Mrfxit

your thread did you start that one with what would you call it let me think i know what but cant find the name for it .
since all people want to go back to the good old days where every thing was so much better and you could still fix things sort of thing.
Your thread shows how mutch worse actuarly a lot of things where and how we only like to remember the good parts and ignore the facts of back then.
Now i dont know if you put till the 80s on purpose because the 1980s to late 1990s was the time cars where getting what you could call Bullet proof like them 4 cilinder petrol toyotas doing 450.0000km with just oil and filter changes before serious problem would happen.
Now 2005 onwards its down the hill again basically the same problems ammount! of problems we have listed on your thread , but the problems are of electric - electronic nature now .
is that the purpose of your thread when you started it did you have that in the back of your mind? because its what it does proof how bad things where.

History repeats itself.

The big change was around 1990, when the imports were flooding in. NZ cars had most emission stuff removed, no power steering or aircon, pretty basic stuff. and we were good at fixing it. It was a huge learning curve for us old school guys. and you either got to grips with it, or became a ''I used to be a mechanic.''

Hey Ron, no intentions apart from remembering a list of things that went wrong back then.

Mechanical gear is pretty good now but the electronics have far too much input now.

Crazy crud like a busted brake light puts the auto in limp mode.
An interior or boot light blown can cripple the security system
The wrong trailer lights can blow an ECU.
Disconnecting the speedo can turn the car's entire suspension system solid.
ONE . faulty sensor can cripple or stop a car from starting

Finding that problem can be like chasing ghosts because the error was caused by something that shouldn't have anything to do with that specific system & in fact has no relationship of any sort until faulty.

Agreed & when it comes to modern engine tuning, it's often off to the garage for me.
Joe bloggs suspensions are still ok tho.

"off to the garage for me" is hugely embarrassing for the likes of myself who was able (on a regular basis) to totally strip any engine, rebuild it with totally s/h parts including gaskets from many other assorted engine parts (even different brands) AND have it running wonderfully for several more years.

Pulling a modern engine out is 80% it the "not on ya nelly" basket now but didn't deserve a 2nd thought back in the 80's.
Even different model running gear transplants were simply viewed as "whats ya problem with that idea" & we simply got on with it & did it with great results most times

the real problem is the way problems are masked the electronics can even mask mechanical faults. the manufacturers write flowcharts for faults they come up with. not for problems that occure from mechanical faults or corrosion, plus they want to hide all information as good as they can as if it was not hard enough to fix this crap with the full information.
plus more and more problems are in programming it self if you look at reflashing for fixing knowen problems , i did read about the vw gearbox problems harsh shifting was reflashed for making drivers happy but now the clutches get burned out as they programmed them to keep slipping in slow traffic for no harshness on driver experience.
its not just vw any of em have emense problems toyota loose there transmission adaption on 2007 onwwards vehicles when battery voltage drops to low during starting, This problem you wont notice unless you do a scope reading to what the voltage dropped down to during a start.
the result is constant hard shift for the first few km of driving and destruction of automatic toyota transmission after a few months of doing this. No codes as its just a relearn and new trans will be nuked again as it is the battery who caused it.