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Comment by fasteddie31003 | Hacker News Reader

I own a 03 Ram 2500 with a 5.9 Cummins engine. It has 250,000 miles and from the forums it can easy get to 1 million miles. There is no infotainment system to show the truck's age, distract you, or break from a bad solider joint. I've fixed everything myself on that truck from the transmission to the axle seals. The vehicle is actually increasing in value because it has a grand fathered in diesel engine. I have no idea why someone would buy a car with so many confusers (AVE for computer) that will only give you grief down the road (literally).

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Liking one specific generation of technology is just being a modern amish. I'm pretty your old truck is an abomination for some old timer. New tech will be tested and bad ideas will be eventually abandoned down the road, this is how it works.

His truck is an environmental abomination, and almost certainly not as safe as a more modern vehicle, not to mention the hundreds of hours (thousands?) he's had to pour into understanding his vehicle and performing his own maintenance.

You make trade-offs, which is fine until you pretend like your set of trade-offs is the best set, and everyone else is wrong.

Diesel actually is a more efficient engine than gas. It produces less CO2 than gas too per mile. The only thing is the visible black smoke that comes out of my tailpipe every time I pass Tesla. JK, my other car is a Model 3. I just YouTube all my questions.

diesel might be a bit more efficient, but produces more nitrogen dioxide (and other oxides) which are harmful to humans and the environment, which is why they are being banned in some parts of europe.

Liking an older generation of technology makes sense when the newer generation has lost its way.

New tech being abandoned down the road doesn't help any of the poor saps who bought that new tech.

There's a lot of symmetry with farmers buying 40 year old tractors. For exactly the same reasons. I really hope the pendulum swings the other way if even just a bit. I mean, there are still new dumb-phones being made. So maybe there's hope for dumb-other-things as well.

Hate to break it to you, but a zener diode on your ECM can fail short, which burns up the pcb trace for the power. And the ECM is glued together, and it's ridiculously hard to open up without damaging it further, and it has a flexible pcb that can split if you flex it too much once you get it open. (I have one sitting 5 feet from me).

Get a P-pump for your 5.9 and forget about electronics altogether :)

Considering that you can get a used one for 70 bucks shipped on Ebay that doesn't sound like much of a problem.

My car is a 2007 and I've kept it around for similar reasons. The one thing that scares me the most about having a car that old is safety. Newer cars are a lot heavier and stiffer, so even cars that are considerably smaller could annihilate mine in an accident.

It's not quite to this extreme, but IIHS did a test (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtxd27jlZ_g) a while back that showed the difference in safety standards between a 1959 Bel Air and a 2009 Malibu. The Bel Air is about 5% heavier.

Probably less of a worry in a 3/4-ton truck though.

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