Any pet hates on your MB?

Craiglxviii

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The IR window closing/opening. I've had it on other cars that work through an RF system. IR is just pointless to the point I don't use it at all. :p

Wipers, namely automatic wipers. I've had them on my previous Alfa 159 and this. I used to complain bitterly about what a waste of time they were on the Alfa as they had their own mind. Sometimes they'd wipe when there was no need and then not when there was.
This MB seems worse. I think in both cases it has to do with how clean the screen is to start with. The MB has a very marked screen (stone chips etc) and the wipers although not worn seem to smear. So when I switch the wipers on they just wipe continuously until I get annoyed and turn them off. Effectively there is no intermittent. :(

There are three small cracks in the windscreen two of which have occurred since I bought it. I need them fixing or ideally a new windscreen which might make a difference. New wiper blades also on order.

Lastly the wiper switch itself. I can't see what it is set on because the steering wheel spoke covers it. This is only and issue when I start the car because once I'm moving due to the problem mentioned they just wipe anyway after a minute or so :D I find myself twisting my head at daft angles trying to see past it.

Auto wipers are dramatically affected by a putted windscreen. The system relies on light scattering (raindrops being optically coupled to the glass). If there is putting the system may read that as raindrops. Or it may struggle to discriminate raindrops due to excess optical white noise so not activate.
 

Frosty149

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Auto wipers are dramatically affected by a putted windscreen. The system relies on light scattering (raindrops being optically coupled to the glass). If there is putting the system may read that as raindrops. Or it may struggle to discriminate raindrops due to excess optical white noise so not activate.
I presume you mean 'pitting' otherwise I haven't a clue what your meaning...o_O
 

Craiglxviii

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I presume you mean 'pitting' otherwise I haven't a clue what your meaning...o_O

I was clearly on about some underhanded golf tactic..! Damn autocorrect!
 

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1. Battery drains.... an expensive car should have very robust electrics.
2. .....no that's it, just hold a charge please.
 

turbopete

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an expensive car should have very robust electrics
ANY modern car, never mind an expensive one, should have very robust electrics. except they don't. and rather than reduce the profits (or fat cat management paychecks) and build cars how they need to be built, its done on the cheap!
 

A.J.

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ANY modern car, never mind an expensive one, should have very robust electrics. except they don't. and rather than reduce the profits (or fat cat management paychecks) and build cars how they need to be built, its done on the cheap!
You need to tell that to Renault Pete ! :rolleyes:
 

turbopete

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You need to tell that to Renault Pete ! :rolleyes:
precisely why id never consider one. or any other French car for the same reason!
 

A.J.

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precisely why id never consider one. or any other French car for the same reason!
Me neither Pete although we did buy my Grand Daughter a Citroen C1 when she passed her test last year but that was purely price driven. As it happens it has been good so far and she loves it which is the main thing :)
 

Craiglxviii

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ANY modern car, never mind an expensive one, should have very robust electrics. except they don't. and rather than reduce the profits (or fat cat management paychecks) and build cars how they need to be built, its done on the cheap!

If only it was so simple...

Fatcat management paycheques? Our overall company President is on around $10m/yr. For that he oversees the production of around 10m vehicles a year and has responsibility for enough staff to form the population of Coventry, and a turnover that would dwarf the total GDPs of many not-too-small countries (think $100 billion plus). If anything I'd say that he's underpaid. The responsibility he has is ENORMOUS.

Cars get built to a series of design standards. Those vary dependent on the manufacturer (sometimes quite widely) but they all have one thing at their core: the minimum service life of the car to its first customer. Right now studies have shown that that is increasing from around 5 to just over 8 years (global average across all cars, all segments). Everything on the car is designed around that lifetime requirement, electrics/ electronics included. The robustness of any particular system is designed with that in mind. Sometimes designs do fail. Typically this happens when a new technology is launched- and a good example here is Audi bringing out LED daytime running lights in 2008, when they used an LED that had not been fully tested for automotive use and 233k cars had to be recalled. Nothing about being done on the cheap, it was a brand new technology. Or 3rd brake lights being introduced and going to LED. Worked fine until they went to California, where they discovered that the optical lenses used to shine red light out were also perfectly placed to shine bright sunlight in- right onto the LED emitter. Result... fried LEDs. Oops. The point being that when a technology is mature in the market (and cars tend to have very little immature technology for this exact reason) things tend to be more reliable, for a given cost of parts.

Cost wise... cars are not built on the cheap. Put it this way round, as I said to Sub. Why do carmakers exist? Is it to build cars? No. it' is to make a profit and return a dividend to their shareholders. That's it pure and simple. In order to do that they have to make a business plan, sell so many cars per year at price X but cost Y, to a dealership network (usually involving many, many different principle actors) which then sells at price Z to the public. The difference X:Y (profit to plant) is much, much less than you might think. To give you an idea, the Toyota Avensis at the end of its first production year became Europe's most profitable car ever (then) at just over £400 per car profit to the Derby Burnaston plant.

If you wanted cars made to last, you'd end up driving round in something like a 1953 Cadillac. For the next 50 years.
 

turbopete

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Me neither Pete although we did buy my Grand Daughter a Citroen C1 when she passed her test last year but that was purely price driven. As it happens it has been good so far and she loves it which is the main thing :)
theyre fine when newish, (when all the customer satisfaction surveys are done) but once theyre at the end of the market I can afford, so 7 or 8 years old, THATS where the issues can start to creep in.
 

Craiglxviii

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theyre fine when newish, (when all the customer satisfaction surveys are done) but once theyre at the end of the market I can afford, so 7 or 8 years old, THATS where the issues can start to creep in.

I'm possibly in the market for something like this, but at the same end of it as you Pete. I've tried out the C1 (same platform as the Aygo and 107) and really could not recommend it.
 

turbopete

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If only it was so simple...

Fatcat management paycheques? Our overall company President is on around $10m/yr. For that he oversees the production of around 10m vehicles a year and has responsibility for enough staff to form the population of Coventry, and a turnover that would dwarf the total GDPs of many not-too-small countries (think $100 billion plus). If anything I'd say that he's underpaid. The responsibility he has is ENORMOUS.

Cars get built to a series of design standards. Those vary dependent on the manufacturer (sometimes quite widely) but they all have one thing at their core: the minimum service life of the car to its first customer. Right now studies have shown that that is increasing from around 5 to just over 8 years (global average across all cars, all segments). Everything on the car is designed around that lifetime requirement, electrics/ electronics included. The robustness of any particular system is designed with that in mind. Sometimes designs do fail. Typically this happens when a new technology is launched- and a good example here is Audi bringing out LED daytime running lights in 2008, when they used an LED that had not been fully tested for automotive use and 233k cars had to be recalled. Nothing about being done on the cheap, it was a brand new technology. Or 3rd brake lights being introduced and going to LED. Worked fine until they went to California, where they discovered that the optical lenses used to shine red light out were also perfectly placed to shine bright sunlight in- right onto the LED emitter. Result... fried LEDs. Oops. The point being that when a technology is mature in the market (and cars tend to have very little immature technology for this exact reason) things tend to be more reliable, for a given cost of parts.

Cost wise... cars are not built on the cheap. Put it this way round, as I said to Sub. Why do carmakers exist? Is it to build cars? No. it' is to make a profit and return a dividend to their shareholders. That's it pure and simple. In order to do that they have to make a business plan, sell so many cars per year at price X but cost Y, to a dealership network (usually involving many, many different principle actors) which then sells at price Z to the public. The difference X:Y (profit to plant) is much, much less than you might think. To give you an idea, the Toyota Avensis at the end of its first production year became Europe's most profitable car ever (then) at just over £400 per car profit to the Derby Burnaston plant.

If you wanted cars made to last, you'd end up driving round in something like a 1953 Cadillac. For the next 50 years.

you seem to have missed my point somewhat. if I took an original Mondeo and mine, the wiring is about HALF to 2/3rds the thickness (id say, looking at it) on the newer car BUT instead of putting in the thicker guage wires and have everything done SIMPLY (ie I can swap, for example, a radio for one out of a higher spec car and NOT have to reprogramme the car to tell it that the radio is there) and not having electrical issues (ALL car brands are guilty of this) they would rather save a couple of quid on wiring, wire it up poorly but run everything through expensive control boxes which then leads to issues where if 1 system fries the control box, you lose the use of entire CHUNKS of the car. we now have cars where the rear light wiring (ignore the bulb failure warnings) is barely heavy enough to power a towbar as well, if required (even the towbar wiring kits are a LOT thicker than the cars wiring)I mean seriously, if that's not penny pinching, I'm not sure what is!
as for cars using 'mature' technology. yes its mature. but in WHAT application? LCD screens acting as a dash display cluster (instead of conventional gauges) are fine, at home, for your telly or PC screen. how long would they last in an environment that vibrates, is subject to extremes of heat and cold etc? id guess not long. same with all the 'computers' controlling everything. yes my PC/Laptop have BOTH performed brilliantly for almost 10 years each, without issue. but there not getting bounced around at whatever speed through potholes etc. yet, as near as I can tell, the internal components are pretty much identical. no thicker circuit boards or heavy duty 'legs' on chips to solder them to the circuits, nothing. I actually wish we had the US's Lemon laws over here as from what little understanding ive grasped so far, basically gives you the effect of a 10 year warranty on the cars. and if the profit to the plant is so low, then perhaps they need to consider cutting the ridiculous margins that the dealers are allowed to make on the new cars OR they could keep things as they are and force dealer repair prices DOWN. neither of which the manufacturers will be willing to do as dealers will not be willing to pay for the 'glass palaces' the manufacturers say they have to have as showrooms if their profits are cut, and to keep profits up, the manufacturers would have to rethink some of their designs to make the vehicles easier/quicker for the dealers to work on.
as for making cars to last, they weren't made to last in the 80s but its amazing how many 80s cars are still on the road. even things like the humble Ford Escort.
 

A.J.

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theyre fine when newish, (when all the customer satisfaction surveys are done) but once theyre at the end of the market I can afford, so 7 or 8 years old, THATS where the issues can start to creep in.
I have to admit Pete, this was a new 66 reg last September. Only a basic 3dr one mind.
 

Craiglxviii

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I’ll have to go point by point sorry.

you seem to have missed my point somewhat. if I took an original Mondeo and mine, the wiring is about HALF to 2/3rds the thickness (id say, looking at it) on the newer car BUT instead of putting in the thicker guage wires and have everything done SIMPLY (ie I can swap, for example, a radio for one out of a higher spec car and NOT have to reprogramme the car to tell it that the radio is there) and not having electrical issues (ALL car brands are guilty of this) they would rather save a couple of quid on wiring, wire it up poorly but run everything through expensive control boxes which then leads to issues where if 1 system fries the control box, you lose the use of entire CHUNKS of the car.

I’ll go back to my point of the business plan. If you can make a design improvement- reduce material, increase efficiency, reduce cost- for a particular part without reducing performance you’d be a fool not to. That allows the OEM to meet business plan easier, which allows them to (variously):

i. Finance the development of new models.
ii. Incentivise (discount) the sales of existing models.
iii. Enrich the customer experience in new model years by adding previously unaffordable content.

A couple of quid per car is a huge number to achieve. I wish I had a few more of those right now! The move to CANBUS for many modules isn’t to do with cost reduction- that’s a secondary effect. It’s to do more with connectivity. Why does the car’s controller need to speak to the headlamp for example? Well, a headlamp nowadays will stand a 50% chance of being LED. Over the service lifetime, the LEDs within it will reduce in brightness by around 30%. Now, we can fit a closed loop feedback lumen sensor into the lamp to ramp up drive current as the brightness reduces over time (for a given drive current), so that lamp brightness is maintained. The car’s controller can monitor each lamp and synchronise them to the same level. Or if a lamp is damaged then the controller can tell the new lamp what brightness to achieve.

Or we can go back to Lucas 7” sealed beam units...


we now have cars where the rear light wiring (ignore the bulb failure warnings) is barely heavy enough to power a towbar as well, if required (even the towbar wiring kits are a LOT thicker than the cars wiring)I mean seriously, if that's not penny pinching, I'm not sure what is!

It’s exactly what I just described. A streamlined design that is exactly enough to do the job as designed and no more. If you want a tow bar then one is offered as a factory option.

as for cars using 'mature' technology. yes its mature. but in WHAT application? LCD screens acting as a dash display cluster (instead of conventional gauges) are fine, at home, for your telly or PC screen. how long would they last in an environment that vibrates, is subject to extremes of heat and cold etc? id guess not long.

Depends on the part and how it’s fitted.

same with all the 'computers' controlling everything. yes my PC/Laptop have BOTH performed brilliantly for almost 10 years each, without issue. but there not getting bounced around at whatever speed through potholes etc. yet, as near as I can tell, the internal components are pretty much identical.

Vibration isn’t much of an issue for a properly designed SMD circuit board nowadays.

no thicker circuit boards or heavy duty 'legs' on chips to solder them to the circuits, nothing.

Nope not applicable. Soldier pads replaced legs ten years ago.

I actually wish we had the US's Lemon laws over here as from what little understanding ive grasped so far, basically gives you the effect of a 10 year warranty on the cars.

Not quite. They have to demonstrate that either the construction quality is bad or that intrinsic design is bad. The latter requires the allowance of class action which doesn’t exist in British law.

and if the profit to the plant is so low, then perhaps they need to consider cutting the ridiculous margins that the dealers are allowed to make on the new cars

Ask yourself. If it was that easy why aren’t they doing it? Because the OEM isn’t in the game of selling to the public. They’re in the game of making huge volumes of cars in as efficient a manner as possible.

OR they could keep things as they are and force dealer repair prices DOWN

And how will they manage that? How will the business plan work? It’s not a charity remember.

. neither of which the manufacturers will be willing to do as dealers will not be willing to pay for the 'glass palaces' the manufacturers say they have to have as showrooms if their profits are cut

Which manufacturers? Showrooms belong to the dealer network. Might be branded OEM but sales are a totally separate organisation.

, and to keep profits up, the manufacturers would have to rethink some of their designs to make the vehicles easier/quicker for the dealers to work on.

Why? To keep profits up the price to the customer would increase.

as for making cars to last, they weren't made to last in the 80s but its amazing how many 80s cars are still on the road. even things like the humble Ford Escort.

It’s also amazing how many 80s cars biodegraded in the 90s onwards... I remember my C reg Orion with little fondness!!!

One point about all of the above. The whole industry has evolved to produce as high a quality of product as cheaply as possible in order to sell them to an ever- increasingly demanding market, in a way that allows the primary tier of that market (new buys) to maintain new products as easily as possible. Doing what you’ve suggested has all been tried in various guides at various points and shown to be unworkable.
 

turbopete

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It’s also amazing how many 80s cars biodegraded in the 90s onwards... I remember my C reg Orion with little fondness!!!
and yet I had a 1990 escort in 2008 and never had a single electrical issue. in the end it was the bodywork that let that car down. it had been owned by a family I knew prior to me buying it, who had never spent ANYTHING on the car outside of the usual wear and tear items and a couple of bits of welding for MOTs (as you would expect from a mk4 Escort that was 18 years old!!) even my 1966 Cortina I had from 1997 until about 2001 showed no signs, that I could find, of having had wiring repairs. a couple of signs of wiring mods to fit modern radios, but no actual repairs. in fact id have probably kept that car, had I had the funds and a place to park it when I moved. as for the orions, would I have one now? too true. I loved every single one that I had and not one EVER gave me any issues. in fact, of all the old cars ive had, the issues have only started to creep in as they got more modern and more electronics added. and yes, sometimes they ARE just for the sake of it. you keep saying that manufacturers only fit what the public ask for. who asked for radios that needed to have the car reprogrammed to upgrade to a better stereo if your requirements changed during your ownership? who ASKED to have to reprogram the car every time you added a retro fit or accessory? NOBODY. people ask for them to WORK and, rightly IMO, assume that you just fit them, plug them in/wire them up, job done. could you IMAGINE the hassle I would probably have now, compared to an 80s car, if I wanted to build a rally car replica and needed to add all sorts of extras, like spotlights? hell that would probably send the whole car into having a hissy fit!!!! the fact of the matter is, its done that way PURELY to prevent people adding accessories themselves, and if they do add them themselves, its designed to force you to go to a dealer to get them to work.
 

MalcQV

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Auto wipers are dramatically affected by a putted windscreen. The system relies on light scattering (raindrops being optically coupled to the glass). If there is putting the system may read that as raindrops. Or it may struggle to discriminate raindrops due to excess optical white noise so not activate.
I'm sure this is the issue. At least with this car. It will at least need a repair or two as there are two or three stone chips. I'm hoping that they'll just say a new one. Along with the new wipers hopefully job jobbed.

I did notice just yesterday that switching the wipers to position II does not activate standard slow speed and in fact is still an auto setting but more sensitive? I say that as at one point when the real rain on my windscreen subsided it went into intermittent mode whilst the car was stationary.
Prior to using position II on position I it was wiping at a stupidly manic speed :p
 

LostKiwi

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I'm sure this is the issue. At least with this car. It will at least need a repair or two as there are two or three stone chips. I'm hoping that they'll just say a new one. Along with the new wipers hopefully job jobbed.

I did notice just yesterday that switching the wipers to position II does not activate standard slow speed and in fact is still an auto setting but more sensitive? I say that as at one point when the real rain on my windscreen subsided it went into intermittent mode whilst the car was stationary.
Prior to using position II on position I it was wiping at a stupidly manic speed :p
MBs have always (in non-auto wiper vehicles) reduced wiper speeds when stationary. So if on intermittent the delay would lengthen, if on I then it would drop to intermittent.
Our 210 if on I will drop back when stopped as well and it has auto wipers.
 

MalcQV

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MBs have always (in non-auto wiper vehicles) reduced wiper speeds when stationary. So if on intermittent the delay would lengthen, if on I then it would drop to intermittent.
Our 210 if on I will drop back when stopped as well and it has auto wipers.
So are all the settings auto on my C209 (I, II and III)?
 

LostKiwi

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So are all the settings auto on my C209 (I, II and III)?
No, only I. II may drop back to auto when stationary if its like our 210 (which I can't check as its 'away' at the moment).
 

EmilysDad

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Not so much a hate but surprise ....
The radio (audio 20) display doesn't revert back to radio if you've been using the phone/other. My humble Vauxhall used to do
 


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