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Comment by aucisson_masque | Hacker News Reader

Still rocking one over here. The thing had not been maintained for 20 years while still being used, ran several times with almost no oil in the engine, drank gasoil full of water.

And it still works.

Things were made different back then.

I looked up the manual, you got everything you need to repair it. Maintenance is extremely easy. Even have electric schema.

Now my BMW, I looked into the manual how to change a light. It said to go to the dealer lol.

Fuck the modern car / tractor / tools. I blame the people for that, we went from customer that demanded to be able to repair their stuff to people who are now mechanically illiterate. I'm not sure they would even know how to replace a tire on their Tesla :)

That's why manufacturer have all the latitude to do what they do. And that's why it didn't go very far with farmers.

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> It said to go to the dealer lol.

It's amazing we let it slip this far. Even cars from a decade or so ago feel much more repairable. I bought an EV and I haven't even seen the motor yet, because I'm going to have to dismantle a bunch of plastic-clipped stuff to remove the frunk, and I've broken enough brittle tabs for one lifetime. God forbid they'd just use actual metal fasteners for this stuff.

And example, in the US, is how much the population makeup has changed over time:

https://dailyyonder.com/census-report-unusually-informative-...

Go back to 1910, and more than 50% of the population lived in rural areas. And rural doesn't mean "suburbs". As this trend continues further back in time, I'd expect that people in their 30s may be living in cities in 1910, but we often not born there. They migrated from rural areas to the city.

Which means that city people even into the 50s had a very, very rural background.

So people who grew up on farms miles from any town or neighbours or stores, who had to rely upon themselves entirely, were the ones buying machines. But if you look at today, many people are apartment dwellers, or live in townhomes. They don't even have a place to fix something, let alone the tools or background.

I could fix any small engine before I was 10, work on cars before I could drive, and it's because you just picked up this stuff in a rural area. I guess my point is, if you don't know how to fix anything, and no one around you does except for specialists?

Then you probably won't care about owner repairability as much.

Sad, but probably a likely reason why we're where we are.

> Sad, but probably a likely reason why we're where we are.

Yeah, that's kind of sad.

I bet that one day kid won't even know what a petrol engine car is, won't know how to drive and will basically just use self driving taxi.

Hopefully I'd be dead before that lol.

Yeah that also.

It's even worst tho, one day I layed a little bit against the front of the car and it made a reverse bump in the bodywork right on my ass.

Got a 2000 Suzuki that is full metal.

I think the trend of plastic went around 2000 to 2010 because of regulation on crash, plastic absorbs better the kinetic energy so we don't get our head smashed.

But yeah, no excuse to not make it easy to dismantle. It's the equivalent of Volkswagen using all kind of different screws to hold the plastic protection under the car, so that the average Joe who has standards screw drivers can't bleed his oil himself or change the gasoline filter.

This is maddening but you don't know it when you buy the car. It's only later.

Fortunately there's less mechanical stuff to break or go bad on EVs.

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