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Comment by _yb2s | Hacker News Reader

As a car nerd, a popular opinion is to avoid cars with computers because they could fail anytime, and can't be macgyvered into a repair roadside.... but after ~50 years of computerized cars, it seems that simple solid state computers, ruggedized and often potted in epoxy essentially never fail. And moreover, they can both give early warnings before you're stranded, and diagnostic data that can be used to pinpoint and fix a problem in the middle of nowhere.

I especially love the mid-90s and newer VWs, which will report through VCDS software literally every part failure, or sensor output, from any system in the car.

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It's not computers breaking you need to fear, but your engine management refusing to turn on when you've put a in third-party window washer motor that doesn't provide the correct response to some proprietary encrypted canbus query.

VWs and Audis of that era were notorious for the electrical system getting haunted by ghosts. Forums are littered with threads of perplexing symptoms, engine codes, voltage readings, often no solutions either for most of these threads from userbases that are competent enough to swap engines or transmissions themselves.

As a longtime VW forum guy, those issues are mostly from people not knowing what they are doing and usually involve extensive water damage to the electrical harness- that can be prevented with proper maintenance. For example, there was a design flaw in some of the coolant reservoirs that cause coolant to leak into the wiring harness. If you know about this, you can look for it and catch it early or prevent it.

I have a couple of '71 VWs and you can fix almost anything on the with toothpicks and Scotch tape. They just run because they're so simple ... You can actually count the wires in the harness and read the color codes! Thing thing that drives me nuts are the mechanical voltage regulator - they are finicky and today's hardened solid state devices near them in every way.

If you don't intend to keep them fully stock there are modern solid-state drop-in replacements for reasonable prices! Given that they are fairly simple cars building one yourself from common electronic parts would not be too difficult either.

Simplicity is huge for reliability… but Volvos from that same early 70s era were also crazy simple yet used solid state boxes to control everything… and were way more reliable than the VWs.

Beg to differ.

The reality is more like how Ford has victimized its customers with its EPAS system. That's Electronic Power Assist Steering.

They got rid of the old dead-simple power steering pump and replaced it with a flakey system based around an electronic sensor that is prone to shorting if you look at it funny and can only be replaced along with the entire steering rack that it's attached to...to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Having a newer VW with VCDS is a superpower. If you are getting vague codes (e.g. Air Intake Leak), you get really good at analyzing sensor data to determine exactly what an issue might be and can either fix it or swap the sensor, most of which can be had for reasonably cheap (notable exceptions include MAF and emissions related sensors).

When I bought a new 2012 VW GTI there wasn't even a schematic for the fuses. Apparently the wiring is not even consistent on a model year, so they just didn't provide it. Easy to understand why with even computer codes mechanics are stuck with a plug and pray methodology.

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