Plastic for cooling sucks.

[volaredon]

Sounds like you must be an engineer?
I work on vehicles daily, and the newer they get the more I hate them. From overcomplicating things and sensors EVERYWHERE (we got along for How many years without TPMS for instance) and I need a check engine light to tell me the gas tank door is open even though the cap is on and tight ... Why?
I need a CEL to tell me something is up with the radio which has nothing to do with the car getting down the road... Why?
While cheapening everything else. These plastic so called "bumpers" are ridiculous as is the idea that the whole "bumper" fascia has to come off of some cars making a simple bulb replacement a 2 hour ordeal? Today's suspension sucks, I hate cam phasers. The 2021 F150s I've had in will not allow me to open the door to "eyeball" things and line up easier when putting one on a lift, they will put themselves in "park" before I move 2".
I despise these automatic door locks. I should be able to decide if and when I want the doors locked NOT have my Durango determine that for itself.... When I come out of the store with armloads of groceries and drop them because the damn thing locked itself last time I went over 15 mph, I hate it.

And whoever decided it was a good thing to make wire insulation that attracts varmints oughta be hung at town square at high noon. What do all of these have in common? ENGINEERS!!!!!!
And whoever thought putting an engine in the engine compartment sideways ... Should be hung right next to the one who specc'ed out the wiring insulation. Have to pull a manifold to do a damn tuneup? What a crock. And people wonder why I bought a pick up with a carbureted slant 6???? Gee I wonder why.

 

[slantsixdan]

Uh yeah, turns out parts on cars that are 23-30 years old fail occasionally.

Yup. The average age of a car on American roads in 1979 was 5.7 years, and that was up from 5.1 years in 1969. The 2013 figure was 11.4 years, just about double the 1979 figure. It hit 11.7 years in 2017, and the 2021 figure is 12.1 years. That's the average age. That means cars last longer now.

Most gas stations used to have service bays and a tow truck. Now, they mostly don't; instead they have convenience stores. That's because cars and all their many parts fail a whole lot less than they used to, so service bays and tow trucks just don't pay their way any more. Not like they did back when most cars had 5-digit odometers.

Engineers have to listen to the bean counters all the time and change designs to make them cheaper (vs better). No doubt there are engineers and designers that would benefit from more hands on work, but engineering something that’s mass produced for a profit has as much or more to do with making it cheap as it does with making any one part more durable.

All of this is true. As they say, it's a lot harder to design and engineer a water pump for a Dodge than for a Rolls Royce, because the Dodge water pump has to do the same job over the same lifespan for a whole hell of a lot less money.

Wikipedia says the SC400 was made between model years 1992 and 2000, and average annual mileage on a car in the US is about 13,000. So if the failed part in question was original to the car, it was between 23 and 31 years old. That's a couple-few decades and a couple-few hundred thousand miles worth of thermal cycling. The repair part costs between $5 and $15 on RockAuto, or $36 from Toyota for an OE part. Just how much longer is it reasonable to expect a thermostat housing to last?

 

[72bluNblu]

Sounds like you must be an engineer?
I work on vehicles daily, and the newer they get the more I hate them. From overcomplicating things and sensors EVERYWHERE (we got along for How many years without TPMS for instance) and I need a check engine light to tell me the gas tank door is open even though the cap is on and tight ... Why?
I need a CEL to tell me something is up with the radio which has nothing to do with the car getting down the road... Why?
While cheapening everything else. These plastic so called "bumpers" are ridiculous as is the idea that the whole "bumper" fascia has to come off of some cars making a simple bulb replacement a 2 hour ordeal? Today's suspension sucks, I hate cam phasers. The 2021 F150s I've had in will not allow me to open the door to "eyeball" things and line up easier when putting one on a lift, they will put themselves in "park" before I move 2".
I despise these automatic door locks. I should be able to decide if and when I want the doors locked NOT have my Durango determine that for itself.... When I come out of the store with armloads of groceries and drop them because the damn thing locked itself last time I went over 15 mph, I hate it.

And whoever decided it was a good thing to make wire insulation that attracts varmints oughta be hung at town square at high noon. What do all of these have in common? ENGINEERS!!!!!!
And whoever thought putting an engine in the engine compartment sideways ... Should be hung right next to the one who specc'ed out the wiring insulation. Have to pull a manifold to do a damn tuneup? What a crock. And people wonder why I bought a pick up with a carbureted slant 6???? Gee I wonder why.

Good grief man.

Yeah, doesn’t seem like you understand design or engineering at all. Like, not even a little bit.

Some fun tidbits for you

-most automatic door locking systems can simply be turned off if you know how. For example, on a ‘99 Durango
-
1. close all doors
2. Place the key in the ign. and cycle the key from the off to on position for a total of four times ending in the on position (Don't start the engine)
3. press the drivers side power door lock switch to lock the door within 30 seconds
4. you'll hear a single chime when programming is completed.
5. to reactivate, repeat above steps
Easy right?

-TPMS sensors are legally required equipment since 2008, that’s not the engineers fault. But properly inflated tires give better fuel mileage, handling, stopping etc too. A little history
What Is The History Of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems?

-you can’t open the door in drive because some stupid bastard did something stupid, got hurt, and then sued the car manufacturer. The response was some lawyer telling some engineer to make it so the doors don’t open unless the car is in park. Again, the moron and the lawyer are the problem here, the engineers just wrote the programming

Honestly, your whole post sounds like an old man complaining about his VCR blinking the wrong time and blaming the engineers. It’s not their fault the old boy hasn’t learned to set the time.

 

[lemondana]

I don't think I have ever seen an older factory AC Mopar that had a solid four blade fan, unless maybe a slant 6 car

I have a 78 fury 2 door hardtop.
A few years ago I had trouble with it running hot. 2 years in a row I pulled it at the beginning of cruisin season and sent it to a radiator shop to be rodded/boiled out. Did no good. This is a 2 owner car I'm the 2nd owner. I got it with 38k original miles in 07, it now has 56k on it. I went to several parts stores to see what they had to offer for a replacement radiator. I couldn't believe it that even on a 70s American car all any could offer me is something that would fit the hole but looked like it would be more at home in a freaking Toyota. No way in HE11 I was putting a Toyota-ish looking radiator in my car. No way no how. So I wound up buying a Champion all aluminum one for about the same money and that was with delivery to my door. All aluminum (I'd rather have copper/brass but at least this one has no plastic) and American made with life time warranty. And a whole lot better looking than a Toyota radiator. And boy did it ever help with temps..... This car has AC and the factory fan on it is a 4 blade solid mount no fan clutch.
My son had a 90 w250 with a 360 gas engine. He too needed a radiator while he had that truck. Stuck one of those Toyota looking POS' in it, didn't cool we'll at all and didn't last long either.
He wound up finding a HD 3 row original copper/brass one in a very similar truck in the boneyard. He put that in and no more problems.

. Mostly big 7 blade clutch fans

 

[volaredon]

I don't think I have ever seen an older factory AC Mopar that had a solid four blade fan, unless maybe a slant 6 car


. Mostly big 7 blade clutch fans

I have the factory service manual for this car and in the section on cooling it tells what models/engine had what fan. And it lists it right in there that that was a factory setup on some 318 ac cars.
And in the comments on the door lock things... I've tried the disable thing listed many times over the last 10 years I've had this thing, and IT DON'T WORK to disable that so called "feature". I know you used 99 as an example, my particular Durango is an 01.

 

[MopaR&D]

Watch the show or read the comics of Dilbert, one of the very few series that accurately portrays what it's like to work as an engineer for a big American corporation. He constantly struggles with clueless leadership trying to get unrealistic goals done unrealistically fast with unrealistically low funding. And of course when it fails, he and the engineering team get blamed for it.

IMO this is an area the Asians and Europeans have the edge. Senior management positions in companies based in those countries are expected to have some level of technical background. Here it's just about managing and selling stuff, making a quick buck for the year and making investors and shareholders (and the Fed) happy. Same goes for gov entities like the EPA, we all know the people there who try to make regulations on vehicles really know their stuff

Not to say Euro and Asian cars don't have design flaws but from their perspective, cars aren't expected to last more than 5-10 years anyway. They intentionally design stuff to fail after a certain amount of time, and they've gotten really good at figuring out how design something "just barely good enough".

Compare a Mercedes car from the 1970s-80s to one today, there is no comparison. Or a 1990s-00s Honda to one today, similar deal.

 

[66jim]

Some parts over time you can count on failing, others not, this is one in the not column of not. Parts failures of this type make me think WTF is going to break next.

 

[volaredon]

I miss the days of being a repeat customer of any brand of any car, truck, tractor, mower, tool, because the last one worked so well, lasted beyond expectations and was often replaced because a buyer just "wanted a new one* with the one in service probably still working just fine. Now a days it's gotta be replaced because the existing one is plum wore out/"shot"/busted and because replacement parts aren't available or else if they are, a silly knob is priced at 80% of the cost of a whole new "whatever".
I remember back when I lived at home if I dropped dad's drill and broke the switch I could go down and very cheaply buy a new switch and fix the existing drill.... Much cheaper than a whole new drill would cost. Not any more! Chuck the whole works in the trash and buy a whole new unit.

 

[volaredon]

And now a days with so many buyouts and so much outsourcing there are so many products living on in name only, and "that one over there" that used to be known as "junk" back in the day is probably the same as one of the preferred brand with different stickers (only) between the two

 

[Killer6]

It's funny, I own 13 vehicles none of which sit in a preservation cacoon, all 30-60yrs. old. Not one has blown up a thermostat housing, or started leaking profusely from one. I'm not downing the engineers for this one, I understand the reasons the components are employed using these plastic/composite materials, but one must lower their expectation for longevity out of this stuff.
I've had to replace a coolant housing/manifold on a practically brand new vehicle for a defective/porous condition.
Ford Exploder upper rad tanks with the reservoir parked directly above straddling it, cracking & splitting incognito 'til it gets bad enough to hemmorage all over the place. Yep, gotta love 'em. My '90 Omni has the 1yr only Al-U-minimum/plastic rad with the trans cooler incorporated. Epoxied the tank years back, but guess it's custom all Al, or go with earlier rad & external trans cooler. Maybe there's a Chineseum one out there now, but not when I was lookin'.

 

[pishta]

What year SC400, with how many miles on it?

92 with 203K I know what your gonna say, "it lasted 200K miles.." yes...it DID. multiple cracks noted in remains. After I replaced it (2 nuts) The $160 IAC motor seized up and the idle went 1100-2100,1100-2100 like the second hand on a watch. Not serviceable: HA! Took the thing apart, cleaned the pintle, found a skateboard bearing seized up barely rotating in the housing. Kroiled it, unseized it and lubed it up good. Now it spins like a skateboard wheel and the IAC works like new. If everyone knew this trick Rock would not be out of stock! GMC Suburban had same aluminum impregnated nylon stat housings fall apart.

 

[volaredon]

what about the plastic nipples on GM 3800 engines that would suddenly "blow" apart that screwed into the end of the manifold.... or the many plastic intake manifolds that would warp and leak..... those kinds of failures shouldn't be allowed to happen.... the pound and 1/2 they saved vs staying with aluminum (which never warped) would have never warped like the plastic ones..... talk about designs that were specifically designed TO fail.....
Ive replaced many Jeep radiators whose side radiator tanks suddenly decided to burst..... idiots.

 

[pishta]

Yup. The average age of a car on American roads in 1979 was 5.7 years, and that was up from 5.1 years in 1969. The 2013 figure was 11.4 years, just about double the 1979 figure. It hit 11.7 years in 2017, and the 2021 figure is 12.1 years. That's the average age. That means cars last longer now.

Most gas stations used to have service bays and a tow truck. Now, they mostly don't; instead they have convenience stores. That's because cars and all their many parts fail a whole lot less than they used to, so service bays and tow trucks just don't pay their way any more. Not like they did back when most cars had 5-digit odometers.




All of this is true. As they say, it's a lot harder to design and engineer a water pump for a Dodge than for a Rolls Royce, because the Dodge water pump has to do the same job over the same lifespan for a whole hell of a lot less money.

Wikipedia says the SC400 was made between model years 1992 and 2000, and average annual mileage on a car in the US is about 13,000. So if the failed part in question was original to the car, it was between 23 and 31 years old. That's a couple-few decades and a couple-few hundred thousand miles worth of thermal cycling. The repair part costs between $5 and $15 on RockAuto, or $36 from Toyota for an OE part. Just how much longer is it reasonable to expect a thermostat housing to last?

My 61 slant head has the original stat housing, cast iron. How many were made in 31 years that are still serviceable...all of them? I've just never had one explode on me like this one. Found the piece on top of the rad shroud 10 inches away.

 

[slantsixdan]

My 61 slant head has the original stat housing, cast iron.

Nope. The original part (№ 2121 254) was aluminum, right from start to end of production. An iron one on a Slant-6 is an aftermarket piece (many-to-most of the aftermarket ones were/are iron). Yours is aftermarket piece number at-least-one.

I've just never had one explode on me like this one. Found the piece on top of the rad shroud 10 inches away.

That sucks (and it's also awesome). Also, someone replaced the aluminum one on your '61 head with an iron one sometime along the line because it failed. It didn't fail the way your plastic one did, but it failed just the same—almost certainly at much lower mileage/fewer years than the one on your SC400.

I do not see a real path or line of sight from your Lexus event to plastic for cooling sucks.

 

[MopaR&D]

what about the plastic nipples on GM 3800 engines that would suddenly "blow" apart that screwed into the end of the manifold.... or the many plastic intake manifolds that would warp and leak..... those kinds of failures shouldn't be allowed to happen.... the pound and 1/2 they saved vs staying with aluminum (which never warped) would have never warped like the plastic ones..... talk about designs that were specifically designed TO fail.....
Ive replaced many Jeep radiators whose side radiator tanks suddenly decided to burst..... idiots.

My Buick has the supercharged 3800, 160k miles and those plastic coolant tubes haven't failed *yet*. Something on my to-do list for sure. I love those engines though, Chrysler never made anything comparable. Drives like a healthy V8 but gets 27 MPG on the highway.

 

[volaredon]

You're lucky. Ive done several of them.

 

[MopaR&D]

You're lucky. Ive done several of them.

At least they're fairly straightforward, not like working on a German car from the same time period. Try changing a coolant hose on a 2005 VW Passat TDI, you'll be ready to douse the car in gas and set it on fire.

 

[volaredon]

I haven't but my kid has, he's got an 06.

 

[MopaR&D]

I haven't but my kid has, he's got an 06.

That sucks lol although I believe 2006 started the next generation (B6?) and I believe those are a bit simpler. There are about 10 coolant hoses in there for all the different coolers and such. This one happened to go behind the engine (sits north-south even though it's FWD) and there is NO room. I had to remove the tandem vacuum/fuel pump from the cylinder head along with like 4 other things just to get to the damn hose. Whole thing took about 10 days working a few hours a day. Told my parents I won't be doing repairs on that car anymore lol. Hopefully that car doesn't have any more issues for the next year or so while my brother uses it to get around then we're dumping it ASAP and getting an old Honda Civic or something.

 

[pishta]

Nope. The original part (№ 2121 254) was aluminum, right from start to end of production. An iron one on a Slant-6 is an aftermarket piece (many-to-most of the aftermarket ones were/are iron). Yours is aftermarket piece number at-least-one.


That sucks (and it's also awesome). Also, someone replaced the aluminum one on your '61 head with an iron one sometime along the line because it failed. It didn't fail the way your plastic one did, but it failed just the same—almost certainly at much lower mileage/fewer years than the one on your SC400.

I do not see a real path or line of sight from your Lexus event to <i>plastic for cooling sucks</i>.

plastic broke catostrophically , cast iron/Aluminum didnt. I guess that's my case. I can handle a leak, but not a break. On the 3 slants Ive had, none had AL necks. I guess they went the same as the AL blocks, to the corrosion graveyard.

 

[volaredon]

I have a few original /6 aluminum thermostat housings sitting here. All pitted in the gasket seal area. They might seep but wouldn't blow out if they were to be used. I found a screaming deal like a year and a half ago on some OLD OLD stock TRW cast iron replacement thermostat housings for the /6. I bought a couple, on or my motor and one for future that's on the shelf at the moment.
Another spot I've had issue with pitting and seepage is the timing cover on small blocks. Again, I never had one explode and rupture all at once.id hate to think how much more of a problem they would have been if they had been plastic?

 

[pishta]

Ive had 3 plastic radiators expire, thats all I can describe them as doing as when I pulled them, the plastic was so thin in spots that I coiuld break through with finger pressure and it gets very brittle. Cracks everywhere, one Minivan rad had clips molded into the tanks that the AC condenser clipped onto as well as the PS cooling line, I actually broke one of the clips while placing the condenser into that clip and it took out the whole tank. And it wasnt that hard to break the other when I took it out to replace it. Its just planned obsolescence. Found a 26" rad out of a 70s Jeep Cherokee Chief with 380K miles. No leaks, no corrosion. Try that with plastic in 45 years, as well as all the plastic harness connectors in these modern cars.

 

[RedFish]

If you ever worked for a dealership service department you are well aware of this "time of year". Ah holiday season in the service department. Spend your whole day playing poker in the break room. Aint no work coming in unless its on a hook. There were days when I went home with less cash in pocket than I arrived with.
For those who don't know the money side of this... The service department carries the entire dealership. Meaning the power bill, the water bill, the property taxes, etc... As the cost of operation goes up, the customer pay labor rate goes up. Think about it. If vehicles didn't break, there wouldn't be a service department. What I know about their finance and insurance game and payroll I'll save for a more relevant thread.
Bottom line, The engineers catch all the flack about chit for parts, but they knew the chit was bound to fail as soon as they saw the drawing of it. It's not their choice.

 

[volaredon]

Oh yeah, I worked for a dealer from 89-92 I know that racket

 

[Woodys_Cuda]

My neighbour just dealt with a plastic Y pipe heater hose connector. It's another common plastic part failure on the minivans. The shop put in a metal y connector in t's place. Video: