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| MK14:
--- Quote from: Zucca on March 16, 2020, 03:42:36 pm ---All good ideas, but none of then will survive the industrialization process. DIY solution could be a hope, so when it stops working you know how to fix it. that said the sensors are not very easy accessible, you need this machine in your garage: In some cases the best sensors is having no sensor at all. --- End quote --- When the regulations (law), were created. They should have kept within an affordable budget, so that a reasonably large number of people, can have their own cars. If you allow uncontrolled, feature creep, and other increasing in excessive regulation (Red Tape). Then the purchasing and running costs of cars, can spiral out of control. You have to be practical. Yes, for £100,000,000 per car. You could surround it with 50 outside air bags (to save pedestrians), wrap it in cotton wool (in case a bird accidentally hits it). Limit its top speed to 10 MPH, to limit injuries when an accident occurs. Make it out of 100% recycled materials. To save the planet, it is powered by a clockwork spring. You have to wind it up for 250 hours, before moving/driving each 10 feet. It has to have a full intensive care hospital unit built in, plus an AI Doctor, to save anyone in an accident. Etc etc. The people who create laws and regulations, should be practical, rather than being extremely OCD, and putting in very expensive regulations, even if it only saves 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 people per year. Tyre pressures, are important for the safety of the car. But, such regulations should NOT be overly burdensome, so that they end up considerably increasing the maintenance costs of cars. tl;dr The laws/regulations, should be a sensible balance between, rules for safety/improvement, and the practical costs for buying and maintaining a car, in the long term. |
| unknownparticle:
Pretty sure that my Mazda 6 has replacable batteries in it's TPMS units? Anyway, recently the system had a problem, the rear tyres only were losing air quite rapidly, to the point where the dashboard indicator would light up every other week or so, annoying. So I had to re-inflate the guilty tyres accordingly. This got old quickly but I was not enjoying the prospect of being bent over for some unpleasant rear end attention by a garage. Tyres are one of those things that are not on the DIY car maintenance agenda. However, through a little research I discovered that it was most likely to be the inflator valve stem assembly that was likely to be the cause. After some ebay surfing I found some aftermarket units at a very low price, and as I coincidently needed some new rear tyres I decided to buy them and ask the tyre fitting service to replace them at the same time. Result, problem solved! I do like TPMS though, as it saves one of those annoying car tasks, and when I set off on a journey I can be conveniently confident the tyres are ok. And correct tyre pressures defo save ALOT of fuel. I wish my motorcycle also had it, as tyres on a bike are a life and death issue. |
| MK14:
I'm all for TPMS as well. But create a set of regulations, which allow efficiently priced solutions. Such as using existing ABS wheel speed sensors/systems and/or battery replaceable units or something else, which potentially lasts the life of the vehicle. |
| unknownparticle:
--- Quote from: MK14 on March 16, 2020, 04:12:55 pm --- But, such regulations should NOT be overly burdensome, so that they end up considerably increasing the maintenance costs of cars. tl;dr The laws/regulations, should be a sensible balance between, rules for safety/improvement, and the practical costs for buying and maintaining a car, in the long term. --- End quote --- Totally agree. Another similar issue is with HID headlights. My car recently failed it's MOT because the headlamp washing system was inoperative. I didn't even realise it had headlamp washers, although it does have active, HID headlights. So, I discovered that it does, and a fuse had blown. There was no indication on the dash that it had a fault, helpful................. not. Then I found there was a law, introduced in 2005 from memory, that required cars with HID headlights to fitted with a washing system. However, it does not specify how effective it has to be!! After replacing the fuse the system works fine as far as spraying high'ish pressure jets of fluid from the screen washer tank at the headlights for about 1.5 seconds, every 20th operation of the screen washers!!! It has naff all effect on the clarity of the headlamp lenses, which stay pretty clean anyway due to the aerodynamic design!! I had a Merc back in the early 90's which had actual headlamp wipers, with a seperate reservoir for that system only, that worked very well, as would be obvious. Although it did have one quite significant design problem, it froze up in winter and there was no protection for the wiper motors or washer spray motor for stalled motor overload. Sometimes the wiper motor fuse blew but not everytime they froze, so in the end they burned out! So, going back to the HID headlamp thing, we have a useless system that is mandatory by law but doesn't actually work in practice. So the consumer pays the price for the incompetance of beurocrats! :palm: |
| unknownparticle:
--- Quote from: MK14 on March 16, 2020, 04:30:37 pm ---I'm all for TPMS as well. But create a set of regulations, which allow efficiently priced solutions. Such as using existing ABS wheel speed sensors/systems and/or battery replaceable units or something else, which potentially lasts the life of the vehicle. --- End quote --- When have you ever known government regs to be well thought out?! There is an old piece of car safety advice, said to be very effective and very cost efficient. Place a rigid 6" long steel spike in the centre of car steering wheels and remove seatbelts, then every one would be very careful how they drove! |
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