On simple change that must have had a big impact on the rust-free life of a car must be plastic inner wing liners. When you see what they are it really makes you wonder why it took so long for them to become common place.
Because car manufacturers don't want cars to last longer.
Until like all plastics they disintegrate. And can't be repaired like partially rusted steel. And may just trap salty water behind them where they meet the steel of the wing.
And it very much depends on the design of the car which parts start rusting through first anyway. It may not be the wings.
When what you have is a billion dollar steel pressing plant, and long term contracts with steel sheet manufacturers, and a design team who know steel inside out and backwards, and have never designed a plastic moulding in their lives, everything tends to look like a steel pressing...
I'm glad that I have had a few decades of just driving cars that with a bit of care and maintenance either lasted the course or you got rid of them when it was appropriate to do so. A youngster now by the time he reaches a fifth decade of driving may well have a car that will be engineered to hardly rot, be self driving when required and have all sorts of technological gadgets. Unfortunately I can also see a position that to keep it legal to use on the public highway the software support will have to be kept up to date by the manufacture. So at a whim they could suddenly make a whole load of older vehicles obsolete .
G.Harman
I was thinking of the many cars that got a vertical line of rust in front of the doors and those that hat the McPherson Strut mounting rot away - all prematurely.
In many ways that is the new car killer - not falling to bits or being BER, but simply not being as fast/safe/cheap to run/conformant to new regulations/ etc as the forecourt Queens.
The same is true of most consumer tech these days. Only the worst examples fall to bits.
I've got three 'scrapper' PCS running here that wouldn't run windows
7,8,9 or 10...but do a fine job running Linux.Id say all have at least another 5 years life in them....
Depends on what you mean by 'prematurely' The number of classics still around means it is often down to how they are driven and looked after. Part galvanizing is probably the best way to protect steel before painting
- but could cost more than many are willing to pay for on a new cheap car. And most usually don't want an old one anyway - regardless of how sound it might be.
However, it is also true to say that a modern CPU of similar processing ability would use a (small) fraction of the electrical power. Similarly, any graphics card. The HDDs. The inefficient PSUs (perhaps). These scrapper PCs might be costing you £100 a year more in leccy than a modern PC. That was covered above "simply not being as fast/safe/cheap to run ..."
I can see the current generation of cars getting prematurely scrapped because the keyless locking system fails.
Replacing this could be more than the value of an 8 year old car and the utility of a car that doesn't lock is going to be low.
tim
There are many jobs that occur on high mileage cars that will set you back £400 +
I've had three done to mine :-(
However, in et end the choice as to whether to do them depends on the qualities of the car.
My ageing Freelander is worth almost nothing, except to me.
I couldn't get a car I wanted more with less problems than it *now* has, for the money its worth.
Think what you may mean is paying a garage to replace everything they can guess at with new bits may be more than the car is worth. ;-)
Depends on what has failed. Of course with integrated locking and immobiliser it's not going to be a simple fix. No point in having an immobiliser if it's easily bypassed.
FIAT.
This is not the issue. The issue is do I do the big repair or buy a new/another car?
Cars these days are designed (as far as possible) so that all components "die" at the same time.
ITYF that a replacement of all of your door locking system will be nearer
1500tim
Nothing to stop you installing 5 lever mortice locks on each door, far cheaper than replacement failed locks.
Why would you replace all the locking system? It's very unlikely all motors would fail at once.
I reckon garage labour rates and parts prices kill off cars now, rather than terminal rust. My recently traded in 10 year old Leon, which was overall quite tidy, fetched £1500. A turbo failure would swallow up an awful lot of that value. Add on a service, a set of tyres and it starts to look uneconomical in some ways. I'm not saying I wouldn't spend a good propotion of a car's value in order to keep an otherwise known car, but plenty wouldn't.
In the end they amount they the same thing.Rst is fiaxable, at a price just like anything elsse.
My recently traded in 10 year old Leon, which was
If you like the car....
however there's another aspect. Cars that are worth more broken than as a whole. Take those alloys off, get them re coated and flog em for a grand, with halfway decent tyres on.
That back seat? The one you never used? there s a family out there with spilt dogsick all over their's... couple of hundred for one in good nick....
Does the ECU still work? Good, mine doesn't...I'll have that for £150..and the MAF sensor as well for £25...and blimey, that's a rear door in the same color as mine where someone reversed into it at Tescos. So that's another £100...
Yet scrap yards just tear out the high value metal bits and the rest goes in the granulator.
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