= Cars Stalling today leads to crashes and lawsuites =

[maxhifi]

I love over-boosted power steering... my '68 F-250 has a giant wheel and so much hydraulic boost I can control it with one finger, beats my previous truck where parallel parking meant a physical work out. "Road Feel" is kind of a myth anyway, in non-performance driving situations (i.e. nearly all the time) My new car has electric power steering, and I like it... time will tell reliability but I sure don't miss having another fluid to keep on top of.

I still think it's lawyers responsible for making a giant deal over recalls - for example the Toyota with the runaway acceleration problem, has anyone ever heard about putting the car into neutral? Maybe I am missing something but is it not obvious?

That said I had a Mazda whose idle would suddenly surge, was awful at traffic lights... brake lightly applied, full stop, then a sudden jump forward when the idle surged for no apparent reason. Or better yet same scenario on ice, the car would decide to drift sideways a bit. Scary and not fun at all!

[Username1]

1970's Chryslers had the best power steering, and a giant wheel....
With one finger and a good twist of the wrist you could make a turn.....
Just flip it and the weight of the wheel would take it all the way to the lock.....
Those cars were great.....

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Username1

1970's Chryslers had the best power steering, and a giant wheel....
With one finger and a good twist of the wrist you could make a turn.....
Just flip it and the weight of the wheel would take it all the way to the lock.....
Those cars were great.....

Chrysler invented power steering!
The commercials used to boast, "as easy as dialing a phone".
They never mentioned, that the next generation of phones would use push buttons, like their automatic transmissions.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Chrysler invented power steering!

Not quite, according to Wikipedia:

Chrysler Corporation introduced the first commercially available passenger car power steering system on the 1951 Chrysler Imperial under the name "Hydraguide".The Chrysler system was based on some of Davis' expired patents. General Motors introduced the 1952 Cadillac with a power steering system using the work Davis had done for the company almost twenty years earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_steering

jr

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by Username1

1970's Chryslers had the best power steering, and a giant wheel....
With one finger and a good twist of the wrist you could make a turn.....
Just flip it and the weight of the wheel would take it all the way to the lock.....
Those cars were great.....

MOPARS and Stalling right on! But when they ran, wow.
Parents had a 1969 Polara "suburban" wagon that would stall on left-hand turns, turned out it was the ballast resistor (battery side of ignition coil) with a small crack that would open when the firewall flexed. It took a small-town MoPar dealer to find the problem not the big, useless dealers in town!

Later my folks had a 75 Fury wagon with a 318 that never stalled until my brother started driving it. Just an accelerator pump, standard fail on Carter BBD carburetors. When they ordered an 83 Reliant wagon new, I filled out the order form: manual trans, HD cooling, 2.2 mopar rather than 2.6 mitsu, it was a great car, and I did not hear many folks say that about k-cars.

After my first car, a 1973 Fury II police model, I became a carburetor expert.
There's nothing more embarrassing than mashing it at a stoplight, hearing a pop as it backfired thru that Carter thermo-quad gas-sucker carb and stalled...

[Reece]

I like to tell the story about my sister and her '59 Rambler standard shift back around 1961. This thing would lock up the column shift from time to time (Chevys and others would do this, too.) She played violin in the symphony and still does today! She's a beautiful redhead. One day back then she was driving to play a concert all dressed in her black dress and shoes and the shifter locked up in the middle of an intersection. She popped the hood and got out, opened it, and looked in. Men were coming from all directions to help the damsel in distress. But she had been taught what to do: reached in, pulled up the lever, slammed the hood, and got back in and drove away leaving all the would-be knights standing there with their mouths open!

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Reece

I like to tell the story about my sister and her '59 Rambler standard shift back around 1961. This thing would lock up the column shift from time to time (Chevys and others would do this, too.) She played violin in the symphony and still does today! She's a beautiful redhead. One day back then she was driving to play a concert all dressed in her black dress and shoes and the shifter locked up in the middle of an intersection. She popped the hood and got out, opened it, and looked in. Men were coming from all directions to help the damsel in distress. But she had been taught what to do: reached in, pulled up the lever, slammed the hood, and got back in and drove away leaving all the would-be knights standing there with their mouths open!

The same thing happened with my '64 Valiant and my '65 ford Econoline van.
They needed linkage bushings replaced. I just lived with the problem.

[Username1]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep;
Chrysler invented power steering!

Chrysler Made Perfect power steering systems....

[egrand]

Originally Posted by Username1

Chrysler Made Perfect power steering systems....

Squirrel, I hate to tell you this, but Mopar used GM's Saginaw power steering units from the early 60's to the 80's. They were the same "canned ham" pumps that GM cars used. What might have been different were the boost pressures. Those units used different springs and shims in the valves to change the pressures. I'd have to look it up, but Mopar might have used higher pressures.

Originally Posted by tvtimeisfun

When my brother went to buy his first new truck the dealership told him that the rear bumper was not included with the truck his face turned beet red whenthey said that a bumper was an option so whats up with that

Yup, rear bumpers were an option on trucks. Used to be that factory bumpers weren't considered heavy duty for towing or farm use, and hitches weren't standardized so there were lots of different sizes and placements in the back depending on what you used. Often buyers would swap bumpers from the old truck to the new.

What it turned out to be was a way for dealers to put some extra nickels in their pockets by ordering all trucks without bumpers and selling them aftermarket. For some reason it seemed to be more common in the South, and usually the dealer had their name engraved into the bumper as a nice rolling advertisement that you paid for.

[Rusty34]

Originally Posted by egrand

Squirrel, I hate to tell you this, but Mopar used GM's Saginaw power steering units from the early 60's to the 80's. They were the same "canned ham" pumps that GM cars used. What might have been different were the boost pressures. Those units used different springs and shims in the valves to change the pressures. I'd have to look it up, but Mopar might have used higher pressures.

Chrysler made their own steering gear (Chrysler called them "chucks") but did use both Chrysler made pumps and GM Saginaw pumps during that time frame.

[Rusty34]

Toyota was doing a pretty good job of grabbing all the headlines a few years ago with reports of sudden unintended acceleration events pouring in. As GM is currently being blamed for their handling of the switch problem the Toyota PR department also initially tried to minimize their involvement by first blaming floormats and then by issuing gas pedal recalls but the problem reported by investigating engineers turned out to be somewhere else. The issue came to light after a Camry was found upside down in a pond with four fatalities inside and the cars floormats were inside the trunk. Toyota circuit boards are assembled with lead free solder which when exposed to certain environmental conditions would allow "tin whiskers" to grow and eventually form a bridge between solder joints. In some vehicles which involved fatalities it was the perfect storm sequence of events, if you will... circuits would short together and trick the ECU into signaling the drive by wire throttle to go full open. Shifting to neutral wasn't possible since the gear shift handle is no longer connected to the transmission with a mechanical linkage but the gearshift is now a switch which signals the ECU to command a shift via the motorized gear range selector. Attempting to switch to neutral wasn't working because it was connected to a runaway ECU.

A major clue here is the fact that every driver who survived an unintended acceleration event reported being unable to stop the car with the brakes. This might point to a corrupted ECU also interfering with the antilock brakes module which regulates brake pedal hydraulic pressure to each of the four wheels to prevent wheel lock-up. No matter how hard the driver stomped on the brake pedal the car kept accelerating.

There is another important point to keep in mind. Every car sold in this country regardless of horsepower is equipped with brakes powerful enough to bring it to a stop with a stuck wide open throttle. Consumer Reports recently tested this on several different makes and found it to be true. In addition they tested them with full throttle at 100mph and the brakes still stopped the car.

This might be something for hotrod builders and those who have old cars with 700hp crate engines installed to bear in mind, will they stop under these conditions?

Ford loyalists would also do well to remember the Ford ignition switches of the 70's and 80's which would overheat and start a fire. Major recall with many lawsuits over that one too.

Cars manufacturers all operate about the same. Depending upon the price range you end up having about the number of problems you paid for. All manufacturers occassionally build a great car but they always manage to screw it up by replacing it with the next model they hope you will trade for.

[maxhifi]

Originally Posted by Rusty34

Toyota was doing a pretty good job of grabbing all the headlines a few years ago with reports of sudden unintended acceleration events pouring in. As GM is currently being blamed for their handling of the switch problem the Toyota PR department also initially tried to minimize their involvement by first blaming floormats and then by issuing gas pedal recalls but the problem reported by investigating engineers turned out to be somewhere else. The issue came to light after a Camry was found upside down in a pond with four fatalities inside and the cars floormats were inside the trunk. Toyota circuit boards are assembled with lead free solder which when exposed to certain environmental conditions would allow "tin whiskers" to grow and eventually form a bridge between solder joints. In some vehicles which involved fatalities it was the perfect storm sequence of events, if you will... circuits would short together and trick the ECU into signaling the drive by wire throttle to go full open. Shifting to neutral wasn't possible since the gear shift handle is no longer connected to the transmission with a mechanical linkage but the gearshift is now a switch which signals the ECU to command a shift via the motorized gear range selector. Attempting to switch to neutral wasn't working because it was connected to a runaway ECU.

A major clue here is the fact that every driver who survived an unintended acceleration event reported being unable to stop the car with the brakes. This might point to a corrupted ECU also interfering with the antilock brakes module which regulates brake pedal hydraulic pressure to each of the four wheels to prevent wheel lock-up. No matter how hard the driver stomped on the brake pedal the car kept accelerating.

There is another important point to keep in mind. Every car sold in this country regardless of horsepower is equipped with brakes powerful enough to bring it to a stop with a stuck wide open throttle. Consumer Reports recently tested this on several different makes and found it to be true. In addition they tested them with full throttle at 100mph and the brakes still stopped the car.

This might be something for hotrod builders and those who have old cars with 700hp crate engines installed to bear in mind, will they stop under these conditions?

Ford loyalists would also do well to remember the Ford ignition switches of the 70's and 80's which would overheat and start a fire. Major recall with many lawsuits over that one too.

Cars manufacturers all operate about the same. Depending upon the price range you end up having about the number of problems you paid for. All manufacturers occassionally build a great car but they always manage to screw it up by replacing it with the next model they hope you will trade for.

Makes me consider installing some kind of manual "kill" switch. I never believed that the Toyota problem was a real problem until reading your above explanation, thank you for that.

[bgadow]

I drove a customer's 76 Newport-it honestly felt like the steering wheel wasn't connected to anything! At the other extreme, I really built up my arm muscles (really!) after I started driving my 74 IH pickup with manual steering. It will really make you pay attention to where you park-I've been in some situations where I just plain couldn't maneuver. Guess I could trade the 235/75R15's for some skinny bias plies. The old Ford, with 6.00/16's and, of course, manual steering-it turns so easy it almost feels like power.

[consoleguy67]

I had a 1979 Volvo 242DL that had no power steering and a 4 speed manual tranny. It was one of the most fun cars I've ever driven.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by consoleguy67

I had a 1979 Volvo 242DL that had no power steering and a 4 speed manual tranny. It was one of the most fun cars I've ever driven.

My first two vehicles were manual transmissions. Back then, I didn't mind the shifting.
Once I got an automatic, I never really wanted to go back.