Car prices are still insane.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

It could have been fake news, but I read somewhere (I can't remember where) that higher average ages these days aren't really due to adults living longer. People usually lived to around 70 to 90 years old before. The reason is children tend to survive to adulthood better. That, and due to abortion being a thing, now still births are no longer counted as deaths. When you have a lot of 0-year-olds that die then the average tends to go down.

Sounds like fake news to me.

When social security was enacted into law, most people didn't make it to 65 to collect it.

I had MRSA in my knee at the age of 28. It probably would have killed me if penicillin hadn't been developed.

When I was 30, my L5-S1 disc bulged into my spinal cord, crippling me both in motor function and in pain. If we were a hunter/gatherer society, I'd be dead meat.

Although I'm highly critical of how barbaric 'modern medicine' is, it's still less barbaric than it used to be. Civil war era, you got shot, and you're going to lose whatever limb was hit. Nowadays, you get shot 13 times, and you're out of the hospital in a few days.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

When social security was enacted into law, most people didn't make it to 65 to collect it.

Ok so I did the math.

In 1935 (when Social Security was enacted) the average couple had around 6.25 children.

But around 7.95% of those children didn't make it past 5 years old. So more like 5.75 made it past that, and pressumably to adulthood.

With that, the average life span was 60.7. But if we take out the ones that died young, it becomes 65.9. So the average person between 5 and up lived to be that age.

However, this brings up another interesting fun fact. If the average family had nearly 6 children that lived to adulthood, they must have had a very large workforce comprised of younger adults and very few older ones. This is very different today with the average American couple having less than 2 children.

[freebeard]

So we've gone from car's prices to the impending population collapse.


https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NGwgwMgquRE/maxresdefault.jpg

[redpoint5]

Car prices < demographic implications.

I wonder what character Saudi Arabia will adopt as oil funds dry up and force a pivot? Rapid population growth + shrinking pie doesn't sound like a good recipe.

[freebeard]

Car prices < demographic implications.

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Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Music
"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is a song written by Jim Steinman. It was released in 1977 on the album Bat Out of Hell, with vocals by the American musician Meat Loaf alongside Ellen Foley. An uncommonly long song for a single, it has become a staple of classic rock radio and has been described as the "greatest rock duet". Wikipedia

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Agreed on the access issue, but how often did you need that access when there was stuff on the cover?

I guess the example provided by Isaac Zachary regarding spare tires and chains may be even worse for the average Joe than engine access, considering most people won't me so mechanically-inclined to perform a DIY repair, even though an engine with poor access might increase the time spent for a repair and increase labour cost.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

I guess the example provided by Isaac Zachary regarding spare tires and chains may be even worse for the average Joe than engine access, considering most people won't me so mechanically-inclined to perform a DIY repair, even though an engine with poor access might increase the time spent for a repair and increase labour cost.

Toyota said the engine and transaxle should be removed on the Avalon in order to change the swaybar bushings.

I was able to force my arm back in there with a wrench and back out the bolts enough to slide the bushings out from their brackets.

Not a great design, but at least it did end up being quite quick and cheap to do by doing it DIY.

Now I'm looking to go get a replacement engine for the Prius... Ooooooohhhh Boy!! Here we go!!

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

Toyota said the engine and transaxle should be removed on the Avalon in order to change the swaybar bushings.

I was able to force my arm back in there with a wrench and back out the bolts enough to slide the bushings out from their brackets.

Sometimes an "unorthodox" way might sound easier, and quicker too, but I can guess neither Toyota, a dealer or an independent shop would want to be liable for any unexpected result for a job done in a way different from what is on the book.

Not a great design, but at least it did end up being quite quick and cheap to do by doing it DIY.

Sure, but as I said before, not everybody would be so willing to try the DIY. So it allows the stealerships and independent mechanics to charge whatever they want, for something that might be not the rocket-science described in a manual

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Sometimes an "unorthodox" way might sound easier, and quicker too, but I can guess neither Toyota, a dealer or an independent shop would want to be liable for any unexpected result for a job done in a way different from what is on the book.

Sure, but as I said before, not everybody would be so willing to try the DIY. So it allows the stealerships and independent mechanics to charge whatever they want, for something that might be not the rocket-science described in a manual

I know, but it is a little depressing. I wasn't able to get a torque wrench on the bolts. I don't think that is a good thing. I want to do things the right way, but I also don't have the time, money and patience to take out an engine and transmission just to fix a clunking noise in the suspenssion.

When I had the car aligned I told the shop about the clunking noise. They told me it was something in the swaybar, but didn't seem to want be the ones to fix it. They said I (not them) should take care of it as soon as possible.

Of course that's just probably from living out in the middle of nowhere where it's three weeks out just for a shop to look at a flat tire. I'm sure in a more populated area the shops would be wanting me to bring them my car so they could charge me in order to fix it.

[redpoint5]

I've said it elsewhere, but I spent 90 minutes concocting a weird setup of swivels, adaptors, and ratchets to remove the 2 bolts that hold the cam chain tensioner on my Honda motorcycle. The manual specifies a silly amount of disassembly to reach that part, so I went a different direction. Then, I spent 3 hours trying to get the 2 bolts back in. Their extreme disassembly might have been about as fast.

The stupid part has like 7 revisions and still makes a godawful buzzing sound after just a couple hundred miles. Common advice is to replace it with a manually adjusted tensioner.