When Tail Lights Lose Touch with Reality | Hacker News Reader

When Tail Lights Lose Touch with Reality

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19 pointsalphabettsy11 comments

I have some sympathy for the kinds of integrations that improve reliability or dramatically cut cost at the expense of repairability.

But when I look (admittedly) from outside at the auto industry it looks like they want to make parts a significant profit center, at the expense of the customer. This case being a prime example.

Just had a cracked windscreen which couldn't be replaced by an ordinary repair shop. The windscreen had a ton of integrated electronics and had to be calibrated, which, funny enough, could only be done by a dealer or a single company that they had a deal with. Price was the same: $1044.50. For a windscreen.

You likely have a lane keep camera. The glass itself can be replaced without special tools, but the lane keep system needs to be”relearn” its new mounting position.

That recalibration requires some additional hardware.

There is also electronics (not just simple wire antenna) embedded in the glass. I have no idea what it's for.

Is that really necessary though? Can't it be attached to the roof in a fixed position?

Or automatically learn it's position by looking at the hood? Or let the driver do it themselves with a "Drag the image till the lane markings match" kind of thing?

If it's attached to the car or glass, a simple adhesive template could facilitate precise positioning for reinstallation.

Normally it’s on the underside of the glass. It’s essentially impossible to remount in the exact same position.

I noticed two issues when I had to have my wind screen replaced:

* the curvature is slightly different on the new glass. Unfortunately, for me this put the heads up display at a slightly different position and I seat too high for it.

* glass has variation in thickness. This can cause visual distortion.

Further, when you’re replacing a windscreen you cannot guarantee the existing windscreen has the camera in the correct position. After all, if you’re replacing the windscreen, it’s probably damaged.

That should be in the rear-view mirror, then.

This is usually bs

Ford has a huge (intentional?) blind spot for easy maintenance and repairability. I found this out the hard way when one of the headlight bulbs in my 2016 Ford F-150 went out and I found out that you have to remove parts of the front end to replace it. Gone are the days of just popping open the hood, reaching around, twisting the bulb base loose, and pulling it out.

Dumbfounded at how stupid this was, I searched for a workaround, and found one that involved removing bolts in the wheel well and bending it back so I didn't have to remove a bunch of frontend trim pieces. You then have to reach up in there essentially blind to feel around for it, twist it, and then pull it out to replace the bulb inside the base/mount.

Video tutorial of this process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWluZ9b9LWI

Ford also royally screwing up the tail lights here comes as no surprise to me.

Not remotely unique to Ford and unfortunately common.

I thought this was going to be about how new GMs incorrectly turn on the backup lights when parked, or how some EV’s have brake light semantics other than “this car is actively decelerating”.

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