Comment on Report: Consumer Hardware Still Often Impossible To Repair Despite New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws
snooggums@midwest.social 1 month agoThere are tons of cars that have been designed to be easy to work on. I have worked on my own cars for over three decades. Every vehicle I have owned allowed the headlight bulbs to be reached by opening the hood. Well, I might need to check my new one because I haven’t needed to yet since it has LEDs.
There is no reason to excuse poor maintenance design as some kind of unavoidable necessity.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Yes. And over the past three decades there have been a lot of advancements and improvements as well as a general push for larger engines for both efficiency and “number go up” horsepower. Also structural design to increase safety in the event of a collision.
The reality is that there has always been stuff you can repair just by popping a hood and stuff you need to prop it up for. And there have always been people who decide to reach under the car to drain the oil and pollute their local sewers.
Any form of engineering is a trade off. And if you compare “under the hood” for a car from the 90s versus one from the 2020s, it is going to look a lot more packed. And, at some point, having super easy panels to open up once or twice over the lifespan of a vehicle is just not a priority for anyone other than someone on the internet looking for something to be angry about.
When it is a case of needing to go in for maintenance to re-approve all my parts? Fuck that noise (also why anyone who ever plans to do electrical work should get one of those code readers to reset the error light…). When it is me being expected to do something incredibly basic like “prop up the car and remove a wheel”? If you aren’t comfortable doing that then you aren’t comfortable “working on” your car.
jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You’ve written a whole lotta junk to essentially end on, “if you can’t jack up your car and remove the wheel, you shouldn’t be changing your headlight in the first place.”
Which is quite a dumb take.
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
I mean, most people don’t think ease of changing a light bulb (that they never have to do) is a deal breaker for a car. I haven’t had to change a headlight since they went to LEDs. My last car that was 7 years of owning it.
I think we should insist on making things repairable, but should focus on the things that come up frequently.
Because everything is a tradeoff, things like how often it is likely to need repair, how much the car costs, functionality of the car day to day, looks, gas mileage, heck a lot of stuff will come before a once a decade thing that you’re either going to pay a shop to do or trade before it’s an issue.