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Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

Full sized cars like the Monte Carlo we're junk too. Owned a 1980. 88-92 saw the first mass consumer computer controlled fuel injection. That is when cars really got reliable. Removing carburators was a game change. My parents had a Ford Tempo (1990) and drove that thing into the ground (250k miles) running a paper route. The auto transmissions sucked in that era though.

You could get 200k miles on my 90 Ford mustang manual. Auto tranny would always bust 40-50k miles on that era Mustang though. Repairs were simply less expensive in that early car computer era. I actually knew how the whole computer system worked. Difference in th 6502 and modern assembly. Yet, cars don't need much more than a 6502 for most things. Oh well.

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I agree that replacing carburetors with electronic fuel injection made a huge improvement. Another step was replacing the distributor and points with electronic ignition. When was the last time anyone replaced a spark plug?

Huh? I've replaced tons of them. Before they went to platinum/iridium plugs, you still needed to change them at 20-50k. The platinum or iridium ones will last 100k I think, but any car these days lasts longer than that, so they still need to be replaced once or twice. But on modern inline engines they're generally really easy to replace.

Maybe you meant to ask when the last time someone replaced a distributor or adjusted points was? A lot of cars still had distributors up until around 2000 or so, so they're not completely gone yet. But points, thankfully, have been gone since the 70s.

> But on modern inline engines they're generally really easy to replace.

The last two pickups I've owned, 2006 and 2010 F150s, it entails disassembling half the engine head to get at the spark plugs - and I have some experience, the 2006 had the garbage 5.4 V8, that has coil problems and blows plugs regularly after 100k miles... Other modern vehicles I've looked under the hood of don't look to be designed for any more ease of access or repair, either.

I guess you're looking at crappy vehicles then. Go look at some 4-cylinder Japanese cars. They're all super easy to work on and last forever. Well, the Hondas, Toyotas, and Mazdas anyway. I always steer clear of American cars; those give you all kinds of wacky crap like putting the battery inside the wheelwell so you have to remove the wheel to remove it, aside from horrible reliability and interiors that fall apart quickly.

Yeah, the Tempo referenced way on up was falling apart. Interior was garbage, but it kept rolling.

Yeah, from what I hear, that's pretty normal with American cars (particularly GM and Ford): the drivetrains are usually very reliable, but the interiors are terrible and fall apart quickly, and the rest of the car looks like crap before long too. But the thing never quits running so it keeps getting used even though it looks awful.

I honestly have no idea why anyone buys American cars, unless they don't know this. Probably they're a little cheaper than imports.

I have a Chrysler product that needs new plugs every 30k. Luckily they're super easy to replace.

Uhh, maybe you should go inspect the spark plugs on your car right now. Spark plugs are very cheap and not worth economizing on.

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