get tired of doing that, and put a bigger one in. Sure enough, there was a bigger one in the lighting circuit - and a smaller one a few circuits over. So I made them both right and checked the whole box. Lots were wrong - sheesh. Farmers can be Fk Heads.

But sadly, still no joy. So I pulled them all and started methodically checking every circuit. Lots didn't make sense.

That's when I discovered a back feed in the harness. Continuity from one feed to another where it shouldn't be. Probably a short buried in the harness. Nothing obvious externally, so I pulled the whole harness and then focussed on the thickest parts where heat can get trapped and melt insulation. Sure enough, two circuits fused together. So I fixed that and then rechecked the harness. All good. Put it all back together and still no joy.

Now what? I forgot to mention earlier that the dealer had given me the service manual on a CD. So I started drawing out my circuit (based on testing) and comparing that to the factory drawing. A few circuits didn't match. But I know how those service manuals are prepared. Had to be a manufacturing running change or human error. It turned out that an error had been made on the fuse box layout. I fixed that on my tractor and bingo - an almost new tractor half off.

I fed that info back through the service network, which ended with a visit from an engineer at Deere. He agreed with my assessment and said he would get the manual fixed.

Normally, nobody would ever have known if everyone had done what they should have done. But a cascade of errors starting with a farmer swapping fuses out with bigger ones led to a fiasco.

For anyone who followed all this, I have a tip for you. Replace all your fuses with lighted ones.

https://a.co/d/4W7x7Sa

The fuse lights up when the fuse blows so you instantly know that a fuse is blown and which one it is. Fantastic advantage - especially on boats and travel trailers which are much more prone to shorts than cars and trucks.

And I hope I don't need to say "Never replace one size fuse with a bigger one. NEVER." Find and fix the root problem instead.

 

[slow-poke]

When I bought the farm here, I needed a row crop tractor. A salesman at the local Deere dealer knew me through his dad. He told me that they had this tractor from hell. It chewed through batteries intermittently. Every repair guy's enemy is intermittent problems. They had tried to fix it for months and ended up putting the previous owner into a new tractor.

He said I could have it for half what it was worth if I could fix it myself. Best of all, he said they would take it back if I couldn't.

I was newly retired and full of piss and vinegar back then so I took it.

My first clue was some black magic smoke on the AC compressor housing. Classic high current shorting. But to what? A hanging lighting wire from the hood hit it perfectly - sometimes. Open the hood, no short. Close it, and "sometimes" magic smoke. I fixed the wire and properly dressed it. But still no joy.

On a hunch, I checked all the fuses. It's the obvious thing a farmer would do. Change fuses whenever the wire shorted, then get tired of doing that, and put a bigger one in. Sure enough, there was a bigger one in the lighting circuit - and a smaller one a few circuits over. So I made them both right and checked the whole box. Lots were wrong - sheesh. Farmers can be Fk Heads.

But sadly, still no joy. So I pulled them all and started methodically checking every circuit. Lots didn't make sense.

That's when I discovered a back feed in the harness. Continuity from one feed to another where it shouldn't be. Probably a short buried in the harness. Nothing obvious externally, so I pulled the whole harness and then focussed on the thickest parts where heat can get trapped and melt insulation. Sure enough, two circuits fused together. So I fixed that and then rechecked the harness. All good. Put it all back together and still no joy.

Now what? I forgot to mention earlier that the dealer had given me the service manual on a CD. So I started drawing out my circuit (based on testing) and comparing that to the factory drawing. A few circuits didn't match. But I know how those service manuals are prepared. Had to be a manufacturing running change or human error. It turned out that an error had been made on the fuse box layout. I fixed that on my tractor and bingo - an almost new tractor half off.

I fed that info back through the service network, which ended with a visit from an engineer at Deere. He agreed with my assessment and said he would get the manual fixed.

Normally, nobody would ever have known if everyone had done what they should have done. But a cascade of errors starting with a farmer swapping fuses out with bigger ones led to a fiasco.

For anyone who followed all this, I have a tip for you. Replace all your fuses with lighted ones.

https://a.co/d/4W7x7Sa

The fuse lights up when the fuse blows so you instantly know that a fuse is blown and which one it is. Fantastic advantage - especially on boats and travel trailers which are much more prone to shorts than cars and trucks.

And I hope I don't need to say "Never replace one size fuse with a bigger one. NEVER." Find and fix the root problem instead.

Good job, tricky when the schematic is wrong. I'm guessing you were paid $1k/hr for your troubles;-) Love it!

 

[Bandit]

Have to watch that”brought the farm” bit, where I come from, that ment you is dead!
When we first got the present Jeep, the seat heat failed, while still under warranty. We took it in, they said nothing wrong with it. Bull shit, the seat does not warm up. Their reply was that “the tech did not find anything when hooked up to the computer”. They did not like it when I offered to show them how to troubleshoot the problem, as I told them, first you turn the key on, then push the power switch for seat heat, look to see if the lite comes on, put hand or a$$ on seat. If you can not feel the seat getting warm, it ain’t working. Don’t need a computer to find that out!
As I had already checked for power going to the seat and had such, checked the seat with ohm meter, had no complete circuit in seat, broken wire? Done a bit of searching on “web”, a common problem with the seat heating grid, a broken wire in it. But hey warranty, you know! Ended up they got me a new heating grid, I skinned the old one off the seat, put new one on, and the better half was happy again. So much for warranty and trained techs at that dealership!
Brought a tractor from a neighbour, well used, but I could afford it, 30 years newer then what I had, and no computers on it, therefore I could fix it! He had told me, battery would not start it if it sat for a week or so. He had put a master disconnect in to stop the problem, still didn’t. Got to checking, an extra light gauge wire on the positive post of battery, what’s that for? Turned out his son had put a radio in and had ran a power wire for it rite from the battery, and this radio never turned fully off. This bypassed the master disconnect and slowly discharged the battery over time, and as an older battery, disconnect the wire and a new battery, problem solved.

 

[jcdammeyer]

That does not even begin to touch on manufacturers making poor and unsupportable decisions in regard to their products. @jcdammeyer could tell you of his torturous experiences... Or maybe he has, given that he was going through them before I knew of the existence of this site. The rough outline was that he had spent a considerable sum on a diesel car, that the failed parts were simply unavailable for, with expected waits ranging from months to years, if at all. while it was still in Warranty... His experiences, and others like his, leading directly, to the opinions stated in the first paragraph...

The long and short of my problem starts with Volkswagen cheating on their pollution stuff with their diesel engines. That rippled down the system to other manufacturers requiring more stringent control for pollution.

Add that cleaning diesel is expensive and that the catalytic converter, for example periodically required a 30 minute drive at high temperatures to get rid of residuals. Short 5 minute drives were not enough to do that so they started seeing failures. And of course those failures resulted in a supply shortage.

And like Volkswagen, the other dealers were also sued and eventually settled. The end result is I receive a cheque for about 1/3 of what I'd spent on repairs not to mention not being able to drive it because of parts shortages. To be fair they did give me a loaner for a month or two but eventually they took that back and magically were able to fix some of it so at least the vehicle was drivable.

Now we're having problems with Linda's 2009 Audi (about 135K on it). A factory recall a few years ago replaced the intake manifold even though there weren't any problems. Then this spring, fault codes on lean mixture had them replace it again. At our cost this time. And then the oil leaks started. To cover their rears after their initial inspection they had listed all the possible places oil could leak out of the engine.

Replace valve cover gasket which isn't really for the valved cover but the entire section of the engine that holds down the cam shafts. Oil leak is still there. Took it back in. Oil is not leaking from replaced gasket. They said they washed the bottom of the engine but couln't see the leak. Seems to me a litre down in just over a month should be a tad more obvious.

So we're going to go to an aftermarket shop for a second opinion. I don't really want to work on her car as she still works part time and my service approach learning as a I go might take it out for a week. And it's not like I haven't rebuilt engines. MG, Datsun, Volvo, SAAB. Just don't want to do that anymore.

 

[slow-poke]

Every time I start looking around for another new (used) car, I'm tempted by the German brands, they have so much going for them; style, braking, handling, technology, then I look at the reliability ratings and just cringe. Mercedes second from last of 30 brands for reliability "Really". Porsche seems to be the exception but pretty pricey. In the end I always revert back to another Toyota and every one of them have been marvels of reliability, eight so far in the family starting with my 73 Corolla that I purchased around about 1980.

I see Mini has really moved up, they use to be at the bottom.

 

[Susquatch]

Mercedes second from last of 30 brands for reliability "Really".

I was part of a focus group 25 years ago or so. What I learned then was that those ratings are so biased that they are basically unusable.

Two examples to illustrate.

First was a pair of models made in the same assembly plant, with the same parts, the same labour, and the same body and suspension. Even the same paint! The only difference was the model and make. One sold in European dealerships as a Japanese brand, and the other sold in North American dealerships as a domestic brand. The warranty and problems on the domestic brand were almost 7x as bad. Even the paint was 7x as bad. How the hell was that possible? We did a really deep dive extracting thousands of repairs and talking to every dealer and every customer. What we found was the expectations were different. Customers buying the domestic car assumed they were crap and demanded repairs. Customers buying the Japanese product assumed that they were as good as they got and no point in repairs.

Another example, this time just looking at price class. Similar story. People buying expensive cars (Mercedes, BMW) were picky picky picky. People buying less costly vehicles of the same brand were not so picky. The replacements on the luxury models for the exact same part numbers were double the same part on the less expensive model. Why? Again expectations drive the survey results.

Bottom line, throw those fancy magazine quality ratings in the garbage. If you need to look at them, consider the customer base before thinking they are meaningful.

 

[slow-poke]

I was part of a focus group 25 years ago or so. What I learned then was that those ratings are so biased that they are basically unusable.

Two examples to illustrate.

First was a pair of models made in the same assembly plant, with the same parts, the same labour, and the same body and suspension. Even the same paint! The only difference was the model and make. One sold in European dealerships as a Japanese brand, and the other sold in North American dealerships as a domestic brand. The warranty and problems on the domestic brand were almost 7x as bad. Even the paint was 7x as bad. How the hell was that possible? We did a really deep dive extracting thousands of repairs and talking to every dealer and every customer. What we found was the expectations were different. Customers buying the domestic car assumed they were crap and demanded repairs. Customers buying the Japanese product assumed that they were as good as they got and no point in repairs.

Another example, this time just looking at price class. Similar story. People buying expensive cars (Mercedes, BMW) were picky picky picky. People buying less costly vehicles of the same brand were not so picky. The replacements on the luxury models for the exact same part numbers were double the same part on the less expensive model. Why? Again expectations drive the survey results.

Bottom line, throw those fancy magazine quality ratings in the garbage. If you need to look at them, consider the customer base before thinking they are meaningful.

Just my personal opinion but I find the JD Power ratings super biased and near useless. I have found CR ratings based on feedback from over 300,000 responses per year from actual consumers about as good a metric that is available. One simple example my daughter drove her 12 year old 2005 Corolla from 2017 until now and it required one $30 part. During that same period her best friend went through two Audis with 1/3 the milage that were < 10 years old and spent probably $10k in repairs during the same period.

Seems pretty consistent with the CR ratings.

 

[Susquatch]

Just my personal opinion but I find the JD Power ratings super biased and near useless. I have found CR ratings based on feedback from over 300,000 responses per year from actual consumers about as good a metric that is available. One simple example my daughter drove her 12 year old 2005 Corolla from 2017 until now and it required one $30 part. During that same period her best friend went through two Audis with 1/3 the milage that were < 10 years old and spent probably $10k in repairs during the same period.

Seems pretty consistent with the CR ratings.

Well, I'm here to disagree.

That's anecdotal. Both are based on consumer feedback, and both useless because they are heavily biased by expectations.

Now if you put 10 machinists into 10 different vehicles blindfolded and asked them to rate something, you might get a pretty good result. Make that engineers and the odds of a good result goes down cuz they would figure out what car they were in. LOL!

 

[Susquatch]

Have to watch that”brought the farm” bit, where I come from, that ment you is dead!

I contemplated having some fun with those words along those lines but ended up getting lost in the story. So it never happened.

Good on you to play with it anyway.

 

[Mike R]

Agree that JD Power is a useless metric -initial customer quality - dealers learned that if they didn't find an issue, its not a reportable issue and ratings go up. See above example of Jeep seat heater. I have other examples where they didn't find the issue - requires a persistent/demanding customer to get the issue recognized which is even more frustrating than them just fixing the issue in the first place.

Consume reports - not bad overall, but I don't see a weighting for major defects versus minor (is there?). To me, the more basic the car the higher its rating can be just due to less stuff to break in the infotainment sphere. Doesn't really mean its going to be more reliable to get you to work, just that its less likely to have any failure of any part. So "luxury" brands like Mercedes and others can be penalized for having too much tech, versus a basic commuter car Toyota that has no features. Its obviously not the whole story as Lexus is up top there but I believe its a big part. I do find it interesting that even the best are below 80 on a scale of 100 - wonder what the overall trend has been for the last 25 years? My guess is downward simply due to the added complexity - there's many reasons that in manufacturing you always want to reduce part count, but failures per what ever (hours, units, etc.) is inevitably higher with more parts.

Statistics is hell, never a good way of making comparisons as everyone wants to measure a different metric.

 

[Chicken lights]

"Never replace one size fuse with a bigger one. NEVER." Find and fix the root problem instead.

Unless it's for diagnostics reasons

 

[whydontu]

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain.

For JD Power rankings, a crooked Toyota emblem that required dealer intervention has the same weight as a complete transmission failure on a Dodge. The numbers don’t reflect severity, only number of complaints.

 

[trevj]

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain.

For JD Power rankings, a crooked Toyota emblem that required dealer intervention has the same weight as a complete transmission failure on a Dodge. The numbers don’t reflect severity, only number of complaints.

Statistics are like Bikinis! What they reveal may well be fascinating, what they conceal, though, might be critical!

I have, over the years, found the Consumer Reports long term reliability and owner satisfaction info to match pretty well with what I experienced and saw those around me experiencing.

One metric that I WOULD like to see tracked and publicly available, is the percentage of the shop time a product line spends doing Warranty repair work. I was dealing with an Investments Advisor who had a lot of dealings with the owners of several Dealerships, he stated that when he asked the GM Dealer he was told that more or less 45% of their shop time went to Warranty work. The local Honda Dealer, got all long in the face when asked, and had answered that for some inexplicable reason, they were half a percentage point over the National Average, at 2.5%...