Comment by gorgoiler
11 days ago
I bought a new salad spinner recently, after having broken yet another one.
I’ve had fancy brands like Zyliss and OXO. I’ve had cheap store brand models and cheaper Amazon MYSSNGVWL type stuff as well. Knowing they would probably break didn’t make it feel better when they eventually broke.
Anyway the new salad spinner is large, heavy, with a steel pin into a brass bushing, has a metal handle and nylon gears in a sealed gearbox with exposed stainless screws for servicing. I opened it up and greased it on first use, mostly just to pretend to be servicing it, just to see what that felt like. It felt good!
The best part is it came with a catalogue that had order codes for spare parts. They wanted to help you maintain it. It was built to last and the manufacturer was on your side.
https://www.dynamicmixers.com/en/our-products/salad-spinner/...
I’m starting to feel silly writing all this about a salad spinner, but where is my car version of this?
The car version of this stopped being produced 15 years ago.
Old petrol Toyotas and Hondas met your criteria.
And the back catalogue of parts is huge and supported for a long time.
Modern cars aren't built as well.
Maybe the modern non-turbo petrol Mazdas are the best fallback.
Modern cars aren't built as well.
Can you cite a source for this? There's no question that they're vastly more complex, but I would think that modern car manufacturing is far more exacting (and efficient) than in the past.
If you're saying that older cars are more repairable, I'm happy to agree with you, even without a source to back up that claim.
An easily visible one is air intakes. Many manufacturers have shifted to plastic. Peteo-engineering has advanced a lot, but they will still get brittle and break.
Interior wise, you can look at things like fabric durability-- lower deniers can be cheaper, but will wear sooner. Springs/foam in seats are another example, but this will vary across manufacturers, models and trims.
This isn't exclusive to financial engineering manufacturers like Stellantis or Nissan, either. Toyota has had issues with simple things like rust proofing (whether intentional or not) on 1st generation Tacomas leading to massive recalls and things like plastic timing guides prone to wearing out. Ford with the wet clutches having belts submersed in oil. German cars needing body off access for rear timing chain maintenance at 80k miles. Water cooled alternators (really, VW?). All types of "why?" if you follow cars once they are 3+ years old.
It seems like there are a lot of regressions that probably result from cost cutting, while others may exist to simply drive service revenue.
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Efficient manufacturing means exactly building stuff as cheaply as you can get away with.
There's a reason why roman architecture is still standing: it is massively overbuilt, the very opposite of efficient (they also used to make the architect stand under his own arches as they removed the temporary support, that could have contributed to the overbuilding).
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10 year old article about Toyota realizing it was over engineering parts and making the cars too expensive and parts didn’t need to last as long.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150122235642/http://www.busine...
It seems like you both are looking at different definitions of built well. One pertaining to how well the car will perform over its lifetime. The other describing the build process. Not necessarily exclusionary, but different.
This won’t fit the usual hate, but.. https://epc.tesla.com Vast majority of parts can be ordered directly from the catalogue.
I mean, the vast majority of parts for the vast majority of cars can be ordered from:
https://www.rockauto.com/
Ordering parts feels like less of the issue than the ability to fix and service it yourself.
Has tesla started supporting third party shops doing battery replacements for instance?
How can you replace the idiotic console and door handles with manageable parts? Is there a sane charging port yet?
You want to add a load of buttons? Should be easy enough, just get them to send codes to the computer via the network.
Door handles are harder, what do you want to change? Inner or outer?
What's insane about the charging port?
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That's a $125 salad spinner... I get the appeal, but it's definitely a premium product.
> but where is my car version of this?
It's the status quo? Cars last longer than they ever have in history. In 2 decades average age of cars on the road increased from 9.5 to 14.5. They are a little more difficult to maintain for the home mechanic because they are packed with electronics, but what you want seems to exist perfectly. Many use timing chains instead of timing belts that last 20+ years. Radiators rarely crack whereas they used to all the time. Alternators last the life of the vehicle. Cars are often upgraded because the owner is bored or does not feel like paying for rust repair at the 15 year mark, more than unfixable problems.
While I can't help you with a car, I share your desire of wanting things with replaceable parts, so I leave you with this, the coffee maker version your salad spinner, https://us.moccamaster.com. All parts replaceable.
espresso machines are maybe in a different class of "coffee maker" but it seems like even the cheapest of those is pretty easy to service/repair/source parts.
or in some cases even upgrade to improve capabilities...
I did the gaggiauino mod to my gaggia classic and basically everything in there is just pipes and wires... the most complicated single part on the original is the vibratory pump. I'm pretty sure i could keep that same machine going indefinitely with access to parts.
I ‘ave already got one!
The [Slate Truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Truck) seems to be marketing itself with this in mind. But it's backed by Jeff Bezos, so proceed with caution.
>Fast and efficient, it respects the product’s fragility.
>Heavy duty construction for an intensive daily use.
Wait is it fragile or is it heavy duty? I guess they used "product" instead of "produce".
2 reasons
Electronics and code ruined replaced pure mechanics. Components aren't physically maintainable or hot-swappable, because they aren't just physically connected.
Second is that maintenance is how dealerships make money, so there is a monetary incentive to make it seem esoteric.
For your purposes, the upcoming slate truck is closest analogue - https://www.slate.auto/en
I’ve had a cheap (was $15) single salad spinner, for about 15 years. Decent amount of usage in that time, but not professional level.
So my question to you is: what the heck are you doing to your salad spinners?
If you spin low-grade uranium ore just right, the heavier particles will deposit on the edges, giving you high-grade uranium.
Please follow HN rules that forbid nuclear proliferation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also if you’re dealing with sensitive information intelligence agencies can’t hack your car to go 100% on the throttle in a suburb. (Not sure if this is relevant in any way to salad spinners, though.)
Every car manufacturer has a catalog of spare parts you can order. I really don't understand what you're on about with your post.
That it should be possible for somebody with a reasonable understanding of car maintenance to actually fix or maintain their car instead of having a blob of proprietary nonsense only meant to lock you in and milk your wallet with mandatory dealer repairs and subscriptions.
Complexity is the reason your car doesn't drink fuel like people drink water and also the reason there's vastly less severe accidents than 60 years ago.
That's a salad spinner with a price of ~4x the cost of the OXO one. Would you buy a new car that cost 150,000 dollars?
https://www.worldpac.com/
Say MYSSNGVWL 10 times fast
1980s Volvo