Wednesday, Jul 25, 2018 at 11:44
Candace - Spot on, the KISS principle has worked
well for centuries. The whole original idea behind 4x4's was a robust, very basic, simple vehicle that could put up with horribly adverse conditions of salt water, snow and ice, mud, and dust, that just kept churning on, regardless.
One looks at the conditions the little WIllys/Ford Jeeps put up with during WW2 and one wonders what a current 4x4 would perform like, under similar conditions? Very poorly, I'd have to say.
One of the greatest problems with modern electronics on vehicles is the lack of readily available
information on how they operate and interact.
And interaction between electronic components is where the problems start.
You only need a dirty or faulty wiring harness connector, a pinched wire, or a failed sensor - and the entire system breaks down because the ECU will not operate due to a perceived "outside-of-defined-parameters" situation.
Often, those defined programming parameters are too narrow or restrictive, causing warning signals at best, and total failure at worst.
I can remember a Ford engineer telling me the made errors in programming with earlier ECU's and microprocessors, whereby intermittent wiring harness connector problems were logged as major faults.
Things such as a flying piece of wood or a stone flicked up by a wheel would hit a connector, cause a temporary power disconnection, and it would be logged as major component fault!
Then there's the problem of microprocessors designed to do integral circuitry fault finding - but when the microprocessor itself fails - you're left in the dark!
We have a 4WD Isuzu truck, stuck in my neighbours workshop right at present.
Driven in to do some minor panel and paint on it, it now refuses to move, because an aftermarket, dash-mounted, low-air-pressure warning light is flashing.
This means the signal to the fly-by-wire accelerator is not being sent, so you can press the accelerator, but nothing happens.
We can start the engine and run it up, it runs happily, the air pressure gauges are up in the green - but the light won't stop flashing, and as soon as we engage drive in the auto, the accelerator stops working.
Talk about frustration. We know it's probably a faulty sensor somewhere - but we need a code reader, and probably a laptop, to try and find the problem, so we can just get it out of the
shop!
Cheers, Ron.
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