Consumer Reports rates minivans

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Nate Nagel wrote:

>>>>As far as the engine, Chrysler has popped out a couple bad ones in
>>>>their time,

> >>Can't think of a single bad one prior to the mid 90s when the 2.0 head
> >>gasket fiasco happened. Not counting the Mitsubishi junk they sold

> > *cough*VW 1.7 in early OmniRizon*cough*

> What's wrong with a VW 4-cylinder?

Yeah, yeah, I *know*, Nate. You've made some kind of a compact with the
devil that lets you get amazingly reliable and long service out of VWs.
Those of us who've made no such deal are in a different situation
entirely.

> that block is still in production today

McDeath still sells the Big Mac.

> Certainly strong enough for just about anything you'd be able to legally
> do to it.

Strong? Who said anything about "strong"? The question concerned the
overall quality of engineering and reliability of the hardware.

DS

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Steve wrote:

> > *cough*VW 1.7 in early OmniRizon*cough*

> Never had a lick of trouble with that engine in the one my Dad had.

Yeah, and Paul T. managed to make 2.6s run well and last. And Hemi A. has
some ungodly number of hundreds of thousands of miles on the 3.0 in his
minivan. *shrug*

> Yes, it was a buzzing gutless POS, but it ran longer than the rest of
> the car did...

As I was saying...

> which isn't saying too much, come to think of it. :-p

As you were saying...

Daniel J. Stern wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Nate Nagel wrote:
>
>
>>>>>As far as the engine, Chrysler has popped out a couple bad ones in
>>>>>their time,
>
>
>>>>Can't think of a single bad one prior to the mid 90s when the 2.0 head
>>>>gasket fiasco happened. Not counting the Mitsubishi junk they sold
>
>
>>>*cough*VW 1.7 in early OmniRizon*cough*
>
>
>>What's wrong with a VW 4-cylinder?
>
>
> Yeah, yeah, I *know*, Nate. You've made some kind of a compact with the
> devil that lets you get amazingly reliable and long service out of VWs.
> Those of us who've made no such deal are in a different situation
> entirely.
>
>
>>that block is still in production today
>
>
> McDeath still sells the Big Mac.
>
>
>>Certainly strong enough for just about anything you'd be able to legally
>>do to it.
>
>
> Strong? Who said anything about "strong"? The question concerned the
> overall quality of engineering and reliability of the hardware.
>
> DS

Exactly, and I've had exactly two issues with engine internals in over
10 years of driving VWs with the same basic engine - a burned valve on a
newly-acquired 1.8 16V that had been sitting a long time and had a
spotty maintenance history, and some worn rod bearings on a Corrado G60
(which apparently was due to VW using a new type of bearing for that
motor which was supposedly stronger, and which was easily rectfied by
dropping the pan and replacing with the standard bearings)

Really, the only major issues with VW drivetrains that I'm aware of that
can be attributed to VW (I'm not counting things like the recent
ignition coil fiasco or the window regulator thing, which were supplier
issues and would have been a non-issue were their dealer network not
populated by combusting rectums) are the fact that the G60 supercharger
is essentially a maintenance item - you rebuild it every 80K miles - and
the close-ratio 020 transaxles were missing a c-clip that caused them to
grenade at about 120K miles or thereabouts (the regular wide-ratio
trannys are apparently OK, however.)

Of course, we can agree to blame VW for their ****ty heater cores, I'm
totally with you on that one. There's no excuse for heater cores that
fail every 8-10 years like clockwork on a well maintained car.

nate

--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel

Nate Nagel wrote:

> Of course, we can agree to blame VW for their ****ty heater cores,
I'm
> totally with you on that one. There's no excuse for heater cores
that
> fail every 8-10 years like clockwork on a well maintained car.

Yeah, sounds like the Renault Alliance, Defiance, Appliance, etc. Oh
wait... you said every 8 to 10 years. I thought you said every 8 to 10
months.

Toyota MDT in MO

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Nate Nagel wrote:

> > Strong? Who said anything about "strong"? The question concerned the
> > overall quality of engineering and reliability of the hardware.

> Exactly, and I've had exactly two issues with engine internals in over
> 10 years of driving VWs with the same basic engine - a burned valve on a
> newly-acquired 1.8 16V that had been sitting a long time and had a
> spotty maintenance history, and some worn rod bearings on a Corrado G60
> (which apparently was due to VW using a new type of bearing for that
> motor which was supposedly stronger, and which was easily rectfied by
> dropping the pan and replacing with the standard bearings)

I'll concede the point that the *basic* engine and _manual_ transmission
are fine. The stuff that gets bolted on and draped around the basic
engine, OTOH...and the automatic transmissions...

> Of course, we can agree to blame VW for their ****ty heater cores, I'm
> totally with you on that one. There's no excuse for heater cores that
> fail every 8-10 years like clockwork on a well maintained car.

I remember getting the recall card for the heater core fittings on our '90
Jetta. Seems they "could" fail and cause a high pressure/high-temperature
leak...directly onto the driver's feet.

Daniel J. Stern wrote:

> I remember getting the recall card for the heater core fittings on
our '90
> Jetta. Seems they "could" fail and cause a high
pressure/high-temperature
> leak...directly onto the driver's feet.

The Renault Alliance/Encore recall notice said, paraphrased, that its
heater core could rupture and spray hot coolant on the occupants legs,
scalding them. I'm sure this did happen to some unlucky people, but
everyone else suffered a heater core that weeped coolant just enough so
that you could always smell it. Usually a couple months after
replacement. Those cars were cool in a lot of ways for the time, but
the coolness was more than offset by the godzilla sized **** designs of
virtually every system on the vehicle.

Toyota MDT in MO

On Tue, 14 Feb 2005, Comboverfish wrote:

> The Renault Alliance/Encore recall notice said, paraphrased, that its
> heater core could rupture and spray hot coolant on the occupants legs,
> scalding them. I'm sure this did happen to some unlucky people, but
> everyone else suffered a heater core that weeped coolant just enough so
> that you could always smell it. Usually a couple months after
> replacement. Those cars were cool in a lot of ways for the time, but
> the coolness was more than offset by the godzilla sized **** designs of
> virtually every system on the vehicle.

Well...yeah, I guess if you cross your eyes and squint and maybe take
large quantities of thoughtfully-combined pharmaceuticals, "zero to sixty
in forty-five minutes" is cool in a lot of ways ;-)

Yep they left out the engine. But weren't they the ones with pedastal seats
in the front so rear passengers had more leg room? That was a decent idea
for a small car at the time. And I thought the hood shape was interesting.


"Daniel J. Stern" > wrote in message
n.umich.edu...
> On Tue, 14 Feb 2005, Comboverfish wrote:
>
>> The Renault Alliance/Encore recall notice said, paraphrased, that its
>> heater core could rupture and spray hot coolant on the occupants legs,
>> scalding them. I'm sure this did happen to some unlucky people, but
>> everyone else suffered a heater core that weeped coolant just enough so
>> that you could always smell it. Usually a couple months after
>> replacement. Those cars were cool in a lot of ways for the time, but
>> the coolness was more than offset by the godzilla sized **** designs of
>> virtually every system on the vehicle.
>
> Well...yeah, I guess if you cross your eyes and squint and maybe take
> large quantities of thoughtfully-combined pharmaceuticals, "zero to sixty
> in forty-five minutes" is cool in a lot of ways ;-)
>

Art wrote:
> Yep they left out the engine. But weren't they the ones with
pedastal seats
> in the front so rear passengers had more leg room? That was a decent
idea
> for a small car at the time. And I thought the hood shape was
interesting.

Yeah, the seats could move more ways than most modern power seats,
including the "astronaut move". And just like every other inovation or
standard feature they brought to this compact econo car class, it was
with glaring fault. I saw the left side seat tracks rip apart when
heavily used (delivery people, etc) causing the driver to flip into the
passenger seat on a sharp turn. I'm sure you can agree that's
dangerous.

Every theoretically nice feature on these festering, moist, piles of
dung was plagued with mass failure rates.

Toyota MDT in MO

>
> About here is where ol' Lloyd would pick up the CR torch.
>
> Did he die or something?
>
> --Geoff

Probably finally realized that he doesn't have much reason to post here
since he hasn't owned a Chrysler product in years.

Or got fired and lost his free internet access through Emory :-p


But hey, we've got Glickman as a replacement. And if nothing else at
least he's less predictable than Yoid was...

;-)