Within the ongoing effort to reveal excessive vehicle repair prices, we can not discount the manufacturer’s role. Throughout a spirited discussion within an automotive forum, your comments ought to below from Ray Fast highlight the function the maker plays in taking money in the repair customer’s wallet.
The discussion involves the problem of replacing an alternator within an Acura. The Acura, like several front wheel drive vehicles, includes a transverse mounted engine. Transverse engines are the type mounted sideways. Due to this “sideways” design, the alternator is mounted low and behind the engine, which makes it hard to replace around the year and model we discussed.
Front wheel drive has good quality features, but could it be much better than its rear-wheel drive predecessor? Front wheel drive has produced a number of additional repairs, none which were necessary years back. These repairs happen to be squandering your, the service customer, a lot of money.
Ray writes:
The shift to transverse engines and front wheel drive would be a major marketing coup for that automobile industry. Vehicle manufacturers were able to dupe the marketplace in particular into believing the new standard was in some way much better than the prior convention of rear wheel drive.
[The truth is] vehicles with transverse mounted engines and front wheel traction systems are less reliable robotically, less stable, and fewer efficient than their traditional counterparts.
Advanced technologies have paid for these downfalls significantly however, vehicles with traditional power and traction systems using similar technology tend to be more reliable, safer, and much more efficient. For this reason high end vehicles that are equipped for applications requiring maximum stability “still” utilize inline engines and rear traction systems.