Is There to many problems with new vehicles these days??

Axle - Apart from maintenance issues mine has been bullet proof - Now has 85k and going strong.

It does wear out rear brake linings way to quickly if you do a lot of water work and silt gets in the drums. Set of linings on now were new before the Simpson crossing and wore out on the trip. The drums were full of claypan silt though :-)

Still that is a too quick in my books

Cheers Tony

We run around 120 vehicles and the incidence of warranty faults is very low especially on Jap cars. Holden Comodores we get a few problems, however anyone using the new SIDI motors beaware they are bad oil burners on the orinigal 5/30 oil. This improves when a heavier oil is used.
I can not recall a single warranty issue on any Toyota.
Cheers Pete

Yes!

My opinion is that forums exacerbate the situation. My last car was a Pajero, I had it for a year until it was written off due to hail damage.
After I bought it I started reading about that model on forums and a couple of days later I was convinced I'd bought a lemon. Made me feel bloody awful.
1 year later, before the insurance company took it back I had had no issues with it and no sign of any happening either.
Prior to that I have a HZJ105, while it most likely did have a weak front diff and gearbox it never left me down and it has some rough treatment but I was always worried it would.
I now recognise that all vehicles will have faults, its life. If a weakness exists know its limits and then stop reading.
The internet is full of negative opinions and very few positive ones and that is across all topics, its is not balanced, plain and simple, you have to absorb that information and see it for what it is.
My 2c and now I'll run for cover...

Hmm, interesting question Axle,
I was wonder the other day are owners of late model 4wd's going to get the k's out of them as those of us that have early 90's models, eg, patrols or Cruisers.
Sure enough the 80 had a couple, BEB's being the most well know.
It's not unheard of for an 80 to of done easy 500000k's with only normal maintenance. And some of these vehicles have not been treated kindly either.
Maybe it's just a numbers game, more vehicles, more complaints/break downs/failure of parts.

"what you used to call a bullet proof vehicle!!"
An 80 comes pretty close to this, I maybe a bit bias in this call.

The more complex vehicles are becoming, the bigger the potential for problems.The manufacturers don't seem to be simplifying things these days. They also are hell bent on squeezing more and more power/torque from smaller engines.Something's gotta give someday.

good old 75 series tray back, still see them everyware.....
Further out in the bush you go and the more remote it is you will only find cars that last.................
oh yeah of course i have one ..... i had to smile the other day, i saw a LADA NIVA go past, poor dude, i was gunna buy it off him just to save him from misery but he had an apple mac laptop and had gps on it, poor dude, i left him alone....

Mmm, from my experience, the quality of new vehicles is excellent compared with say 20 or 30 years ago.

My last two vehicles have been Toyota 4WD. The first, a 2005 Hilux had a couple of issues fixed without drama under warranty. The current vehicle, a 2008 79 Series has done a power of work - big loads - towing a 3,500 KG van and has done a bit over 50,000 KM in two years. Not one warranty issue. It has been to Toyota each 10,000 KM (approx) for a fixed price service - that's it. The only 'problem' is that it burns almost a litre of oil each 10,000 KM.

Before that, my previous three new vehicles were two Holdens (a Commodore and a HSV) and a Falcon. None had significant issues.

Go back to the 1970's and '80s and there was an expectation of quality issues on most new vehicles.

Perhaps I've been lucky. Of course there are some hard luck stories and I don't want to detract from the difficulties some people have. But on average, vehicle quality has improved dramatically in my lifetime of vehicle ownership.

Norm C

One should take on line forum comments on vehicles with a big dose of salt. There is a certain amount of slagging of products for no good reason at all. Sometimes this is done by people who have no direct experience but make out they have. Sometimes it could be worse and be deliberately malicious.

Say a product has some faults early in its production life which are corrected. The internet will endlessly repeat the product has a big issue with those faults when they were corrected long ago and affected a handful when thousands or tens of thousands have been sold since.

Sometimes the posts are maliciously negative. Say I sell white tractors and my rivals sell black ones.Well I buy a black tractor and then post all sorts if horror stories about them so people will shy away and but what I sell. A bit cynical? I have seen what I think are examples of it on American websites more than once.

All in all, I think vehicles are much more reliable now then they have ever been. In my younger days breakdowns were accepted as more or less normal. Cars rusting out in less than five years was normal. Now we expect perfection and are disappointed when perfection is not delivered. Perhaps we are expecting a bit too much these days.

Something I have noticed of late is a trend to use light and mid range 4x4s to do the work that was once done by heavier and more expensive vehicles. It is no fault of the light and mid range 4x4 if it suffers a bit when being overburdened. It is important to pick the right vehicle in the first place.

Re my cruiser the only issue so far has been the electric radio antenna that needed resetting.

Re the work vehicles I look after I can not remember the last warranty issue. The Subarus in particular have been trouble free but in all fairness so have the Toyotas, Fords and Hyundais we have had in recent years. The last lemon was an early BA Falcon. The later ones were really good. Other brands we have not had for along time but I would expect they would be similarly reliable.

Flynnie

Axle

There are always a few problems with any new car. Back in the days when unleaded petrol was introduced, the Toyota dealer I was working for bought a new engine tuning machine. The instruction book said the results of one particular test could vary a little from car to car. The reason given was "automotive engines are not precise devices". That pretty well sums it up. There is no precision engineering in a car except possibly some parts of a diesel fuel injection system and the rotating parts of a turbo. Most cars are built to a price and when you look at some of the prices you can pay for Bentleys, Mercs etc, our 4bs are down the lower end of the scale yet they are much the same size and have a similar number of parts as those at the top. There has to be a reduction in quality and reliability in there somewhere.

There was a DVD available a few years ago on the history of Holden. Part of it contained an interview with an engineer from the original design team. He said the 48/215 model was designed to go for 35,000 miles. We all know they would last a lot longer than that in the hands of a good driver but anything beyond 35,000 was considered a bonus.

GM was quite capable of building it to last double or triple that mileage but the finer engineering tolerances and material quality needed to achieve that would have taken the price well above the family car segment of the market it was intended for. The more reliability and longevity you want, the more you will have to pay.

For the record, the worst car I have ever worked on in regards to mechanical problems was the EH Holden yet they were extremely popular. They nearly drove us nuts with warranty problems, and major ones at that. The most trouble free would probably have been the 504 Peugeot.

My supposedly bullet proof and unbreakable 03 Hilux needed a new bearing on the front of the cluster gear at only 50,000 ks. It was just under 300 ks from the time I detected it to when I thought I had better replace it or end up in big trouble. Had I been half way down the Canning when I first heard it, I would not have reached the other end.

That is certainly not a common fault at that mileage but typical of what can happen to volume selling low priced cars.

I think cars are now much more reliable and there are far fewere problems in new cars. Consumer rightsand publicity now mean that stuff that would have just been accepted years ago now gets headlines and makers are forced to issue recalls. Engines etc certainly last for much longer distances.

Gday...
Not sure I agree with you about 'all' new 4x4s are unreliable. My history in 4x4s has been -
Series III Landy - 2nd hand - not a solitary problem in 2 years
HiLux dual cab - new - not a problem in 3 years
60 series Cruiser - 2nd hand - was jumping out of 4th gear when you back off - previous owner had towed horse trailers constantly - and I was towing a 23ft van. Sold it and got a Falcon - lived in Brissie for 2 years.
60 Series Cruiser - 2nd hand - not a problem in 3 years
(sold that and got a Fairlane - back in those damned cities again)
HiLux Dual Car diesel 2nd hand (first diesel) 4 years with out one single problem
100 Series Cruiser 2nd hand - clutch shudder and some rough engine idlling - Toyota couldn't locate or fix either - after 11 months sold it and bought
2006 Hyundai Terracan CRDi Auto - new - 68,000km and not a solitary problem
Now have a Discovery 3 TDV6 Auto Turbo Diesel 2nd hand - only had it for about 3 months and so far not a problem (but like some say - the internet tells me I should expect 'problems' .... time will tell.

Some people seem to get a "monday" vehicle and the rest get a goodun - that would work out to 10% of the vehicles may have problems praps ?
Cheers

Julie & John

The problem is that the vehicle you buy is built to a price and not to the blueprint , if each and every component was made to the blueprint specs and not to the so called acceptable plus - minus range the problems would not be so prevalent ,,take the first 80 series bigend bearing problem , 1 consignment of bearings that were so far out of specification that the 1st 80s were and still are classed as duds , even though there would not be any of the dud fitted bearing vehicles running today. Same for the Ford Explorer , villified as the exploder not for any mechanical problem as such but in reality because of a out of specification group of tires supplied by Firestone.

There is only one thing wrong with modern cars and that is the replacement price of electronics especially for Japanese and German cars. In the past you could fix mainly mechanical issues yourself easy. Today the mechanical issues become less compared to the past (better material, more precision manufacturing with robots) but the problems of electronic development (software in embedded systems) creep into the car industry.

The replacement cycle of my brake pads is 120,000 ks. Oil change is 25,000k, transmission oil 100,000 etc. Very cheap to run this vehicle when you make sure you keep the bushes and joints healthy (many of which are self lubricating).

Manufacturers and especially dealers are overcharging on spare parts especially electronics. So my solution was to buy a car where I can avoid that. I have a spare ECM (Engine control module US$300) spare BCM, TCM, DCM for less than $1000 US. Having a TechII for diagnostics helps to keep everything in check.
The upfront investment of tools and spares will pay off very quickly.

have fun
gmd

An interesting thread. The thing that surprises me is the short time folks keep
their cars. I guess it is nice to change every 2 or 3 years, but hardly a recipe to control the cost per km of motoring. I cant imagine ever allowing the cost of depreciation to exceed the running cost, but most do. I dont know if new cars have more issues than older ones, maybe the sheer amount of electrically
controlled systems is an issue. Current diesels spin like petrol motors & will wear
at a similar rate I imagine. One hears of the faults that arise in new cars but
is it statistically important when so many are sold ?. Manufacturers rush to fit
bigger & bigger wheels & up goes the cost of tyres, but not a dollar is spent on
making decent seats that really fit the human frame. Ever sat in the back of a
Holden Crewman ?. Disgraceful............oldbaz.