this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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I feel like not buying a Honda would be a pretty good way to opt out. In fact since the majority of car manufacturers are doing this bullshit I feel like simply not purchasing a new car is a great way to opt out of this.
Plenty of older not smart cars that are perfectly usable or fairly easily restored no reason to go dropping the money on a brand new one that's not only a privacy disaster but a repairability disaster on top of it.
I think my favorite is how almost all new cars now come with a sealed transmission with absolutely no way to replace the fluid in it with the claims of it being a "lifetime fluid" there is no such thing as a transmission fluid that can last and do its job forever, what they mean by LifeTime fluid is that it will last long enough to satisfy the warranty. And what they have deemed should be the usable life of the car.
Shit I hadn't heard about that sealed transmission thing, that's fucked up. Transmission fluid replacement seemed pretty important on the maintenance schedule of all the cars I've had
It's been happening for a long time, even some cars is far back as 2012 have a supposed lifetime fluid. Although they at least still have the drain bolt so that you can say yeah that's cute and do it anyway. But lately the drain bolt has gone away and they are completely sealed meaning you can't change it even if you want to
Just today I said goodbye to my 2012 chrysler minivan because of the "lifetime sealed transmission." Now Chrysler minivan transaxles have always been garbage, this is known. But mine said in the owner's manual, "lifetime, sealed transaxle" "no fluid fills or dipstick." I worked at a Chrysler shop and asked the service manager - "nope, don't need to do nothin'." OK, all good.
Yeaahhh... That's not entirely true. 160k on the odo and it lost the desire to 'go' in drive (no forward progress in drive despite the little engine trying it's best), a hell of a scream coming from the engine bay and a light show of errors on the dash. Limped it home and the code reader said that gears 1 & 3 had a "ratio mismatch" which should only happen if they lost teeth, and a couple others I don't remember. Figured it was scrap. Had a mechanic friend look at it; he popped off a tube, fingered it a bit, sniffed it and said to try changing out the filter and as much fluid as I could. Did that, dropped about 5qt in (with no goddamned dipstick, how do you tell how much it needs?) and the thing ran great for another 3 months. Until today when it started making the whining noise again. Dropped it off and said goodbye.
Fuck "sealed" transmissions. Sorry, I had to rant. I loved that van - no tracking, had a Sirius radio that has 50 song and 50 artist alerts and 300gb on board mp3 storage, and the 2 screen DVD system (great for parents that don't want their kids on tablets but still want to occupy them on long trips)
I believe Honda started this in the early 2000s because they found that transmissions were compromised at earlier mileages at a much more frequent rate from leaks, bad fluid changes, or missing the intervals, than were actually failing from use. So they designed the cars for how they were actually being used and maintained. It’s kind of a non-issue unless you’ve got 300k+ miles on your transmission, at which point you’d expect to potentially replace it anyway.
Cars are just catching up to HVAC systems... In the last 3 years I've had to replace both inside and outside fan motors because their (maintenance free) bearings failed.