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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete F View Post
    Grahame I can assure you that computers don't "yell" at anyone, they're a tool to accomplish a task. I can also assure you, that any mechanical engineer worth his/her salt working on a design such as you've used as an example would know full well just how much clearance is needed by a human hand.

    I think what some people missed, is the emphasis that engineering is all about compromises. That's not to say there isn't bad engineering, there's certainly no shortage of that, but often it's a case where there hasn't been enough (or any, with some copy attempts) engineering input into the final product. Just because you found a oil filter difficult to access doesn't mean that it's "bad" engineering. Maybe one of the design constraints was the volume and specific dimensions of the engine bay made it difficult to impossible to locate it anywhere else.
    Your right Pete ones worth the salt are... trouble is not many round these days even less of them who have ever touched a spanner let alone got down under a vehicle when its all together and stuck their hand in to see if it and a socket, spanner could undo whats required.
    Never had to remove the starter motor, gear box etc etc etc when it altogether
    Or even a headlight globe such as on my Subaru Forester 2 service technicians/managers ex mechanics now have taken 40 mins each time to replace a globe which should by the book take 10mins. Why did it take 40mins because the battery wasn't there when they timed the work to be done which is what engineers do.

    In working at a company who built the Commadore Ute Ambulance (which should never have been allowed on the road). 1st one's built to short in the ute tray for comfortable fit of the patient bed. Shocks and springs well under rated for total package load. I had phone call from smash repairers "How do we remove the fibreglass shell from the body"? The 1st 50 had been mounted so the outside shell was fitted first, bolted to the top rail, then the inner skin fitted and sikaflexed?/glued together, NO access holes to undo the mounting bolts

    3 ute extentions latter and 4 set of shocks springs etc to accommodate a fully loaded with passengers and patient they pulled the pin and went to the Merc van. I could tell you the political reason the switch between Ford f series and Holden if you like.

    MAN 40ft tag axle coach rear engine ZF gear box to remove the clutch companies who bough the vehicle called in the sales man and team of MAN engineers to ask "How do you remove the gear box to change a clutch"??? Leading rear axle had to be totally dropped and removed to allow the removal of the gear box. of course it had all been computer designed. gear box installed on line by overhead gantry.

    Bean counters do not spec bearings nor do they spec load limits engineers do.


    I will say one of the greatest feats of engineering designed (not by an engineer Uni trained) is the King Pin of a semi trailer 3"dia is all that holds on a trailer or team of trailers.

    Being a wheelchair user the hassles I have had with this chair from new and alterations I have had to make for $1,000.00 outlay is disgusting. The engineer where I purchased couldn't see the fault with the foot plates swung in retraction mode hitting the break leaver and knocking it into off mode. Nor the fact the front wheels were trailing not leading in front of pivot point this had the reaction of lean forward and I'd be on the ground change the wheels easy bu then the foot plates were to short to fit.


    Machines and design are in many cases not much better look at how many fellows just on this forum alone have to alter, fudge, re-build new machines to have them work some are not cheap either.

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  3. #32
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    Hi,
    Talking of spark plugs, to access the back 2 plugs on the Sunbeam Tiger you did it through access holes under the dashboard. I suppose you expect a bit of fun when you buy a car with a 4.2 litre V8 when it was designed for a 1.5 straight 4. The base for the Alpine / Tiger was from the Hilman Husky.
    Regards
    Hugh

    Enough is enough, more than enough is too much.

  4. #33
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    (For someone trying not to defend engineers I'm getting deeper and deeper...)

    Firstly, there are good engineers and bad engineers. These days there is so much stuff an engineer is meant to know about and such an emphasis on computers that there is no longer much hands on stuff for the kids going through engineering school - but then again there is no pay off for the Uni's if they do have those facilities available anyway. At our factory when we have students there on work experience the first 3 or 4 weeks are spent pretty much 100% on hands on just to get them used to the idea.

    As a few people have said, engineers are subject to a whole bunch of constraints, mostly on cost - while Bean counters do not spec bearings nor do they spec load limits, they certainly stop engineers putting in the solutions they would prefer to have. One noise problem that I saw an engineer struggling with for months was eventually found to have been caused by cheap low spec bearings. In the mean time tell the bean counters that you want to spend more on suspension before a problem has been proved and see how far you get.

    Yes, I've worked in a car manufacturer and interacted with the design guys there. However, a lot of this stuff is set in stone way before production get to see it and only a major stuff up will stop the program. Most car companies back the stylist if the engineer says that he/ she needs more room in the engine bay. What are you going to do?

    Lastly, servicing - the space available is dictated by the shape of the car. Servicing is assessed at design time and there are always trade offs - but then the car companies want you to use their dealers so they don't really care if the average person has a problem changing the oil or plugs. The dealer with the flash tooling is alright though.

    Michael

  5. #34
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    Yes I agree Michael, I would consider it highly unlikely that an automotive engineer producing a mainstream car would have, as part of his/her brief, that the part needs to be easily serviced by a guy in his home workshop.

    I'll throw up an example of how good I think engineering is in general in this field. Look at the warranties these days, many are 100,000 km. That in itself is very good, but more the point is that the vehicle typically gets to 100,000 km without too many issues at all, mostly none in fact. Very soon after that period quite often they'll start developing issues where parts will require replacing etc etc etc. Now for us as customers many might thing that it's bad engineering, but I think it's absolutely brilliant. The brief is clearly to produce a product that will reach that period, and after that anything extra typically adds weight/cost/etc. Just consider how cheap vehicles are in terms of average weekly earnings compared to a generation ago! The fact that so many get to exactly that defined warranty period (ie it's "just enough") takes considerable skill in my opinion.

    Doesn't help you much if you buy the vehicle at 120,000 km though

  6. #35
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    Michael your right just as Pete.


    Nothing like a backyard mechanic Pete without them we wouldn't have many motor sports we have today.

    The word Engineer has changed so much since I was a kid well its meaning anyway.
    Even the Engineers Institutes have all but gone last one I saw the building was in Tamworth or was it Toowoomba recently.

    If I had had the pleasure of going on further in education it still would have been hands on I'm a tinker at heart have always been so. Just life throws things in a whirl wind and you never know where you end up.

  7. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete F View Post
    I think Ray is quite right, while I'm just as guilty as the next guy as swearing at the guys who designed something (hey my last car was Italian!), in all fairness I think the engineers themselves cop flack they don't always deserve. We typically don't know he constraints the engineers operated under. Maybe they needed to fit engine ABC into engine compartment XYZ, the latter's dimensions provided courtesy of the marketing department? As the final consumer we're rarely privy to what the constraints were at the time, hence what compromises needed to be made.

    I guess if you extend the definition of "engineering" to mean the whole design process by all departments, criticism is often well deserved, but I do often think the poor old engineers cop a lot more criticism than they often should.
    I would agree with you Pete on this. Often the senior management, people managers, not engineers are the real cause of these issues. As I recall when Rover introduced the Range Rover, which was very innovative in design for the times, it quickly took off in the sales charts, and demand outstripped supply. Instead of ramping up production ASAP, BLs head, Lord Stokes said to increase the price by 100 pounds per month, until supply and demand balanced. In a few short years, other manufacturers introduced their own innovative design changes, and Rover lost their design lead, and sales dropped in proportion to what they had been.
    Another example on which I had a very minor part was in the Electrical Engineering field. Some years ago now Tasmania and Victoria linked their electrical networks by constructing BassLink. The idea being that as Tasmania had almost 100% hydro electric power, and Hydro power stations can be spooled up in a couple of minutes from 0 to full output. Victoria had mainly brown coal fired power stations which do not like having their outputs varied quickly to match power demand, so it made sense to have Tasmania supply peak demands with hydro power, and Victoria to supply base load from their coal fired stations. Tasmania was to send power to Victoria during peak times, when the power stations would be run flat out. during times of minimum load, power would be sent back from Victoria to Tasmania, and as much as was possible, the hydro powered stations would be throttled back. It would not have been possible to turn them right off as the BassLink cable did not have the capacity to carry the full Tasmanian load. They even refurbished and IIRC replaced some turbines with higher capacity units, with the idea that as they would not be running 24/7 at near full output, they could be run even harder in short bursts without us running out of water, in order to satisfy the peak.
    To cut to the chase, a lot of my time was spent assembling components in the switch yard. There were perhaps 10 parallel circuits comprising circuit breakers, capacitor banks, inductors and other large bits and pieces, all connected together with multistrand Aluminium cable, and my supervisor from Siemens was tearing his hair out because instead of the terminations on each component pointing toward the next one in line, they might be in excess of 90 degrees out. the only way that you could get the cable to run from one terminal to the next, without birdcaging, or kinking was to pre-bind the length of cable with fibre reinforced packing tape as tightly as possible, connect one end, then bend it around and clamp the other end loosely, hacksaw off the protruding inner cores, and then tighten the clamps fully. we then removed the packing tape, and cleaned off any adhesive with solvent. The supervisor said that until a couple of years earlier, they had an experienced field engineer looking after the assembling of components back at Siemens in Germany, but that he had been pensioned off for cost cutting reasons, and that he had been replaced by a recent graduate, who using Autocad, could run a line from A to B with a couple of mouse clicks.
    You couldn't blame the young bloke, he'd been thrown in with no experience or guidance, and had just done what he had been taught at university. If he had been sent out on one field installation first, he would have had some practical experience to go on. Big egos and toxic personalities can also cause these situations, as some hate being told by others with specialised knowledge like engineers and technicians what is or is not possible or reasonable etc.

  8. #37
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    Hi,
    "Big egos and toxic personalities" Like the types that know so much they don't even know there is stuff out there they don't know.
    Regards
    Hugh

    Enough is enough, more than enough is too much.

  9. #38
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    I don't watch much television, but my wife generally has it on. Last week I sat down in the evening and watched a program on restoring a Triumph Stag. I quite liked the show, but have always regarded them (and especially the engine) as a complete POS! They were notorious for overheating. Dodgy engineering was always blamed for that, and while there was certainly no shortage of that in this car, the program showed that in fact there was nothing at all wrong with the cooling system of the car, provided it was installed and maintained correctly. I always got the impression the engineers were pushed around a lot on that project, and yet in the end copped the blame for a lot of problems that really were beyond their control.

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