Arguably, many of the things you’ll need to work on for newer vehicles are likely far outside the casual mechanic’s expertise and require a lot of bespoke and expensive equipment to service.
Everything else, like oil, brakes or fluid changes are basically the same as any other car. I understand that this kind of runs afoul of the spirit of this post, but there’s a reason many engines are simply replaced when they encounter some kind of major malfunction.
I am an amateur mechanic, but have done a great deal of very technical work. My only formal training is three years of high school shop classes, everything else I learned under or in a car. The newest thing I have worked on is a 2022 GMC Sierra. Seemed to be pretty much the same as my 2003 Chevy Silverado.
You are definitely correct about foreign (non-USA) makes. My wife had an Audi when we got married. I own a small toolbox of tools specific to her Audi S4 that I will never use again, but that was a 2006, so this issue predates 2013 for the makes that it is true about.
Admittedly, I try to avoid fuel injected vehicles. So I don't go out of my way to work on new things.
You’re right, I was speaking specifically to euro and Japanese makes (I’m biased toward those makes, so I didn’t even think of qualifying it).
I do a lot of auto work, between restoring cars to repairing my own. But modern fuel injection systems run on a razor’s edge of tolerances and often getting to some part requires dismounting a turbo, which is all sorts of pain in the ass, and not something I’d recommend for an amateur.
You say that but the new stuff is actually way more tolerant. Once we got electronic fuel, timing and spark in one ECU things totally changed. You want finicky? Deal with a solex carb!
Ah dude those bosch CIS systems are hot potato garbage. I mean its a cool concept its just so fiddly. Once we got LH though things got a lot better. But that brings me back memories
they're neat and they're fine-ish usually once running but they're a fricking pain to setup especially since a lot of the OEM you are supposed to have don't exist anymore. Like the book says 'oh plugin this or that' and its just... yeah no sorry
The only cool thing is the wiring harnesses and everything are fully analog so like, you have fuel injection mechanically, i mean that in itself is cool. it's just a pain
I wonder how similar it is to a mechanical fuel injected diesel. All my tractors are diesels and they have electric free fuel injection.
My tractors are something I always marvel over, besides the starter you don't need any power. I have an old Cat diesel that doesn't even have an electric starter! Uses a small gas engine (called a pony engine) to start the large diesel engine, and the gas engine uses a pull start, very similar to a lawn mower engine.
Diesels never were carb'd - there's no venturi effect possible without vacuum. There's no spark. It's just totally different.
They always have direct injection into the cylinder as far as I know. Maybe in the early 1900's they did manifold injection but I don't think so.
It's just a total different concept.
How the metering is done (IE How much fuel to meet load) though may have been similar, I am not sure. I 'asked a friend' on this one, since I am really unfamiliar with diesels in general.
Ya you're probably right. I think "common rail" injection is based on gas DI though.
And there are some engines that are indirect injection (called IDI). I've been on the hunt for a 90s 7.3l IDI. They're gutless without a turbo, but slap a pair of turbos on and it makes a heck of a towing machine. But I don't know as much about diesels, partly because they just never break the way a gas engine will. I've rebuilt a few gas engines, diesels just seem to be made of tougher stuff.
Ya if imports are your thing you're definitely going to have a few tool chests of one-off tools!
I have always stuck to American muscle and diesel tractors. The amazing simplicity of those machines has always attracted me. I love that I can hold a complete understand of the entire
vehicle in my head. I'm sure you can even for modern vehicles, but they're not simple at all!
There will never unfortunately be an open-source car. The nearest you will get is by getting a well-documented one with good OEM parts availability and converting it to an EV which eliminates a lot of the proprietary computers that seem to cause issues. EV drivetrain and battery parts are mostly well documented and interchangeable and can even be open-source, and Air bag and ABS computers in older cars also mostly work stand-alone (ie they will work properly if the cars computer is not there)
Newer cars have much better safety systems but have unfortunately gone all in for making things difficult.
Well, at least here in Brazil, vehicle's manuals were far way better, even explaining the process of building the car. This reminds me of the history of a guy that rebuilded a Volkswagen Saveiro just reading the manual: https://youtu.be/ZKe1gl4WCvc?si=nIvKtAESdmn03bCn (Brazilian Portuguese, with auto generated subtitles)
It depends what you mean by "open-source". You can build the entire drivetrain of the equivalent of a stereotypical mid-century domestic car with no parts from the original manufacturer, for example.
> there’s a reason many engines are simply replaced when they encounter some kind of major malfunction.
Only a catastrophic failure[1] results in an engine replacement. For the p99 of car owners out there (especially in rust-prone areas), the engine will outlast the body by a large margin.
[1] And for some types of catastrophic failure, such as overheating damage, it's still cheaper to replace the head only.
This isn't true for many makes and models. It's different than older models because troubleshooting or servicing starts with interrogating or commanding the car with specific software that isn't basic OBDII but with OBD adapters and cheap software both my 2010's Volkswagen and Jeeps can be diagnosed and serviced with an OBD reader.
Ironically my old Toyota is one of the hardest to really get at sensor and dealer-software changes.
In personal experience, VW manuals are atrocious to figure out while Toyota, at least around 2000 put out wonderful service manuals even if the ECU's are locked down.
Ironically my old Toyota is one of the hardest to really get at sensor and dealer-software changes.
In personal experience, VW manuals are atrocious to figure out while Toyota, at least around 2000 put out wonderful service manuals even if the ECU's are locked down.
It seems like one effect of this is that the temperature display can not be localized. Most everything else on a US market Toyota can be converted to metric but it looks like the AC and internal dash display for temperature can't be changed by the dealer, by knowledgeable users or by repair shops.
Everything else, like oil, brakes or fluid changes are basically the same as any other car. I understand that this kind of runs afoul of the spirit of this post, but there’s a reason many engines are simply replaced when they encounter some kind of major malfunction.