Can we be honest people?

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CheemsK1500

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The answer is most times obvious, cost, ease of assembly and engineering requirements ie safety.

Never liked any under dash work but it is part of the automotive "experience".

Today no one wants to get out and turn in hubs. All that fancy stuff eventually fails then,,,,,,,,,,,,,, shocker it is expensive to fix.

One of the most infuriating jobs I did was fixing the push button 4x4 system on a 2004 2500HD. after much trial and error, I narrowed the issue down to the control module tucked behind the dash. After installing the new module, it still wasn't fixed.

I had a GM technician investigate. It turns out that the parts supplier messed up and sent me a module for an AWD Avalanche. He reprogrammed it to work with the 4wd pickup, and now it's good as new. The modules aren't labeled on the outside and all use the same style connector, so you are pretty much just putting good faith in the parts supplier to send the correct module.
 
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Redfish

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My current Pet Peeve with GM: Why did they put the DEF fill point UNDER the hood for the Duramax HD series? Yeah, they fixed it in 2020 but my 2019 pisses me off every time I fill it.


I had a friend that owned an X-11 Citation. It had the 2.8 V6, it was light metallic blue and he kept it up beautifully. I actually liked that car a lot. I also had good experiences with that 2.8 V6, honestly one of the better engines I ever owned.
 

Keith Seymore

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The answer is most times obvious, cost, ease of assembly and engineering requirements ie safety.
Well there's that, but there's also:

Part number count
Minimize proliferation
Designing to work in seven assembly plants
Designing to maintain the existing production process/flow
Designing to install at 60-70 vehicles per hour
Durability
Use across multiple model lines
Reuse of an existing part
Doing it because your boss (or his boss) said so.

Those are few others that come to mind.

K
 

fast 99

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Basically it has nothing to do with ease or cost to repair. Having been working on cars all my life I can tell you all they care about is making a buck selling the vehicle and getting it off warranty.

I can give one really bad design. Chrysler has a blower motor resistor behind the dash assembly on several years of trucks and SUV's. Only access is to nearly remove the dash. Blower motor requires dash removal. Would have been very easy to make both accessible. Drop a piece of paper in the defroster vent it will cost 7 bills to get it out.
 

bucket

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The plan jane Citations we had in the fleet years ago had the 2.8 engine from he!!. I sure hope the X-11's had a better engine.

Yeah, they were better. They got the high output version with better heads and a higher lift cam. They weren't gutless and they seemed to have better quality control. In '85 they gained multi port fuel injection, but was the same basic engine.
 

Hunter79764

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There's a few that have bugged me over the years, like the blower speed control on my Yukon that gets condensation dripping on it and shorts out every so often, but most of my problems with GM are more to do with their marketing than engineering. When did you ever see a Pontiac advertised anywhere, and then they kill the brand from lack of sales. Same thing for the Camaro when it died in the 2000's, it was a great car with tons of potential (yes, it had the 90's plastics that everybody was fighting too), but not much in the way of updates and nothing for advertising, then cancelled from poor sales. Turbo buicks should have gotten much more press, but when they beat Corvettes, they were buried instead of celebrated (imagine if the Grand National team got to turbo the SBC in the 80's to fit in the C4? Or even take the GNX-spec 3.8 as an optional Vette engine?). Saturns were good cars for their market, but didn't get pushed very hard. The Volt is the best Extended Range EV that the world has never heard of. Imagine an EV that has a small battery you can use for a day's commute, then a small gas generator that lets you take it on the highway with Zero range anxiety. Perfect answer for most of the general car buying public, but no one knew what it was or how it worked. Those are the things that bug me most...
Furds and Chryslers all seem to take the stupid engineering cake for me though. A friend had a 90's Chrysler that would shut the radio off on right turns and kill then engine on left turns, even in parking lot speeds. Finally traced it to the main wire harness being attached to the steering linkage and flexing in the same spot for years, until wires started making/breaking contact every cycle. Ugh.
 

CheemsK1500

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Basically it has nothing to do with ease or cost to repair. Having been working on cars all my life I can tell you all they care about is making a buck selling the vehicle and getting it off warranty.

I can give one really bad design. Chrysler has a blower motor resistor behind the dash assembly on several years of trucks and SUV's. Only access is to nearly remove the dash. Blower motor requires dash removal. Would have been very easy to make both accessible. Drop a piece of paper in the defroster vent it will cost 7 bills to get it out.

We like to pick on Ford here (often times for a good reason) but the HVAC systems on the 80-96 trucks were phenomenal in terms of easy maintenance. The heater core could be changed within 30 minutes, and the evaporator core within an hour. Now all of the manufacturers feel the need to bury the entire hvac box and make heater and evaporator core swaps into an all day job.
 

WP29P4A

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The main power feeds ( fusiable links) coming off the starter, and the crap location for the fuse block up under the dash are my peeves.
 

pnwnvrdn

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I like my SBC's have had more than I can count..but would have preferred they put the distributor in the front.
 

fast 99

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I like my SBC's have had more than I can count..but would have preferred they put the distributor in the front.
Agree, especially if it is a later big block. It's buried behind the plenum. However, reason they are used so much on hot rod conversions is the rear sump.
 

RecklessWOT

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It may sound funny, but a Citation X-11 is a bucket list car of mine. I should have got one years ago when you could still find one. Same with an '86-'87 Cavalier Z-24. With a manual trans would be ideal. They are basically all gone and I can't find one.
I'd love to have a white Z26 Beretta (any color really, but for some reason I always liked the way they looked in white, which is usually a color I can't stand). I know, I must be ill, but I still love them. Unfortunately I haven't seen one in years, pretty sure I couldn't buy one if I tried.
 

SquareRoot

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Avalanches and Hummer H3's. Whoever designed those azzugly mudholes deserves a kick in the balls.
On another note, putting the 3-5 and 2-4 exhaust ports next to each other on SB's. Ford beat them there but they did fix it on the LS's. Symmetry damn it!
 

Redfish

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I'd love to have a white Z26 Beretta (any color really, but for some reason I always liked the way they looked in white, which is usually a color I can't stand). I know, I must be ill, but I still love them. Unfortunately I haven't seen one in years, pretty sure I couldn't buy one if I tried.
My high school car was a brand new 1988 Beretta GT, solid black with a gray interior and a 5 speed. I got it brand new my senior year and I loved that car. The computer shut it down at 121mph but it would run 120 all day long. I always heard those cars were just junk but that one wasn't. It had over 300K on it before we ever had to pull a valve cover, it finally broke a valve spring. Pop "bought" it from me and used it as a work car and finally sold it at 365K miles. I drove it one last time the night before it went and it would still spin the tires well into second gear.

The first two years I had that car if it left the driveway, it went over 100 mph at least once that day.

I just dug up some very old pics of that car. This was Mrs. Redfish back when she was still my girlfriend back in '92 in Arkansas. That was her first time to ever see a real mountain!

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CheemsK1500

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Using the Beretta name without the Italian gun company's permission got GM in some legal trouble. You think someone on the exec board would've recognized the name. Maybe they thought it was fair game since the Dodge Colt and AMC Marlin already existed prior.
 

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