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My brother bought a huge GMC diesel truck for his work, hauls a trailer that carries 10,000 gross weight enough to justify the truck.
At 2000 miles it dropped the tip of a glow plug into one cylinder and trashed the engine.
The dealership told him they were going to repair the engine.
I told him to basically tell them if they tried to fix that engine, and anything required him to return to that dealership 3 times total, they would get the truck back through the Virginia Lemon Law provisions.
Then they decided to put a new engine in the truck. He always bought the extended warranty whenever he bought a GM product.
Now he drives a Tacoma and gets 25 MPG carrying all his work tools and materials around with him.
In 1973 I worked at a Ford Dealership, I got to fix all the warranty rattles and squeaks, and there were plenty. One Ford pickup I will never forget. Brand new, start it up and oil starts pouring out of the bottom of the bell housing almost immediately, probably a quart a minute.
They pulled the transmission out and the torque converter and flex plate. On the back of the engine block was a hand written note from one of the assembly line workers. The note said:
"You found it you SOB"
The guy had drilled a 1/8 th inch diameter hole into the main oil gallery.
The threaded it with tapered threads and put a plug in his hole.
About 10 years later I worked for A Mercedes dealership in Houston Texas. A new turbo diesel 300 SD cam in with a hole in the side of the engine with 600 miles on the odometer. The dealership put the customer in a loaner car, and Mercedes air freighted a new engine from Germany. It came in a steel cage with every accessory attached, just the way it was built on the assembly line before being installed in a car.
The old engine went back in the steel cage and was air freighted back to Germany.
The warranty cost was $7800 for the engine and the round trip air freight was $1000.
That same year I bought a brand new Honda CRX 1.5. It was a stripper and cost $7000, less than the Benz engine.
When I put a radio in the car we found out the right hand door speaker circuit was not working properly. The ground wire was an open circuit. We just ran a new wire, I didn't want someone tearing the dash out of a brand new car to fix a simple problem. I later found out it had a 195 degree thermostat and had the dealer switch it back to 180 under warranty.
I drove the Honda 50,000 miles and sold it for $5000. I averaged 44 MPG and never tried to hypermile the car. It had no AC.
The American car manufacturers needed Unions in the 1930's. Ford was the exception and treated his employees well. Old Henry was a "man of the people".
After WW2 the adversarial relationship between Unions and management created a situation where quality suffered. Sabotage and waste became the results of the balance of power going to the unions. Customers flocked to the Japanese makes when the first oil Embargo hit in 1973.
GM stated in that same time era that it was not possible to build a car that got 40 MPG. In 1977 I rebuilt a Honda Accord that was in a collision. My Pop bought the car and drove it 40,000 miles in the Florida keys. He averaged 39.5 MPG. Traded it in for $1300 less that he paid me for the car.
You will never see the American car companies return to their position of dominance that they enjoyed in the post WW2 era. I would be amazed if GM pays back their 50 billion "loan".
Jammer it amazes me that you would buy another GM product after the problems you had with your truck, which almost killed you. Apparently the dealer that sold you the truck had some serious problems with their techs if they could not find and fix the brake problem you had with your truck.
I never failed to identify and correct a customers problem in 30 years of working on cars.
If GM was negligent in their handling of your problem I would go after them for cash. According to your post they damn near killed you with a defective product.
Like the old Ford pickup in the earlier part of this post, I don't need too many examples of a total disdain for the customers investment of his hard earned money, to convince me to never buy from that manufacturer again.
The American manufacturers and the Unions forgot one major point in their 40 year conflict. That was the customer.
They only got better after the Japanese (taught by Douglas MacArthur) kicked their butts.
Oil prices are a minute part of our monthly expenses. Just over 1% of our annual income.
I also don't swallow the myth of the oil speculators last year. The oil exporters are cash rich and own the product and the tankers in which it was shipped. It's like a shill bidder in an auction. They could simply write themselves an IOU and jack up the price of their product.
Our greatest enemy today, other than our own propensity for shortsightedness and outright criminal waste, is OPEC.
The next worst enemy is ourselves. We don't have the backbone to enact legislation and support R&D that would eliminate oil imports in the next decade. China and India are coming on the scene, and we will never be able to compete with their low manufacturing costs. Our once world leading manufacturing base is gone. We produce very few manufactured goods anymore, and have evolved into a nation of money handlers and bureaucrats.
Politicians buy votes with handouts, and refuse to act courageously. We are selling out our next generations because we are collective a bunch of cowards.
I was checking yesterday on how many people are millionaires in the country. The ones that have a net worth of over 1 million dollars. The figure is about 6% nationwide.
That means there are about 18 million millionaires. The national debt is over 11 trillion.
To pay that debt we would need to confiscate 1 million dollars from 11 million millionaires.
Instead (and I am not advocating confiscation) we just keep piling on more debt. Income taxes do not apply to people with large amounts of net worth, only to work related income and investments. In 1973 I paid more income taxes than John Rockefeller. He was worth 165 million, I was worth nothing.
Ross Perot made 60 million in tax free municipal bonds on his 2 billion in net worth when he ran for president. He paid no taxes on that 60 million in income. At the same time the poorest were suffering from inflation that forced them to ask for annual raises just to keep up with the prices on daily needs.
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My point,(whew it took long enough!)
Another oil shortage due to international conflicts would be a short term disaster, but in the long run, it might (big emphasis on might) actually get us to actually fix the problem.
Right now I can barely get anyone to even look at my solution, even though several friends who are engineers (West Point, MIT, Va Tech,etc.) tell me it is an ingenious and practical solution.
regards
Mech
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