oldsoul
Gold Member
Excellent point. I have been doing my own repairs for over 20 years now. Everything from an 84 Subaru, to a 13 Caravan. Only problem I ever came across that I couldn't get fixed myself was a blown engine. Well, truth be told, I rebuild the engine (partially), but couldn't get it to crank, didn't need the car (or the headache) anymore, so I scrapped it. Every other car I've owned, I either sold in working condition, or scrapped because I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.That's the common myth folks swallow. The fact is there is nothing to maintain on electronics, they either work or they don't. Used to be that 100,000 miles on a car was just about it's limit. Today it's two or three times that, usually. What you may mean is that modern cars are harder to diagnose than older cars but with a little common sense and some basic understanding of electricity and a few tech tools, you can fix some things on your car. It's actually easier because many of the mechanical devices no longer exist. Electronics have simplified the control valve body on automatic transmission quite a bit. Now instead of a complex series of valves used to control shifts, you have solenoids that if failed, provide a code for your scan tool to read, telling you where to look for the problem. Giving just one example....No, computers make cars perform a lot better. They start a 1000 times more reliably, get better fuel mileage and the transmissions last longer because of electronics. Just imagine if they were applied to true muscle cars. -1.9 seconds quarter mile!Can we get rid of the computers and dang crank sensors while they are at it......................
Need a computer to say........YOUR CAR IS CRANKED............LOL
True, but MUCH harder and expensive to maintain all that modern stuff. I used to do my own repairs on older no computer based models, because it was so much cheaper and simpler to do.
As a side note, I have found Google and Youtube to be most helpful in diagnostics, as well as parts counter folks.