alfadriver said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
You can look at that argument another way- car A requires work every X,y, and z miles or it will break down. Car b requires less work every y miles. Most people will agree that the car that needs less work is more reliable.
For the context of this discussion this sums up my personal attitude.
I know it's not logical in the true sense of the word but it's where I am at.
In reply to Nathan JansenvanDoorn :
Exactly. Can I rely on it? Yes? Then it's reliable. Is it high maintenance? Well, that's something I accepted when I bought it. My Dodge diesel is fairly high maintenance because it works very hard, but it's been rock solid reliable over the past decade and I will not hesitate to hook 6 tons to the hitch and drive it across multiple states and significant mountain passes.
There was a big Miata event in Moab a few years back (okay, I think it was 2003). One of the participants hadn't kept up with maintenance and their timing belt broke during the event. NA Miatas are reliable cars (especially when they're less than 10 years old) but a lack of maintenance had made it unreliable. Completely ruined the weekend for him, of course, never mind the expense and challenge of trying to find someone to change a Miata timing belt in a small off-roading town in the Utah desert. That more than overcame the money saved by not maintaining the car.
Tom, you're looking for low maintenance. Or, given the fact that you're ignoring a future CV failure with that ripped boot, something that will take a lot of punishment despite a lack of care. I'd call that fault tolerant or robust, not reliable.
Keith Tanner said:Tom, you're looking for low maintenance. Or, given the fact that you're ignoring a future CV failure with that ripped boot, something that will take a lot of punishment despite a lack of care. I'd call that fault tolerant or robust, not reliable.
I would agree it's more accurate to say abusing living / fault tolerant than unreliable but nevertheless in my mind that is an element of what I personally deem reliable.
I like vehicles that will tolerate some level of neglect. When I was younger and near broke, it was nice to know I could milk something until the next payday.
These days I don't need to do that but the habit is still there.
What you need is a 66 Dart with a slant six and manual transmission.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
We had a 73 Valiant Scamp with a slant six...........my father abused that car. We sold it off at 150K and they young guy who bought it put another 40K on it.
This discussion highlights the differences in opinion in what makes a vehicle reliable.
As I see it there are a couple different philosophies and in very general terms:
The Germans design a car to be 'reliable' assuming you're going to follow all maintenance guidelines on the strict schedule.
The Japanese design a car to be reliable assuming you're going to ignore it.
This is of course a broad generalization, but helps explain why people claim their BMW is reliable despite requiring rod bearing replacement at set intervals, etc. That's not 'reliable' for the guy that can't kill his Camry that hasn't seen an oil change in half a decade.
nuthunmuch said:This discussion highlights the differences in opinion in what makes a vehicle reliable.
As I see it there are a couple different philosophies and in very general terms:
The Germans design a car to be 'reliable' assuming you're going to follow all maintenance guidelines on the strict schedule.
The Japanese design a car to be reliable assuming you're going to ignore it.
This is of course a broad generalization, but helps explain why people claim their BMW is reliable despite requiring rod bearing replacement at set intervals, etc. That's not 'reliable' for the guy that can't kill his Camry that hasn't seen an oil change in half a decade.
This sums up my attitude perfectly..........I was laughing when I read it.
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:What you need is a 66 Dart with a slant six and manual transmission.
My current '66 Falcon project car came with a six but a C4 automatic. Odometer showed 123,000 miles. It was owned by a little old lady that quit driving it when she was 93 and had owned it since the 1970s. Everything, and I mean everything, was worn out on this car...except the engine, which used no oil and didn't smoke. Suspension was shot, transmission was shedding clutch material, rear axle made noise. Yet, the car would still start and 'proceed' every time you asked it to. So, was it reliable or unreliable? The parts were worn out after about 100,000 miles (of little to no maintenance) but the car still functioned.
The upside to it was the parts it needed were, without exception, cheap to buy and easy to install. That cannot be said about any modern car.
The appliances have spoiled people.
Through the malaise era people would change oil every 3k miles on an American car and still be impressed when 100k miles was exceeded. The odometer only had 5 digits left of the decimal, and like DDavidv's falcon it might be the engine, but other components were worn out.
Now we don't change spark plugs before 100k miles on many cars. Fluids are not expected to be changed on some transmissions, and don't even have dipsticks on transmissions.
I wouldn't call a performance engine that requires bearings to be changed before 100k miles to be unreliable, as long as it doesn't fail at random intervals.
Engineering is a balancing act and choices need to be made about performance, weight, size, maintenance, service life, cost, etc.
An easier example to demonstrate this is tires. A 200tw tire is going to have higher grip than a 700tw tire, but need to be replaced sooner.
Does that make it unreliable? No, the tradeoff of total mileage for performance is part of the part of the design tradeoff made to meet user needs. If the tire failed randomly during that service life then it's unreliable.
Nathan JansenvanDoorn said:In reply to alfadriver :
I think that depends on if that surprise left you stranded. If you buy a car knowing that maintenance is going to be expensive, that doesn't make it unreliable. A surprise repair, by definition, suggests unreliability.
from Cambridge:
Reliable: Someone or something that is reliable can be trusted or believed because he, she, or it works or behaves well in the way you expect.
I understand that viewpoint. But in terms of a consumer, having 3 expensive repairs when you know they will be needed vs one that you don't. Unless the car is spectacular, consumers don't really get the extra work as being good.
Many brands have gotten horrible reputations because consumers don't want to do the required work. And all of a sudden, reliable well kept cars are suddenly unreliable POSs.
And that desire to not pay for work has resulted in some pretty amazing jumps over the last 50 years. First, valve adjustments went away, then points, then plug wires, and plugs don't need changed for over 100k miles. Trans oil changes become less frequent, and now engine oil changes have. All of that makes cars that are fine but require regular maintenance become unreliable compared to a car that you just have to do simple oil changes once a year.
This thread is the definition of a word vs the consumer perception and the consumer wins despite what Webster says.
Yamaha made a maxiscooter that had an expensive major service somewhere in the low 5 digit mileage range. It was not uncommon to see them for sale right around that point, as the service was often more than the bike was worth at that point, As I understand, most of the cost was labor for disassembly/reassembly, so if you didn't mind doing that yourself, it was a cheap way to get a nice scooter.
I still wouldn't say it was unreliable, just that a lot of people weren't paying attention to the service intervals when they bought it. Which, with a non high performance Japanese bike, I don't entirely blame them.
In reply to No Time :
Sure, in the past people did it, but were not happy spending the money. As soon as one OEM started making cars need less work, everyone had to follow the same path.
Calling a car an appliance is only a dig in the tiny enthusiast world of cars. Otherwise, it's exactly what consumers require.
Would my GL350 be considered reliable if Mercedes simply added the following to the maintenance schedule in the manual:
- Every 40,000 miles: replace air suspension compressor, rear air bags, and front air bags
- Every 50,000 miles: have the rear moonroof removed, resealed, and re-installed
- Every 70,000 miles: pull the engine, disassemble it, clean out all the carbon build-up, replace the timing chain, replace all the bearings, re-ring the pistons, and seal it all back up before dropping it back in
- Every 100,000 miles: replace DEF tank and DPF
- Every 150,000 miles: replace transmission
If you did those things, in addition to the other items in the book, I don't think you'd find yourself with very many surprise repairs. It might make it rather cost-prohibitive to own, though...
This is an interesting discussion. I tend to favor cars that require minimal maintenance for my daily driver stuff. I also have a good sense of mechanical sympathy (at least I think I do) and tend to get a lot of miles out of my vehicles with minimal maintenance. I keep up with oil changes, timing belts, and other critical maintenance, but most other things are on an as-needed basis. If I get less than 200k before needing major work, I'm not thrilled.
The distinction between maintenance intensive and unreliable is valid. For me, a car that needs rod bearings at 100k would be a non-starter as a daily. As long as that's advertised up front, I can accept that it's not unreliable. For a sunny day car, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. When I was racing regularly, I never had any problem with frequent rebuilds/maintenance to keep my stuff reliable. I just don't want to do that for my daily.
No Time said:The appliances have spoiled people.
Through the malaise era people would change oil every 3k miles on an American car and still be impressed when 100k miles was exceeded. The odometer only had 5 digits left of the decimal, and like DDavidv's falcon it might be the engine, but other components were worn out.
Now we don't change spark plugs before 100k miles on many cars. Fluids are not expected to be changed on some transmissions, and don't even have dipsticks on transmissions.
I blame leasing for a lot of it. Manufactures have a huge business in leasing and even include service in it for some makes. They have a big incentive to push required services out past leases. They don't want the perception that the car is expensive to maintain just before they turn it in. That's how we end up with "lifetime" fluids or service intervals that are more about making sure they don't come up for the first owner than the lifetime reliability of the car. Heck my x5 doesn't have drain plugs for the diffs.
In reply to nuthunmuch :
"The Germans design a car to be 'reliable' assuming you're going to follow all maintenance guidelines on the strict schedule.
The Japanese design a car to be reliable assuming you're going to ignore it".
The key word here is DESIGN. As in "Let's build it this way".
theruleslawyer said:No Time said:The appliances have spoiled people.
Through the malaise era people would change oil every 3k miles on an American car and still be impressed when 100k miles was exceeded. The odometer only had 5 digits left of the decimal, and like DDavidv's falcon it might be the engine, but other components were worn out.
Now we don't change spark plugs before 100k miles on many cars. Fluids are not expected to be changed on some transmissions, and don't even have dipsticks on transmissions.
I blame leasing for a lot of it. Manufactures have a huge business in leasing and even include service in it for some makes. They have a big incentive to push required services out past leases. They don't want the perception that the car is expensive to maintain just before they turn it in. That's how we end up with "lifetime" fluids or service intervals that are more about making sure they don't come up for the first owner than the lifetime reliability of the car. Heck my x5 doesn't have drain plugs for the diffs.
My 1966 Cadillac doesn't have a drain plug for the transmission either, but it needs regular fluid changes :)
You guys know that the "100k rod bearings" in the BMW engine are something the community have decided is necessary for cars that are having the nuts revved off them frequently, right? It's not a BMW service interval and it's not a daily driver thing. Just like how JG having to change out the whole oiling system in his BMW track car wasn't a BMW requirement, it was something an advisor had decided was necessary for hard track use.
"Reliability" and a PITA maintenance schedule are two different things. And it's all relative.
A NHRA Top Fuel engine usually needs to be broken down after every pass to replace internals. For its intended purpose, that's normal and part of the maintenance schedule. If you had to do that to a daily driver every time you drove it, well, that would suck.
Similarly, I had been considering getting an Alfa Romeo Milano for a little while as a fun, cheap daily driver when one popped up locally for sale. Being Italian, there's always this itch I want to scratch about getting a proper Italian car. Then I looked up the maintenance schedule and realized the timing belt needs to be changed every 20k miles or something absurdly short like that. And I'm sure the process is not exactly easy and requires a menagerie of special tools and a lot of cursing/hand gestures, because Italian (we have a certain flair for drama). If it were a sunny day driver I put 2k on, I might be able to live with it, but that would mean yearly timing belt changes for me, and that puts it squarely in the PITA zone for its intended purpose.
Someone in here said it best earlier: on a regular car, if you have to open up the engine before 200k and replace internals, then that makes it unreliable. I would have to agree.
In reply to wae :
Would my GL350 be considered reliable if Mercedes simply added the following to the maintenance schedule in the manual:
- Every 40,000 miles: replace air suspension compressor, rear air bags, and front air bags
- Every 50,000 miles: have the rear moonroof removed, resealed, and re-installed
- Every 70,000 miles: pull the engine, disassemble it, clean out all the carbon build-up, replace the timing chain, replace all the bearings, re-ring the pistons, and seal it all back up before dropping it back in
- Every 100,000 miles: replace DEF tank and DPF
- Every 150,000 miles: replace transmission
If you did those things, in addition to the other items in the book, I don't think you'd find yourself with very many surprise repairs. It might make it rather cost-prohibitive to own, though...
This sums it up perfectly for me. Any car can be "reliable" if you replace all of the failure points preemptively before their fail.
I put lots of trouble free miles on DSM's, cars most would consider unreliable. I changed out pretty much everything made of rubber in the engine bay every 60k miles with the t-belt and water pump. If I didn't do that, I'd suffer continuous random failures, which would make it unreliable compared to other cars that don't require that level of service.
Now as others have pointed out, reliability is apples and oranges if you are comparing vehicles with different use cases. If you compare an M3, a diesel truck, and a Prius, it's easy to say the Prius would be the most reliable of the three as a commute vehicle. But it wouldn't be happy on a track and would not make it very far with a 20,000lb trailer hitched to it.
I have one of those 8000 rpm BMW v10 motors. If you want to play with this kind of car you have to be willing to accept what it takes to maintain it. Don't complain about it. You also have to have mechanical sympathy. No hard pulls until the oil is up to temp. If you want to play with an F1 derived V10 there are some trad offs.
Toyota makes great appliances that are so boring but boring usually means it is driven calmly, carefully with the RPMs probably never getting over 3500. You could argue that Toyotas reputation of reliability is due to them being boring penilty box's of bland. It is almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Just look at the Cammery that GRM tried to take to the track. Probibly the most un reliable car ever (for that use case).
Volvos are the same with respect to safety. They have a reputation for being safe. So they are purchased by people that want safe cars. People that want safe cars are usually risk adverse and conservative in there driving style so they get in to less accidents. Less accidents means lower injury's or deaths. So statistically they become a safer car. Another car that is a self fulfilling prophecy.
If you neglect cars and at the same time drive them like it owns you money and then say it is unreliable you need to look in the mirror and maybe see the root cause of your cars unreliability.
Another way cars get the reputation for being "unreliable" is the heavy depreciation that many of the German cars see. They then get purchased by people that have an appetite for steak but live on a Mac a cheese budget. Maintenance gets skipped and the car fails and the next thing you know they are on the internet saying the car is an unreliable pos. Proper maintenance of anything is key. Don't confuse high maintenance with unreliable. Two totally different things.
Lazyness also contributes to things. Lazy peoples cars become unreliable because they are lazy and don't do the maintenance. Some very wealthy friends of mine are like this. Drives me nuts. One I know will trade in his car for a new one just so he does not have to deal with maintenance. Ever two years or so trades in his car and gets a new one. Just crazy.
In reply to dean1484 :
Those are all very valid points but where they don't work for me is there are plenty of manufacturers that offer similar performance that don't have those issues.
A fellow racer once told me the story abut the head of Maico Motorcycles asking why Americans referred to his bikes as Maico break-o. It had to be explained that Americans tend to throw their bikes in the mud, stuff them in the garage and then drag them out again for the next ride.
I don't think the German manufacturers comprehend this............just as I don't comprehend why I can't neglect them. My Datsun and Yamaha tolerate this kind of abuse.
Not saying it's logical but it's where I'm at.
Keith Tanner said:You guys know that the "100k rod bearings" in the BMW engine are something the community have decided is necessary for cars that are having the nuts revved off them frequently, right? It's not a BMW service interval and it's not a daily driver thing. Just like how JG having to change out the whole oiling system in his BMW track car wasn't a BMW requirement, it was something an advisor had decided was necessary for hard track use.
Which makes me even more likely to think of them as less reliable and or less robust. LOL
The 225 ci slant six in my dad's '68 Dodge Coronet checked the box on being robust and almost sneered at neglect.
Too bad the unibody to which it was attached surrendered to the tin worm.
Tom1200 said:In reply to dean1484 :
Those are all very valid points but where they don't work for me is there are plenty of manufacturers that offer similar performance that don't have those issues.
A fellow racer once told me the story abut the head of Maico Motorcycles asking why Americans referred to his bikes as Maico break-o. It had to be explained that Americans tend to throw their bikes in the mud, stuff them in the garage and then drag them out again for the next ride.
I don't think the German manufacturers comprehend this............just as I don't comprehend why I can't neglect them. My Datsun and Yamaha tolerate this kind of abuse.
Not saying it's logical but it's where I'm at.
I want to live in your alternative universe. ;-).
I'll try to find the treatise someone wrote a long way back about Fiats and VWs, back when all VWs were aircooled and Fiat sold cars in the US.
The gist is, VWs has absolutely horrible mechanicals, but the dealerships stressed frequent servicing and inspection, which allowed them to find issues before they became Problems. VW also had a stellar parts distribution network.
Fiat had wonderful mechanicals, but they didn't stress any kind of maintenance, and the maintenance seemed ridiculous (tell someone in the 60s/70s that you had to replace a really expensive "fan belt" every year or 12,000 miles), and the parts network was almost nonexistent.
Buy a Fiat, it might get laid up for a month or more waiting for parts. Buy a VW, they'll literally stick a "loaner" engine in your car at the dealership while they replace your valve guides again, and you can keep driving.
VW became a powerhouse in the US because their cars were deemed to be very reliable. Fiat left North America and their legacy here is that of making crap.
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