Car Enthusiast Club [Now Motorcycle friendly!] - First thread to 150k! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[PandaCopyRight]

4 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

So - How many inches to the electron do you get?
Can you even measure that?

Miles per kW?
A battery has certain amount of kWh ... and a fuel tank has a certain amount of liters/gallons what ever the fuck you measure in ... makes sense to me 

[AlwaysFSX]

1 hour ago, vetali said:

Was more thinking "b-but muh modern oils last longer!"

Yeeaaaaaaaaaaah or that

6 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

There is no real way to do a direct comparision of a full tank to a full charge except maybe by a measure of miles per battery discharge percentage vs MPG itself - Which I've noticed isn't the way an EV's current state of battery charge isn't expressed as "Being".

It's always expressed as range left that I've ever seen in an EV before.

MPKw, the leaps to be negative lmao

[Commodus]

I have to admit I'm perpetually amused by the "I'll never drive an electric car" holdouts, the ones who are convinced EV technology is fixed in stone and that sufficient gas stations will be available for all eternity.

 

Sorry to break it to you, but EV dominance is coming — and I normally hate to deal in absolutes. The laws are increasingly in place, the automakers have committed to transitions. Even if you could somehow vote in enough politicians to meaningfully undo zero-emissions policies (you can't), your favourite badge isn't about to have a change of heart and keep ICE vehicles around to please you. From the 2030s on, you'll likely have to buy an EV if you want a new ride.

 

No, they won't suddenly shut off the gas pumps, but the notion that you'll just keep buying used ICE cars for the rest of your life is optimistic at best. There will be fewer and fewer gas stations, and fuel prices may go up as demand shrinks. You'll see fewer repair shops that can service ICE vehicles, fewer parts and fewer viable used cars to buy.

 

That and the notion that most problems with EVs are permanent is, frankly, silly. There's already plenty of work underway on more environmentally-friendly batteries, recycling and repurposing. Don't like the range, weight or high typical prices? Those are already improving. And remember, EVs are net positives for the environment as long as the energy used to charge them isn't particularly dirty. Many EV issues can be solved in time; ICE's remaining problems are effectively permanent.

 

As it is, it's hard to imagine the performance and tuner crowds holding on to ICE for much longer. Combustion still wins in motorsport, but it's having a very bad time among enthusiasts. Congratulations, your Challenger Hellcat or 911 GT3 has lots of horsepower and makes loud "vroom vroom" noises... too bad it gets smoked by a Model S or Lucid Air in a drag race. There may well be a point where someone's big, bad ICE car can be dusted by someone fetching groceries in the family sedan.

 

You don't have to rush to buy an EV right away, but pretending that you can stave off an industry sea change is naive at best.

[IPD]

3 hours ago, vetali said:

Was more thinking "b-but muh modern oils last longer!"

Speaking of....

 

I have been using Rotella T6 5w40 for nearly a decade.  I change it every 3000 miles like clockwork.  And I've never owned a diesel.  Gotta love legislation that makes (allows) diesel oils to be better.

[Bitter]

Regarding the miles remaining thing, ALMOST EVERY MODERN CAR CAN DISPLAY THIS, not just EV's. Plenty of people use the miles remaining instead of their fuel guage because they have no concept of miles per gallon, how many gallons in a tank, how many gallons per fraction of a tank, etc. Much the same way most EV owners won't have a concept of charge level vs range either, how many kWh their pack is, voltage level, how kWh and voltage play out together to influence available range, etc. Boiling it all down, fuel level or battery level, to an estimated range is simply easier for the mass motoring public to digest at a glance and doesn't require an understanding of the underlying systems or concepts at work.

[Fast_N_Curious]

4 hours ago, Commodus said:

Congratulations, your Challenger Hellcat or 911 GT3 has lots of horsepower and makes loud "vroom vroom" noises... too bad it gets smoked by a Model S or Lucid Air

Make it Nürburgring and then see what happens with the GT3 

 

Also: this won't happen with ICE cars: 

 

jk - I admire the electric car for it's low end torque. And don't get me wrong, I am all in for the hybrid electric/ICE race cars as well. I just don't think its nearly as viable as fossil fuels are. 

 

 

[Beerzerker]

4 hours ago, theninja35 said:

They've actually just invented that and they call it a "battery."

Really - They Did?
One day you're gonna have to show me how pouring electrons in works on the roadside to get you going again after your EV decides it's time to die.

I'm not saying with all this EV's won't come into dominance because they will eventually, I am saying this sudden rush to EV's isn't the smart way to go at it. There is still decades of research and improvements to be make before they'd truly be as viable as an ICE is today.

 

 

5 hours ago, Bitter said:

Regarding the miles remaining thing, ALMOST EVERY MODERN CAR CAN DISPLAY THIS, not just EV's. Plenty of people use the miles remaining instead of their fuel guage because they have no concept of miles per gallon, how many gallons in a tank, how many gallons per fraction of a tank, etc. Much the same way most EV owners won't have a concept of charge level vs range either, how many kWh their pack is, voltage level, how kWh and voltage play out together to influence available range, etc. Boiling it all down, fuel level or battery level, to an estimated range is simply easier for the mass motoring public to digest at a glance and doesn't require an understanding of the underlying systems or concepts at work.

I'm aware of it - My Altima does that if I want it to.
I'm just saying it always seems to be expressed as "Miles remaining" in an EV instead of a charge percentage left but I'm sure it can show that too.

[Bitter]

I wonder if horse trainers and carriage makers....

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/17/auto-fad/?amp=1

Yeah pretty much the same then too.

[iDeFecZx]

12 hours ago, Commodus said:

too bad it gets smoked by a Model S or Lucid Air in a drag race

Id love to see a tesla stick with a GT3 once the road gets twisty...

[Beerzerker]

5 hours ago, theninja35 said:

If you're familiar with batteries then what's the issue?

 

You can't make improvements without first making the object and I think you understand that...so I don't know what you're even arguing about. No one is suggesting that EVs will replace the ICE tomorrow.

 

I'm having a bad case of deja vu here.

I don't know either because I didn't know I was arguing with anyone.

As for the reference about "The Rush" to EV's, it's not being done the right way.
It's not a matter of building them - EV's have been around longer than ICE powered ones have, yet the tech for them is still far behind where it needs to be for reliable mass use and adoption of them.
History of the electric vehicle - Wikipedia

[JoaoPRSousa]

Hurr durr drag race 

[STRMfrmXMN]

On 10/27/2022 at 2:46 PM, Fast_N_Curious said:

Lithium is a renewable resource?

snipsnipsnip

 

I think you're intentionally being daft if you don't think our lack of adoption is mostly fueled by the incredibly potent forces of fossil fuel industry lobbying. Electricity as a mainstay to the level we have it now is only a relatively recent phenomenon. If you think lithium mining is morally concerning then wait till ya hear about how many wars we've been in over fossil fuel and why we have such an expansive and expensive military in the states... Oh, need I remind you about fracking incidents like what happened with Deepwater Horizon in 2010 with BP. It should also be noted you cannot refuel an ICE car with solar panels, which is what I meant by "renewably."

 

On 10/27/2022 at 12:20 PM, GlassBomb said:

That's mint.

Thanks!

 

On 10/27/2022 at 6:30 PM, AlwaysFSX said:

Fuckin' love that color

Atlantic blue pearl! This was taken through Lightroom which kinda dulls the color a lot. The color is a lot brighter in real life.

 

On 10/27/2022 at 8:47 PM, Fast_N_Curious said:

Actually, EVs have been viable since the early 1900s (history of the EV goes back even further), so the platform is basically just as mature as ICE.

 

Very nicely done! Looks great.

 

Brake upgrade?

 

Thanks! Yes, the Brembo brakes are from a 2004 STi.

 

The fronts bolt right up without issue and the rears need some adapting and trimming of the dust shield to fit the parking brake assembly and all that. Way, way expensive considering I don't track the car but the pedal feel is so much better and they look way cooler!

On 10/28/2022 at 2:29 AM, Beerzerker said:

snipsnips

If you were that strongly involved in the industry I think you'd understand that I'm referring to the MPG equivalent as kWh/100 km. Range is such a variable thing, hence we shouldn't be using it, hence I say that EVs are in their infancy - the public adoption of it is still extremely low and people can only think in range anxiety measures of EV efficiency even though longer range doesn't indicate more efficiency. Your example of range being an indicator of when the car is going to be "empty" is a perfect example, although despite the thousands of electric cars I've driven, I've never been stranded by one. The E-Tron we use as a shuttle still goes a bit after it hits "0 miles" as did all the Bolts at the Chevy dealer. My assumption is that you were working on vehicles that underwent far harsher conditions than cars typically do. I would probably agree that I'd rather have a crane with an ICE backup, for example.

 

I work for an Audi dealer and, although they don't break much (and don't worry, Audi still found a way to make electric cars break!) the only maintenance that they recommend are tire rotations every 10K miles and coolant changes every 100K or something along those lines. The Bolts I worked with at Chevy were every 140K for the cooling system. Obviously stuff like window regulators and door lock actuators can still break on these cars, but they don't have all the oily bits that break. ICE cars need transmission fluid changes, they need way, way more frequent coolant changes, differential fluid changes, new clutches, new air intake filters, new brake components far more often, etc. It's deliberately obtuse to say that they need just as much regular maintenance. They simply do not.

On 10/28/2022 at 2:32 AM, JoaoPRSousa said:

 

 

 

I NEED TO KNOW MORE

I have an instagram for the car if you'd like more pictures! It has a lot done. Just hit 238K miles yesterday! It has too much to list off the top of my head here, but you can see the suspension is lowered, the Mach V wing, etc. 

[STRMfrmXMN]

On 10/27/2022 at 9:41 PM, Bitter said:

I just reset a 2010 Audi A5 2.0 that had somehow been setup for 18,700 mile oil change interval. Set that shit to 5K miles. 30,000 kilometers for an OCI is ludicrous. 8,046 KM is more reasonable.

Oh god, 18K OCis would drive me crazy. You can audibly hear that the EA888 is not happy when oil is run that ragged. I can't even believe that Audi recommends 10K oil changes on their cars given how much they burn oil...

 

Call me old-fashioned but I still change my oil every 3K. I use synthetic on a modified turbo car. I'm sure the oil could go longer but it's cheap insurance. On a modern DI car I wouldn't stretch things beyond maybe 7K. There's a lot of fuel in there after awhile...

[Bitter]

Just now, STRMfrmXMN said:

Oh god, 18K OCis would drive me crazy. You can audibly hear that the EA888 is not happy when oil is run that ragged. I can't even believe that Audi recommends 10K oil changes on their cars given how much they burn oil...

 

Call me old-fashioned but I still change my oil every 3K. I use synthetic on a modified turbo car. I'm sure the oil could go longer but it's cheap insurance. On a modern DI car I wouldn't stretch things beyond maybe 7K. There's a lot of fuel in there after awhile...

Twas in for 'low oil pressure warning on dash once', I noted oil was super sooty black for 8800 miles left on a 10,000 mile OCI, checked oil pressure with mechanical gauge and found it kind of around the minimums but above them when hot tho not by much. Suggested switching up 5W-40 as we didn't know what had been used in it, and if the message came back to shop for another car. Well I had some surprise when I reset the oil miles counter and was greeted by 'next oil change in 18,700 miles' which means that the oil had about 10K on it which makes much more sense. Also ended up replacing a ripped PCV diaphragm which hopefully helps with the P0420 it's throwing sometimes despite a fresh (but aftermarket) cat converter on it.

[GlassBomb]

14 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

It should also be noted you cannot refuel an ICE car with solar panels, which is what I meant by "renewably."

That's one thing that I really like, and want myself.

 

I just want to be able to hook my car up in the evening when I get home, and have a good charge for the day after. Would be so nice to have a couple of solar panels on the roof, and a battery for the house to charge the car and power the house during peak demand to decease costs, etc.

 

For me - That would mean zero visits to charging stations for 99% of the trips that I do. I'm more than good enough with less than 150 km's of real world range.

[Fast_N_Curious]

28 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I think you're intentionally being daft if you don't think our lack of adoption is mostly fueled by the incredibly potent forces of fossil fuel industry lobbying. Electricity as a mainstay to the level we have it now is only a relatively recent phenomenon. If you think lithium mining is morally concerning then wait till ya hear about how many wars we've been in over fossil fuel and why we have such an expansive and expensive military in the states... Oh, need I remind you about fracking incidents like what happened with Deepwater Horizon in 2010 with BP. It should also be noted you cannot refuel an ICE car with solar panels, which is what I meant by "renewably."

Make no mistake lithium IS morally and environmentally concerning.

 

And if we are turning this into an equivalency argument, let's talk about religion and continue to ignore the detriment of electric vehicles... Oh wait, you are already trying to do that!. As for the large US miliary force, you are okay with slimming that down? Just FYI we were essentially fossil fuel independent when Trump was president. What has Biden done? In fact it seems like he and Obama might be an incredibility potent force against the use of fossil fuels? 

 

I stand by what I said as fact:

 

LITHIUM is NOT a renewable resource.

(also) OIL is NOT a renewable resource.

 

But there are vastly larger quantities of oil in the ground than lithium AND it is:

1)Less damaging to the environment

2)Does not use child labor.

3)Not toxic 

 

Please don't let the irony get lost on you. I thought EVs were environmentally friendly? we were basically 100% independent in terms of oil production here in the United States, what happened? Need I remind you again? Lithium, another crucial component of lithium-ion batteries can only be harvested from a couple 3rd world nations use child labor to do it. How is that moving towards energy independence? 

 

The irony is clearly lost on this guy:

 

How's that for energy independence? 

[STRMfrmXMN]

2 minutes ago, Fast_N_Curious said:

Make no mistake lithium IS morally and environmentally concerning.

 

And if we are turning this into an equivalency argument, let's talk about religion and continue to ignore the detriment of electric vehicles... Oh wait, you are already trying to do that!. As for the large US miliary force, you are okay with slimming that down? Just FYI we were essentially fossil fuel independent when Trump was president. What has Biden done? In fact it seems like he and Obama might be an incredibility potent force against the use of fossil fuels? 

 

I stand by what I said as fact:

 

LITHIUM is NOT a renewable resource.

(also) OIL is NOT a renewable resource.

 

But there are vastly larger quantities of oil in the ground than lithium AND it is:

1)Less damaging to the environment

2)Does not use child labor.

3)Not toxic 

 

Please don't let the irony get lost on you. I thought EVs were environmentally friendly? we were basically 100% independent in terms of oil production here in the United States, what happened? Need I remind you again? Lithium, another crucial component of lithium-ion batteries can only be harvested from a couple 3rd world nations use child labor to do it. How is that moving towards energy independence? 

 

The irony is clearly lost on this guy:

 

 

How's that for energy independence? 

I feel like you went down a weirdly political rant.... This has nothing to do with religion either. This is a car thread. Fossil fuel/energy independence is a tricky subject and has very little to do with who is president and largely due to global economic forces and the "trusty" hand of OPEC. The best thing to do to become less energy-dependent on other countries would be to become less dependent on almighty oil. Oil industry lobbying has been powerful no matter who the president is. Moving to EVs is a start, although moving to more widely-adopted public transit is a far more thorough one. This also gets us into the really tricky subject of globalization and how good or bad being dependent and having interconnected commerce between nations is or isn't. 

 

My point was the US military is as expansive worldwide as it is because of our dependence on fossil fuels from other countries. It doesn't matter how "energy independent" we are as we are wholly too dependent on a resource that we consume obscene amounts of. Moving to EVs is both a short- and long-term solution to removing ourselves from fossil fuel dependence. Like all new technologies it takes time to adopt. We may find more moral ways of extracting cobalt and lithium later on. We may find ways of engineering solar panels to charge cars reasonably quickly while they sit outside. We may find that solid state batteries become so potent that the current huge battery capacity of a Model S would be enough to power a dump truck for thousands of miles 10, 20, 30 years from now. Who knows - we might undo the massive lobbying effects of General Motors in the 1950s having created the level of car-dependence we know today and affix public transportation systems that would massively reduce all forms of emissions. Trains!

[STRMfrmXMN]

38 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Twas in for 'low oil pressure warning on dash once', I noted oil was super sooty black for 8800 miles left on a 10,000 mile OCI, checked oil pressure with mechanical gauge and found it kind of around the minimums but above them when hot tho not by much. Suggested switching up 5W-40 as we didn't know what had been used in it, and if the message came back to shop for another car. Well I had some surprise when I reset the oil miles counter and was greeted by 'next oil change in 18,700 miles' which means that the oil had about 10K on it which makes much more sense. Also ended up replacing a ripped PCV diaphragm which hopefully helps with the P0420 it's throwing sometimes despite a fresh (but aftermarket) cat converter on it.

I remember a friend of mine with an identical Legacy GT wagon to mine telling me "yeah the oil light doesn't come on on our cars until they're two quarts low on oil" and I was like "Yo that's the pressure light dude! Don't let it get that low!" It was a miracle that car survived his ownership before he sold it...

 

Also had a lady that came in with a bit over 12K on the oil in her Q5 a couple weeks ago. She hadn't done an oil change in over a year. She comes in saying her car is saying the oil is a quart low which can't be possible because she had it topped off last time she was in... in December the year prior. I tried to explain to her that oil does burn a little faster as it goes through more wear and tear and that she is a couple thousand miles over her oil change due date, so not only is it causing a lot of premature wear on her engine which will cause it to burn faster, but that oil is also not in great shape anymore and will burn a smidge faster. The light wouldn't be on if she would have done an oil change two thousand miles ago! She wouldn't have it and insisted something was wrong with her car... which I guess isn't wrong because I don't believe newer cars should burn oil ever, but I digress. 

 

I need the generally car-idiot populace to adopt EVs already. I can deal with the occasional TPMS light and stuck sunroof.

[GlassBomb]

5 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I feel like you went down a weirdly political rant.... This has nothing to do with religion either. This is a car thread. Fossil fuel/energy independence is a tricky subject and has very little to do with who is president and largely due to global economic forces and the "trusty" hand of OPEC. The best thing to do to become less energy-dependent on other countries would be to become less dependent on almighty oil. Oil industry lobbying has been powerful no matter who the president is. Moving to EVs is a start, although moving to more widely-adopted public transit is a far more thorough one. This also gets us into the really tricky subject of globalization and how good or bad being dependent and having interconnected commerce between nations is or isn't. 

 

My point was the US military is as expansive worldwide as it is because of our dependence on fossil fuels from other countries. It doesn't matter how "energy independent" we are as we are wholly too dependent on a resource that we consume obscene amounts of. Moving to EVs is both a short- and long-term solution to removing ourselves from fossil fuel dependence. Like all new technologies it takes time to adopt. We may find more moral ways of extracting cobalt and lithium later on. We may find ways of engineering solar panels to charge cars reasonably quickly while they sit outside. We may find that solid state batteries become so potent that the current huge battery capacity of a Model S would be enough to power a dump truck for thousands of miles 10, 20, 30 years from now. Who knows - we might undo the massive lobbying effects of General Motors in the 1950s having created the level of car-dependence we know today and affix public transportation systems that would massively reduce all forms of emissions. Trains!

I for one would love an EV truck for work. Give. Give. Give.

It would be excellent for inner city work with less noise, and where range becomes less of an issue.

 

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

If you were that strongly involved in the industry I think you'd understand that I'm referring to the MPG equivalent as kWh/100 km. Range is such a variable thing, hence we shouldn't be using it, hence I say that EVs are in their infancy - the public adoption of it is still extremely low and people can only think in range anxiety measures of EV efficiency even though longer range doesn't indicate more efficiency. Your example of range being an indicator of when the car is going to be "empty" is a perfect example, although despite the thousands of electric cars I've driven, I've never been stranded by one. The E-Tron we use as a shuttle still goes a bit after it hits "0 miles" as did all the Bolts at the Chevy dealer. My assumption is that you were working on vehicles that underwent far harsher conditions than cars typically do. I would probably agree that I'd rather have a crane with an ICE backup, for example.

Yes, I worked a a few places along the way, a Nissan and Clarklift dealership and after that I was an in-house maintenance mech/tech working on Crowns for awhile too in a DC.
 

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

 

I work for an Audi dealer and, although they don't break much (and don't worry, Audi still found a way to make electric cars break!) the only maintenance that they recommend are tire rotations every 10K miles and coolant changes every 100K or something along those lines. The Bolts I worked with at Chevy were every 140K for the cooling system. Obviously stuff like window regulators and door lock actuators can still break on these cars, but they don't have all the oily bits that break. ICE cars need transmission fluid changes, they need way, way more frequent coolant changes, differential fluid changes, new clutches, new air intake filters, new brake components far more often, etc. It's deliberately obtuse to say that they need just as much regular maintenance. They simply do not.

No, it's not an obtuse thing to say - I will admit I didn't properly describe my meaning of it (That's on me) but yes, they do require the same level of maintenance in terms of how often you do it and depending on it's actual use/useage enviroment, may require it even more than you'd think.

Once a month/200hrs of operation is the norm and that's what we went by but in some cases we'd do them every 100 hrs, depending on the lift type and other variables about it's use/enviroment as mentioned.
This was important since some places would run these things 24/7 all the time so it didn't take long to rack up some hrs on one and you had to be on top of it. Normally (Depending on where you live) a vehicle for driving gets about an hour or two per day on it on average. 
These were going all the time aside from battery changes, shift changes, breakdowns and such that would cause it to stop because that's how it is and you can imagine the amount of wear & tear these things accumilated and how quickly it did accumilate because of it.

The electronics themselves do hold up rather well, considering all the physical shock and banging they experience right along with the hrs put on them non-stop but when things go wrong, it can be a real pain to diagnose and fix correctly and that's when the experience on them pays off.
For example, with a Crown reach truck there are certain codes that will tend to pop up far more often than others, I know you know what I'm referring to and can tell after some time what it means because you've seen it so often - It just becomes routine.

As a particular example, in the case of a Crown like I was working on, code 331 always meant the traction motor encoder was bad.
You just grabbed another one, replaced it for the older one, cleared the code and you're done.

There were other things too like when one would get "Stuck in the rack" while stocking pallets up high.
It was almost always operator error and the lift would code out and shut down. Try to restart it, same thing would happen so it they coudn't get it clear of the rack to lower the mast and get going again.
I'd just go out to the lift and after accessing the service menu, clear the code so it would try to function and then after repeating these steps a few times (Would keep coding/shutting down out until I got the forks/carriage up) I got it out and the mast down.

 EV's, while different and their tech is well advanced in comparison, it's still the same basic thing because of it's nature - That being it's all based on electronics. It's the same concept as a PC you can build today vs one that was built 20 years ago - Even though a new one is more advanced and can do more, faster, all the basics of what it is still applies.
 

[AlwaysFSX]

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

Atlantic blue pearl! This was taken through Lightroom which kinda dulls the color a lot. The color is a lot brighter in real life.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh excellent

[iDeFecZx]

2 hours ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I work for an Audi dealer and, although they don't break much (and don't worry, Audi still found a way to make electric cars break!) the only maintenance that they recommend are tire rotations every 10K miles and coolant changes every 100K or something along those lines

Used to work at a JLR dealer, the I-Paces are brakefluid and cabin filters every 20k/2y and thats it, believe coolant is every 100k/10 years

[STRMfrmXMN]

2 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

Yes, I worked a a few places along the way, a Nissan and Clarklift dealership and after that I was an in-house maintenance mech/tech working on Crowns for awhile too in a DC.
 

No, it's not an obtuse thing to say - I will admit I didn't properly describe my meaning of it (That's on me) but yes, they do require the same level of maintenance in terms of how often you do it and depending on it's actual use/useage enviroment, may require it even more than you'd think.

Once a month/200hrs of operation is the norm and that's what we went by but in some cases we'd do them every 100 hrs, depending on the lift type and other variables about it's use/enviroment as mentioned.
This was important since some places would run these things 24/7 all the time so it didn't take long to rack up some hrs on one and you had to be on top of it. Normally (Depending on where you live) a vehicle for driving gets about an hour or two per day on it on average. 
These were going all the time aside from battery changes, shift changes, breakdowns and such that would cause it to stop because that's how it is and you can imagine the amount of wear & tear these things accumilated and how quickly it did accumilate because of it.

The electronics themselves do hold up rather well, considering all the physical shock and banging they experience right along with the hrs put on them non-stop but when things go wrong, it can be a real pain to diagnose and fix correctly and that's when the experience on them pays off.
For example, with a Crown reach truck there are certain codes that will tend to pop up far more often than others, I know you know what I'm referring to and can tell after some time what it means because you've seen it so often - It just becomes routine.

As a particular example, in the case of a Crown like I was working on, code 331 always meant the traction motor encoder was bad.
You just grabbed another one, replaced it for the older one, cleared the code and you're done.

There were other things too like when one would get "Stuck in the rack" while stocking pallets up high.
It was almost always operator error and the lift would code out and shut down. Try to restart it, same thing would happen so it they coudn't get it clear of the rack to lower the mast and get going again.
I'd just go out to the lift and after accessing the service menu, clear the code so it would try to function and then after repeating these steps a few times (Would keep coding/shutting down out until I got the forks/carriage up) I got it out and the mast down.

 EV's, while different and their tech is well advanced in comparison, it's still the same basic thing because of it's nature - That being it's all based on electronics. It's the same concept as a PC you can build today vs one that was built 20 years ago - Even though a new one is more advanced and can do more, faster, all the basics of what it is still applies.
 

The issues you describe, to me, sound like issues that any machine could have whether EV or not. Problems coming up so often that solving them becomes routine. How many EA888 water pumps have our techs done in a quarter of book time? 

 

Also, were these forklifts that were on the cheaper end (I don't know the market at all, sorry. I've heard of Hyster!) and thus particularly hard to keep running? I'm assuming the electric ones were more expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Most EVs are more expensive than most other ICE cars because the technology is still expensive and will take awhile to become cheaper.

 

From what I can tell from every EV car I've had to help with or seen come in, they are much more reliable than competing ICE cars. Problems they encountered were due to poor engineering. The Bolt EV having battery fires comes to mind, a'la Ford Pinto. Our RS E-tron GTs have 6 or 7 ghost codes that we have to hide from the ECU when the cars come in because the fix is a software update that Audi says will be released next year. These things could still happen with ICE cars. On Audis, it sounds like the EVs are better interconnected to the ECUs in the car and thus give more prevalent data for diagnostics. Whereas an ICE car could have a P0420 for a vacuum leak, a bad catalytic converter, a bad O2 sensor, etc. Also, to be fair, most people with EVs do not drive them anywhere near as much as the average ICE car owner. 

 

Time will tell. I'm pretty ready for most cars to be electric. The power grid issues and technological hurdles are what's getting in my way

1 hour ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh excellent

I got lots of pics, some not as up-to-date (none of these pics show the Mach V wing), but I got a few!

 

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

The issues you describe, to me, sound like issues that any machine could have whether EV or not. Problems coming up so often that solving them becomes routine. How many EA888 water pumps have our techs done in a quarter of book time? 

They would only be the same if they were all EV or ICE because EV's don't require a fuel pump for example. Some problems I ran into, that weren't related to the nature of the vehicle being electric or ICE were the same such as brakes or bad wheel bearings as examples of that.

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

 

Also, were these forklifts that were on the cheaper end (I don't know the market at all, sorry. I've heard of Hyster!) and thus particularly hard to keep running? I'm assuming the electric ones were more expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Most EVs are more expensive than most other ICE cars because the technology is still expensive and will take awhile to become cheaper.

No - Usually more expensive or the same at the very least.
As long as you did the maintenance and they were treated right by the operator(s) you rarely had problems from them regardless if it was gas, diesel, LP or electric powered.
Some situations of course were worse than others.

 

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

From what I can tell from every EV car I've had to help with or seen come in, they are much more reliable than competing ICE cars. Problems they encountered were due to poor engineering. The Bolt EV having battery fires comes to mind, a'la Ford Pinto. Our RS E-tron GTs have 6 or 7 ghost codes that we have to hide from the ECU when the cars come in because the fix is a software update that Audi says will be released next year.

I can tell you about a ghost code - Code 19 on certain Nissan electric lifts of a given model. Indicates the battery electrolyte was low but there was never anything in the lift to read the battery's electrolyte level!

It was a feature that was planned but never implemented.
The authors/programmers of it's control module at the factory forgot to remove the code for it from the module's firmware so there it was. All it took to trigger it was a certain small 5A fuse to blow and it would code out and stop in it's tracks, would not do a thing while this code was popping up.
Replace the small 5A fuse, clear it out - Back in biz again.

 

1 hour ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

These things could still happen with ICE cars. On Audis, it sounds like the EVs are better interconnected to the ECUs in the car and thus give more prevalent data for diagnostics. Whereas an ICE car could have a P0420 for a vacuum leak, a bad catalytic converter, a bad O2 sensor, etc. Also, to be fair, most people with EVs do not drive them anywhere near as much as the average ICE car owner. 

 

Time will tell. I'm pretty ready for most cars to be electric. The power grid issues and technological hurdles are what's getting in my way

I got lots of pics, some not as up-to-date (none of these pics show the Mach V wing), but I got a few!

 

 

I'm not ready at all and TBH this sudden rush to EV's will actually work against itself.
It needs to happen more slowly to give time for all the infrastructure to catch up and the tech to further mature so it's reliable, feasable to implement in terms of support AND for it to be economical too.
By the time all that comes to be I'll probrably be outta here anyway or at the very least, no longer driving.

[AlwaysFSX]

5 hours ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I got lots of pics, some not as up-to-date (none of these pics show the Mach V wing), but I got a few!

Well these certainly brought me joy