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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

“ They cost a fraction of the price, and then the operating costs are much less because they’re so much easier to fix,” he said.”

It’s not really so much a technology problem as the ability to repair, probably by the farmers themselves.

Companies don’t make it easy. You need special equipment, tools, etc.

We could insist on a right to repair, open standards, etc

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All good ideas, but repairing surface mount / integrated / dust and vibration glued parts is not as easy EVEN IF they were open standards as a 40 year old tractor is to repair. I spent way to long repairing an old gas engine, it was super simple in terms of operating approach. Opening the hood on my new car - the fixes are not as obvious.

I can't help but think that this is intentional. I'm pretty sure it's possible to create a more modular design without sacrificing anything. Especially given John Deere's record, it doesn't seem far fetched that they would actively seek out ways to make it more difficult to repair their tractors.

It's definitely intentional. You pop the hood of a new car and you see a plastic cover, not the engine. The plastic cover doesn't do anything for the car, it adds cost to the car, and mechanics have to remove and reinstall it if they do any work at all.

However, it does have a function: to obscure you from the workings of your car, and push you to take the car to a dealership or someone buying genuine parts at least.

If it truly does nothing, why would the mechanic replace it instead of just leaving it off? Genuine question, I know nothing about this. Do the manufacturers at least have some explanation for why it's there other than to make access more difficult?

There's often some noise reduction (the plastic may be backed in foam) to quiet down the direct injectors on modern cars. There's also an element of less weather-proofing required for the connectors underneath the plastic (or at least easier to undo/replace).

It's also certainly about aesthetics when the car is being sold new - you open the hood and knowing nothing about cars (or modern cars) you see lots of little piece and become concerned that there's lots of things that could break. You open a car that says "$BRAND" in a $30 piece of plastic and you think, "Nice, this is a simple, reliable, easy-to-maintain vehicle!" There may be some small effect from highlighting the typical user service ports as well (windshield washer fluid, oil, brake, coolant reservoirs).

Phones are sold this way - and people like everything "packaged up" into a black box in many cases.

My guess - the company that makes all the parts / wire runs / etc very visible has a harder time selling to mom and dad when they stop by with their kid.

I couldn’t even swap out a headlight in my girlfriend’s car, because of the tight space.

Instead she has to pay a garage to do it. That’s not it used to be.

I had the same on a 2002 Toyota avensis, and the price of the lights wasn't like 40 years ago either unfortunately.

I mean that sounds more like "It's a pain in the ass to change a headlight in my girlfriend's car, so I have her bring it to a shop" than a right to repair issue. Or are you saying the shop needs special tooling to get the job done? What kind of car is it? There's usually a few YouTube videos showing how to do things like this.

I have an older gas guzzling SUV on a truck chassis. Lots of repairs are a lot easier than my wife's car, because there is a lot more space. But that is a fundamental tradeoff between two vehicle classes and gas guzzlers versus high MPG crossovers. My SUV is newer than her car too.

I volunteered to replace a headlight in my girlfriend's car long ago. The socket was completely buried. No access from above. The assembly looked like it was held in by two screws and a section of 3/8" metal bar, so no problem, I'll remove those, pull it out and then replace the bulb. Nope. You couldn't actually get it out because the hole was slightly too small.

Looked it up online, shops put this model on the lift and access it from below. Ended up laying on a piece of cardboard in a light rain because it was only accessible from below the bumper. If my forearms were any shorter (I'm pretty tall) I would not have been able to do even that.

Meanwhile the headlight on my 10 year old VW went out a couple months ago. There's a twist-on cap, and a twist-in socket. The cap is visible standing up.

I had the replacement bulb in in under a minute. Unfortunately the matching bulb on the other side, the socket was a bit wedged and I spent most of the time getting it out.

The Ford Fusion requires removing the front bumper cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxBBdMeNho

I rented one once and on a long trip I noticed a headlamp was out, I was going to just buy new bulbs and replace them, but once I saw the procedure, I called the rental place and drove 30 minutes to swap out the car.

If they are going to make it that hard to swap headlights, they should use LED's which (should) never need to be replaced.

This is pretty common for modern cars, I'd say post 2008ish or so. Headlights just don't go out as often as they used to so OEMs feel more comfortable making that a bumper cover off, pay a mechanic, type job.

If the machine used standard specs and protocols, you could buy replacement boards on a competitive open market.

Some things are much easier with ODB electronics though. Like if a cylinder is misfiring, you pull out a code scanner and see exactly which spark plug needs to get replaced.

Good luck replacing it without giving the car computer mental breakdown. I replaced my car's tire once and all the sensors went crazy until engine light came on. They are not making those car software forgiving.

...I've done it and it was nothing like that.

There are a few procedures. You just need to tell the car about the new tires so it doesn't keep looking for the old.

Any repair has to operate at some level of abstraction of the components. Maybe a sensor or actuator failed, perhaps a wiring harness went bad, or maybe the potted computer between those components is defective, but the solution in those cases is typically not to disassemble the malfunctioning device and get out a soldering iron but to replace it.

Perhaps a remanufacturer would disassemble eg. an alternator and diagnose a bad rectifier or bearing, but most of the time the right answer is to leave treat it as a black box, leave it in one piece and swap the entire thing for a new one. Board-level repair is really only suitable for expensive lab equipment and occasionally in a PCB assembly plant.

The problem is that modern manufacturers find it simpler and more profitable to sell the entire tractor/car as a black box. Better engineering in the form of:

1. Modular construction that allows equipment to be disassembled with replacement of individual parts

2. Simple, cheap, open diagnostic interfaces to measure and isolate system performance

3. Consistency across model years to reduce the number of part numbers required for a repair

4. A replacement parts pipeline, possibly including aftermarket manufacturers

5. Documentation on how the system was designed to function

Are all things which which manufacturers in the past respected enough to implement (based on value ascribed to those things by consumers, vendors, and repair shops). However, those items have been devalued and disrespected in favor of more marketable features and lower prices. It's not about the tech in the new car or tractor - those could be implemented with the same (or better!) level of serviceability as your old gas engine.

Unfortunately, "Right to repair" legislation focuses on items 4 and 5 above. A lack of 1, 2, and 3 can still be abused to effectively prevent repair.

huge discussion here about Nebraska voting for right-to-repair a few weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805633

Vote with your wallet.

Vote with your vote. As far as I know only two candidates in the presidential primary race support right-to-repair: Sanders and Warren.

Because the shortest path to fixing anything is always electing a politician who knows nothing about that thing, in order to have them approve legislation written by other people who know nothing about that thing, that demands that companies do a thing. That always works great.

Certainly all the greatest societal reforms have been brought about by individual purchasing decisions.

Followed closely by the second most influential action, encouraging other people to vote the same way you do in website comments on articles that don't pertain to elections.

Good luck, Mssr. Quixote.

I would encourage everyone to vote for the candidates who best represent their values even though voting by itself does not produce meaningful change.

You know politicians consult field experts etc and have legal teams go over legislation with many drafts and experts as well as laymen reading and commenting.

Most peoples jobs dont know everything that happens under them... you have people that have specialised expertise and the value of good leadership (among other things) is those who can hire and utilise people well, not know all.

Those are not exclusive.

I agree with you in the general case but Warren does have a long history of consumer advocacy.

I think voting with your wallet is the more sensible approach to getting the products you want, but we also need politicians to stop passing crazy laws that make it illegal for you to even attempt repairing your own possessions.

Exactly.

That seems to be what this article is describing.

It is a technology issue. Computers make things complex and opaque where they were once simple. When something stops turning you can look at it. Does it need grease? Is something blocking it from turning? When a microcontroller stops sending out the correct signals how could a farmer possibly do anything about that or even know what is going wrong?

> We could insist on a right to repair, open standards, etc

The advantage older equipment has is that a generalist can repair it because the equipment is fairly simple and well understood. Parts on older equipment are easier to source or sometimes can be fabricated by the farmer themselves. Newer equipment has tighter tolerances and components are more difficult to fabricate or repair. Computerized components require special tools to interact with and specific knowledge to configure. Newer equipment is more complex and thus more difficult to diagnose and repair.

Right to repair won't fix that. Regulations aren't going to make manufacturers return to having simpler machines, it can only force them to make the knowledge required to repair those machines public. If need a left-handed knurled whats-it to remove a part or a special diagnostics tool to service the electronics, regulations might force the companies provide documentation and sell those tools, but it won't remove the need for those special tools and domain expertise.

The only real way to change this would be for a manufacturer to pivot to selling field serviceable equipment which seems unlikely.

Specifically though on tractors we're seeing companies essentially DRMing replacement parts. Farmers etc can easily find and install parts but then the computer controller will not recognize the replacement or won't reset from the error condition.

Yeah, that's something regulations can handle (and should).

I would like to move towards informed consent. A product should clearly state that it only accept OEM parts VS it will accept any replacement parts or only certified parts. Or that is unrepairable or only repairable by the manufacturer or can be repaired by anyone.

Heck think about printers. I would gladly only purchase printers that take ink or toner without chips only.

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