GM is in trouble - Power Steering Issues

[sirfignewton]

I just finished watching the local news here in Indianapolis, they where reporting on a Honda recall, for airbags, I think i live in a biased state for auto manufacturing. This is a fairly small recall but since it is an import recall it made the news..

[Ferrer]

You are correct that the 70s-90s were a bad time for the domestics.

I've always thought that the big 1973/74 fuel crisis impacted the US automotive industry more, than any other car industry.

Up to then American manufacturers had been confident of themselves by building cars that were often charismatic and sometimes full of clever solutions, a personal favourite of mine being the first generation Pontiac Tempest. They you had cars that were great like Rivieras, Toronados, Mustangs, GTOs, Chargers and many more.

And yet, with the fuel crisis the US motor industry seemed to be completely out of place. They had gone from great to completely out of touch with the times in the blink of an eye. And then the Japanese started to erode their lead, which of course didn't help. This lasted well until the 90's, as you said, but is it too late now?

[Dino Scuderia]

I've always thought that the big 1973/74 fuel crisis impacted the US automotive industry more, than any other car industry.

Up to then American manufacturers had been confident of themselves by building cars that were often charismatic and sometimes full of clever solutions, a personal favourite of mine being the first generation Pontiac Tempest. They you had cars that were great like Rivieras, Toronados, Mustangs, GTOs, Chargers and many more.

And yet, with the fuel crisis the US motor industry seemed to be completely out of place. They had gone from great to completely out of touch with the times in the blink of an eye. And then the Japanese started to erode their lead, which of course didn't help. This lasted well until the 90's, as you said, but is it too late now?

That also coincided with the emissions devices that were ill conceived and executed.

The engines were choked down and had smelly catalytic converters.

Also safety regulations dictated huge ugly chrome bumpers.

A lot of things the industry wasn't ready for that they tried to address cheaply while the Japanese market was not yet a threat. At that time most of the Japanese cars were not in tune with American taste.

As you point out the stumbling efforts lasted far too long and the Japanese won the market to a large degree.

[culver]

I think the 70s really were a bad time. Much of the emissions and safety regulations were poorly thought out and implemented. I think this is true on both the regulator's side and true of the solutions implemented by the regulated. Did Europe have the same problems when regulations really came into being or did they have enough time to watch and see what worked poorly in the US thus avoiding many of the problems we had. I think by the 1980s many if the worst issues had been corrected. At least in the 1980s computers and other sensors were finally up to the task of dealing with emissions. Given the 1970s technology I'm not sure there were many good ways to handle emissions. That is if you were to take people who know what we know now and tell them to design cars to meet the 1970s standards using 1970s technology they would likely still end up with designs that were better than what we actually had but likely still not that great.

The GM V8-6-4 engine with cylinder deactivation is a great example. The fundamental hardware used to deactivate the cylinders seemed to work well enough. However, the late 70s control systems just were no where near sophisticated enough to control when the engine should change modes.

The vacuum operated control systems added to carburetors are another example. They were just every problematic because they were very complex, interwoven mechanical systems. When we moved to electronic fuel injection (even port fuel injection) the level of robustness went up dramatically. Of course that didn't help the buyers of 1970s cars who had to live with the pre-computer systems.

[wwgkd]

I think you have some very good points there, culver. A lot of the solutions were rushed, for a variety of reasons, and they weren't able to get a good solution (inventions, after all are usually a string of failures prior to success.) Other people came along later and improved upon what had been learned from that, and then took a majority of the credit. I'm not saying things weren't done wrong, or could have been done better, but there were a lot of factors which came together at once to cause a much larger problem.

It's easy to blame a CEO for instance, and many people just plain enjoy doing it, but that's not necessarily the source of the problem.

[MRR]

At least if your power steering fails you aren't completely screwed and the car can still be driven with a bit of muscling but if your gas pedal gets stuck to the floor well that is another issue entirely.

[johnnynumfiv]

At least if your power steering fails you aren't completely screwed and the car can still be driven with a bit of muscling but if your gas pedal gets stuck to the floor well that is another issue entirely.

Yea it's so hard to turn the key off or shift to neutral.

[MRR]

Yea it's so hard to turn the key off or shift to neutral.

I'm not sure you can turn the ignition off in modern cars when they are moving and I'm pretty sure the same goes with switching to neutral at speed (although I have never tried either in an automatic transmissioned car).

[CdocZ]

I'm not sure you can turn the ignition off in modern cars when they are moving and I'm pretty sure the same goes with switching to neutral at speed (although I have never tried either in an automatic transmissioned car).

Most cars I have driven can go into neutral while moving and accelerating. However....I am not sure I have the balls to try turning the car off while moving at any significant rate.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

There was a story about a P-Plate driver in australia who turned off his ignition to save fuel.

Of course he didn't realise when you do that, and click the key all the way back, the steering locks, doesn't it.

I believe he died.

[leroy]

There was a story about a P-Plate driver in australia who turned off his ignition to save fuel.

Of course he didn't realise when you do that, and click the key all the way back, the steering locks, doesn't it.

I believe he died.

I suspect the story's not wholly true. The steering will not lock unless you withdraw the key.

[Alastor]

Most key ignition (I have no idea how keyless push-button ignitions work) systems have 4 positions:

Off/Lock - Where the car is completely off, steering wheel is locked, and you can remove the key.

Accessories - Where the steering wheel isn't locked, some equipment (like the radio) works, but the fuel system is off.

On - Where all the vehicle functions are on.

Start - Just used for starting the vehicle.

If you are driving down the road the car has to be in the "ON" position and when you turn the key back to the "Accessories" position the engine should die (along with power assist for the steering and brakes). However, on a modern vehicle there shouldn't be anyway to get to the "OFF" position without putting the car in park and getting into park while moving is very hard ;-) So you can still stop and steer the car it just takes more effort. You should be able to test all this with the car in neutral to see how it works on your own car.

The most modern car I have is an 06 civic and I know you can put it into neutral while driving, and I also know that it limits engine speed to around 5,500 RPM when it is in neutral. So that is definitely the best solution in a stuck throttle situation. I cannot speak for other cars.

Years ago my friend would shut off his old Talon when coming to a traffic light to reset the boost controller, it was a manual so all you had to do was turn the key back to “ON” and then release the clutch with the car in gear to restart the engine.

[RacingManiac]

My friend's done that on a 07 Acura CSX Type S(Civic Si), coasting down a hill in neutral going 75mph we shut the engine off and when we get to the bottom we put it back in gear and release the clutch and the engine starts back up...

[johnnynumfiv]

Just like pop starting a car when pushing it.
I love the old GM ignition set up where you don't need to a key to start it as long as its on the off position. You can remove the key at any time, but if put to the lock position, you need the key in to start it up again.

+

[IBrake4Rainbows]

I suspect the story's not wholly true. The steering will not lock unless you withdraw the key.

He did remove the key, but I've been able to lock my steering while driving by turning the key to the off position.

Luckily it's easy to return to normal.