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Comments
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think anyone who even remotely participates in this forum knows that since it's been repeated over and over as if we had ADHD.
We could probably narrow it down to two or three things that constantly get rehashed...by all sides. You certainly know that.
Also, note...some time, new people might view this forum, not just the diehards like the six or seven who post constantly.
And as far as posters here and 'ADHD', well....you said it, not me.
Ah, that makes sense (well, it doesn't in a way, but you know what I mean.
Reminds me of suspension issues where the adjustment is taking a big hammer....
So now we're back to the question of whether the welding was a UAW line worker problem or an engineering failure, or software issue (telling the robot what to do) or the fault of the tech setting up the jigs on the line.
Reminds me of suspension issues where the adjustment is taking a big hammer....
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Or a tree and a come along;)
I'm sure that's where my jack stands were made.
A bad decision is a bad decision, whether it was decided in Detroit, Tokyo, Seoul, Stuttgart or Munich.
How about:
1) Ill-fitting and/or warped interior trim pieces? Perhaps the worker damaged it sledge hammering it in instead of doing it properly.
2) Broken tabs/clips/latches on plastic interior trim pieces due to rough handling could cause interior trim to rattle, come loose, or fit poorly.
3) Any minor dent/scratch anywhere on a new vehicle, including a chip on the glass or mirrors.
4) spilling corrosive liquids on the battery terminals/cables, wires
5) having your interior smell like pot or alcohol (for Chrysler plants)
6) Rattles from left over trash in unreachable spots.
7) And on and on and on....
I guess that was the issue with my 2005 Sierra. The GMC shop foreman told me there was no way to adjust the doors on the extended cab. It had the rear doors that opened. I could pull on the door while driving and the wind noise would stop. When they tried adjusting the door tight enough to stop the wind, you could not close the door without using brute force. It really makes little difference who was responsible for the screwed up door. It was GM and they were unable to correct it. Plenty of other choices.
I asked that of rocky when he was defending all things UAW. His response if you reject too many vehicles they give you the boot. Which is hard to believe when you can smoke dope and drink beer on breaks. I think they were in a hurry to get to their pot break when they built my GMC Sierra. I will take the Mexican workers over UAW any day of the week.
Simply not my experience, anyway, for a long time.
Can anyone mention that they've found trash in their car (that wasn't theirs)?
How about:
1) Ill-fitting and/or warped interior trim pieces? Perhaps the worker damaged it sledge hammering it in instead of doing it properly.
2) Broken tabs/clips/latches on plastic interior trim pieces due to rough handling could cause interior trim to rattle, come loose, or fit poorly.
3) Any minor dent/scratch anywhere on a new vehicle, including a chip on the glass or mirrors.
4) spilling corrosive liquids on the battery terminals/cables, wires
5) having your interior smell like pot or alcohol (for Chrysler plants)
6) Rattles from left over trash in unreachable spots.
7) And on and on and on....
You forgot missing disc brake pads and ill-positioned airbags, both of which have been sources of recalls for different makes.
It's clear Gagrice and I have, Lemko and Uplander have not.
Trust me, there is a huge difference between a bad vehicle and a VERY bad vehicle.
I don't know how to communicate it any better than imagining having to spend $300-$400 every 3 to 4 months repairing something or other, and in addition to that, in 65,000 miles having to call in 4 tow trucks to rig up and lift up your vehicle.
Doing the math, that means one tow truck trip per 16,250 miles. Perhaps not enough to kick you out of Triple AAA, but you won't be their favorite customer.
My Fords fell apart around me, but never left me stranded. They always started and moved, even if nothing else on the vehicle worked.
I'm not aware of the latter, but the missing disc brake pads you mention, obviously about the U.S-built and well-regarded Sonic, was actually the result of parts received from overseas, not a UAW worker.
An entire assembly built overseas, where the pads were not installed, was installed on the car, not just pads by themselves (obviously I guess, huh?--not humor on your part, but mine!).
Still, wasn't very many cars and I never heard or read that it actually happened to more than one car.
The kind of things most people complain about in cars, is usually a bad-quality component, due to poor QC at a supplier or bad engineering. I still believe that.
But we'll all agree to disagree. I think the stories about rattles with notes attached that say 'You found it, you rich *******" are as old as the 1971 Chevy motor mount recall that gets brought up here once in a while about all that's wrong with GM today.
I believe AAA gives you four free service calls per year, and then they start charging after that. At least, they were that way at one time...I know because there was one year that I DID have to use them four times, and on the fourth time they warned me.
First time was in late 2002, when my buddy's 1998 Tracker ate its transmission around the 86,000 mile mark. I let him use my AAA to have it towed to the local shop. Not long after, my '89 Gran Fury ate a starter and had to be towed. Then it ate the rebuild, and had to be towed again. It actually ate two more rebuilds, but only had to be towed one more time. The last time, I was able to get one final start out of it, and get it to the mechanic.
I was worried that there was some other issue that was making it eat starters, but the mechanic said that it was getting harder and harder to find good rebuilt starters for that car. Worse, it used a lightweight starter, which the mechanic said was really designed for a 4-cyl Accord. Dunno if it actually WAS an Accord starter, or if he was just speaking in hyperbole.
Other than having my DeSoto towed away a few years back to get a bunch of work done on it, that was the last time I had to have a car towed. I have had a few breakdowns, but they would always re-start. Eventually.
Isn't it great that we live in a country where we can all make these choices?
Let's just hope we're not heading down a path where our freedoms are being substantially reduced, although that's another topic.
1) Ill-fitting and/or warped interior trim pieces? Perhaps the worker damaged it sledge hammering it in instead of doing it properly.
I can tell you that although our 1994 Mecury Villager (bought new) was a great vehicle in most ways, and the Nissan engine and tranny went >200K miles without problems, the car was not assembled that well by Ford.
As my only UAW built vehicle, it had noticeable assembly issues that I've not seen on my other makes. The glovebox door was quite crooked. The reading light panel in the headliner stuck out wrong. And on the engine compartment hood, the soundproofing material had a big rip down it. Those were all aseembly issues rather than design issues.
Great post andres.
What isn't important is whether uplander had good vehicles, or gagrice had bad vehicles. Any one or two vehicles could be good or bad.
What IS important is the aggregate, statistical total of experiences of all owners. And that is best measured by market share - is a brand gaining new buyers (due to great reputation/word of mouth) or losing buyers (for poor owner experiences/word of mouth). That is what affects how a make is doing. It's tough to change perceptions when there's good (Toyota as an example) or bad (GM as an example) history behind a brand.
Hyundai is a brand that had a terrible reputation and has done a lot to improve. They look like they mean business by being quite dramatic in their changes to their vehicles.
I'm just not seeing ENOUGH of that kind of mentality at GM. Sure, the Volt is good, but a niche car. Sure, the ATS is looking good, but not a volume seller. The volume sellers are the ones that are decent to less so. The Cruze is pretty nice but the drivetrain is unrefined. The Malibu redesign is in some ways a step back from the previous model. Those cars are right in the heart of the market and should be even better. The advertising continues to be lame, especially for Chevy, the mainstream brand. And then GM reliability ratings continue to be fairly dismal except for Buick.
I'd still buy a Ford if I liked it, but CR has gotten brought up by others here over time and that's what I seem to remember being reported here not very long ago.
My '99 Quest was also made by Ford in Ohio by the UAW. There's a TSB for a sloppy fitting airbag cover on the dash that I never bothered with (squeaks once in a blue moon). Assembly or design? I don't know. And the combo signal stalk got recalled (not assembly). And the ALPs power window switch carboned up (supplier issue). For the age and miles (and abuse), the trim has held up well. Few rattles considering it's a big box.
I have an 80 year old retired Army friend that always swore by his Lincolns. This last Spring he decided to trade it in on a new Sonata. He has made several trips to see his family in NM and now has 12k miles on the car. He told me last Sunday it is the best car he has ever owned. Loves to drive it. Drives straight through every trip 15 hours. Says the NAV gets him there and home again. Which is good as he is kind of forgetful.
I think the Villager is the only vehicle I've driven 100k miles w/o any expensive repairs.
The Nissan powertrain was a big reason we bought it. No way would I have a POC Windstar or GM minivans at the time.
Here is your exact quote...
Personally, I find it hard to believe that the line worker can have much influence on assembly quality these days. I believe cars are engineered to come down the line with much less personal handling of fit than even in the '90's. Seriously, I can't recall a single issue of poor fit that I could attribute to an assembly worker, even on my cheapest cars of the last fifteen or so years.
Well, I didn't realize we were centering in on UAW assemblers. Looked to me like the original claim was that assemblers had little impact on the assembly quality of a vehicle, and I provided 2 specific examples of assemblers having a direct influence on that exact subject. Anything that requires a human hand to be installed can be installed incorrectly, and its a frequent occurrence (one may define "frequent" as they see fit).
The airbag positioning issue was on my daughter's Nissan Sentra.
The last company I worked for had to be evacuated one day because one of the shop guys Impala's caught fire one day as he was getting rready to go home for the day and he happened to be parked right up next to the building. Never found out the cause but IIRC, I don't think they were ever Supercharged :confuse:
Anyways, he managed to escape just fine but must've been pretty crazy to have a car catch fire with you in it! May I ask what yours was? :surprise:
Whoever took the trash out didn't see the missing brake pads at the bottom of the shipping container or didn't bother to report them. (Autoweek)
And a missing pad wasn't enough to trigger the brake light.
The plant is located near Nissan’s vehicle assembly plant in Tennessee, and can produce up to 200,000 batteries annually depending on demand. :shades:
Whether or not any warning light came on or not, it was a defect tied directly to vehicle assembly.
Example... Lear makes the seats for BMW in Spartanburg. If a seat heating element is omitted, it's still an assembly problem, although it wasn't a BMW associate issue.
From the buyer's POV, it's a BMW assembly problem, and the buyer will look to BMW to fix it... Not Lear.
Same goes with Toyota truck frame rusting. The customer went to Toyota to be made whole, not the frame supplier.
Wonder where the brakes were assembled and were the workers union, RTW, foreign or domestic? Or was the problem just the packing? (Putting clips in the shipping container was the fix). But you're right, pointing fingers at the supplier doesn't mean squat to the consumer. But it may indicate a management or engineering issue as much as a worker issue.
(The airbag fit sounds like something noticeable on the line btw).
And I recall anythingbutgm actually seeing an SRX on fire...when there were less than 4K in that entire recall. I still want him to buy me a Powerball ticket sometime, with those odds!
Where were the brakes assembled and were the workers union, RTW, foreign or domestic?
(The airbag fit sounds like something noticeable on the line btw).
Looking at the window sticker earlier today on a Sonic, it says NA content is 50%, so it's an even bet the brake subassembly is imported from Korea (27% of the Sonic is Korean content) or somewhere in Asia, possibly Mexico.
Personally, I don't blame the final assembly worker for the missing pads. Frankly, he/she doesn't have the time to re-examine the sub assemblies during final assembly, nor should anyone be expected to do so.
If that were the case, what's the advantage to having Pre-assembled subassemblies?
After all, who would expect the drive-train installation team to re-inspect the engine/transmission to ensure all pistons are installed, bolts are torqued to spec, etc.?
In this particular airbag case, I agree that it's something that the final installer should have been able to notice. However, there have been a number of airbag recalls due to defective or improperly designed/assembled airbags, and there isn't any way the final assembly installer could tell a good one from a bad one.
Sure, you notice the one ablaze with all the fire trucks/firemen around it, but what about the other hundreds of houses in the vicinity that aren't on fire?
It's like my opinion on "minor" surgery. Sure, its minor, until YOU'RE the one getting it, then it's not so minor anymore...
Mexican workers are American but not UAW, too.
Not true.
According to JD Powers 2012 survey of manufacturers reliability in the first 3 years of ownership, Cadillac is #3 only behind Lexus and Porsche. Buick is ahead of Honda, Toyota and Acura. Chevrolet is about average and ahead of Audi, Nissan, Mazda, Kia and VW.
I would recommend posters check their facts before posting.
Here's the scoop on reliability...
http://www.jdpower.com/content/press-release-auto/Q5wPftR/2012-u-s-vehicle-depen- - dability-study.htm
However, according to Sargent, there are several brands that have performed very well in dependability during the past several years but still face challenges with customer perceptions of their reliability. In particular, during the past four years, models from Buick, Cadillac, Ford, Hyundai and Lincoln have achieved consistently strong levels of dependability, but still have relatively high proportions of new-vehicle buyers expressing reliability concerns.1
"Building vehicles with high levels of dependability is obviously a necessary element in reshaping consumer perceptions," said Sargent. "Negative quality perceptions are notoriously difficult to change, and it takes considerable time, but effectively communicating improvements in dependability may reduce concerns, and by extension, help new-vehicle sales."
According to JD Powers 2012 survey of manufacturers reliability in the first 3 years of ownership, Cadillac is #3 only behind Lexus and Porsche. Buick is ahead of Honda, Toyota and Acura. Chevrolet is about average and ahead of Audi, Nissan, Mazda, Kia and VW.
I would recommend posters check their facts before posting.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
JD Power is one source. They also show Chevy just below average, and GMC well below average - the two volume brands of GM.
According to Consumer Reports, even though the Volt is excellent, GM as a whole didn't place for 2012 in the top list, which was all Asian brands.
The JDP survey looks at one model year ONLY for the 3 years people owned them, while CU is looking at the last 3 model years. So it is more broadly representative than a one-model year focus.
So doing research depends upon what research you are doing.
But thanks for the suggestion anyway, greg.
The folks who hate the bailout are hatin' that!