i want to punch an Electrical Engineer and baby in the face

Ok, so I have a 2006 grand prix, I go to college 9 hours away, and i dont have cruise, i've gotten used to not usin it, but my dad was pushin me to get it fixed, blah blah blah, already put 300 into someone trying to figure out what was wrong, so it's been in the shop for 3 weeks, with all sorta of man hours, reprogramming, and a new body module, well, i dunno if you looked hard at a new grand prix, but the spoiler is just a hunk a plastic, i wanted something a little sportier, though not ricer, and my new spoiler's tail light is LED, well aparently the FRICKEN spoiler running light's resistance has some fricken thing to do with the brake sensor and the lower LED resistance made the compooper think the brakes were on, and the bill is going to be 1000 for that fricken goof up, I got an ear full from my old man, telling me that i just spent 1200 on a spoiler, there was no warning on the site, nor would something like that have even crossed my mind when putting it on, what if the running light burns out? will the cruise stop working? wouldnt some brake switch like on a motorcycle, somthing simple, that would cost $5 to replace work well enough to shut the damn cruise off?

im going for mechanical engineering, but have lots of EE friends who im going to give a shot to the kidneys for this.

 

schooter sorry for your bad luck but if it's any concillation my seca's atari reports that I have a blown tail light when I run the led bulbs in the rear

 

That sounds like a bit of a bogus explanation to me.
Reality is probably more like:
Well sir, we worked on your car for MANY MANY hours and then it dawned on us to check the fuse and change it so now we had to make up this bogus description so you would cover our labor time.

Similar story:
My A/C became erratic in my car. Sometimes it would work OK for a while then not. (usually when it was hot as hell).
Took it to a local shop and they checked system, vacuumed it down, checked for leaks, re-filled (charged me $220)...I didn't even make it home and it stopped. Took it back next week and they double checked and ran for 30 minutes. It was an ice-box inside.
Got in and drove home. On the way to customer next day it stopped working WTF??
It was at dealer for timing belt etc and they also worked on it. No issues they said but gladly took my $75 for A/C inspection. Three days later it stopped again. A couple calls and another inspection with leak test etc and no joy.
Occasionally it would come on and then go off. It seemed related to bumps in the road. I searched and searched for a loose wire.
Finally I sold it to a friend.
When it was NOT working, the compressor clutch would not engage. We decided to simply install a toggle switch. In the process, it dawned on me after we tested "hot-wiring" it that the clutch on the compressor was controled with a relay.
I opened the fuse-box/relay panel and "cool>>the fog light uses the same relay"
Switched the two relays and BAM>> AC works fine now ALL the time.
Damn $12 relay cost me hundreds of dollars and thousands of miles sweating and cursing.

 

I can't stand the new electronics in cars today. I've been a tech for a long time and seen some really crazy things. The strangest so far was a lady comes in saying her car is losing power. Nothing is out of the ordinary, nothing, but the drivers window doesn't work. A few shorts in and fried circuits later and that was all the cause. A damn blown window motor caused a loss of power in the engine. Someone please tell me how cars these days are really getting better. Give me a manual tranny and a carbed 350 and I'm happy.

 

Re: i want to punch an Electrical Engineer and baby in the f

It's not the electrical engineers, it's the lawyers.

"Government Motors knew how to build a cruise control that would cut off when the brake lights were on but they didn't do it to save $0.02/car. Because of those greedy fat cats Mrs. Jones will never play the piano again." There goes $20 million.

That's the same reason it takes three hands to start a push mower now. Need that bar because it's unreasonable to expect Mr. Jones to be smart enough to shut the mower off before reaching under it.

 

no, i checked the fuse, but the mechanic is a local guy, and kind of a distant family friend, he wouldnt do that, but he said in his wiring diagrams, there wasnt a resistor listed

 

Just so long as the PassLock in your ignition hasn't gone out yet...

 

He's a mechanic. Most do it to some degree some worse than others.

 

How about "schooter went and installed some cheesy accessory that screwed up his electrical system and confused the computer."

I think that's probably a little closer to the reality...

 

Perhaps Schooter will be seduced by the dark side? (Electrical engineering).

Modern car electrics are unreasonably complicated - all under the heading of "protecting the environment" and this probably puts a lot of fault diagnosis outside a regular garage, however I would seriously question being charged $1000 because you have fitted the wrong spoiler!!!

 

I'd say a lot if it is due to "design by committee" combined with "engineering by management".

 

2006 was the first year on the grand prix with the electronbic cruise and not alinkage type system.. mmm

schooter did put a cheesy hunk of plastic on his car that messed up the cruise,

though i think the way the system is designed, is like if you dont put on your gas cap, then your anti locks dont work because the computer couldnt detect the engine was running because the movent of the car didnt make any gas vapor from movement of the car, thus it would have been recorded by a pressure valve on the gas cap.

if it aint broke dont fix it.

 

Re: i want to punch an Electrical Engineer and baby in the f

a distant friend that's getting real distant
when you walked in this is what he saw

 

Fitz, you're such a dad :lol:

And right on

 

Cars are designed by engineers that don't know how to work on them if they had too. All wiring systems should be isolated from each other Duh but you have to take into account the accountants that want a $100 car not $105 car that kills the bottom line.

 

i just think it's dumb ho it's designed, the larger the system, the more chances for variables. a simple brake sensor would wok

 

I'll line up to get the next punch!!!

 

If you want a car that well engineered, you don't buy a Pontiac. I don't mean this to slander the engineers at Pontiac in any way. There is a price point they are engineering to. Same goes for an XJ.

So how's the handling with that extra down-force you're getting off that spoiler?

 

I loved my '94 GrandAM best car i ever owned.


And the cruise wasn't stupid like a lot of them today. Go up a fairly good hill, it would wait and see if it had to change gears before just randomly dropping 2 gears cause it lost 2km/h lol.

I hate the transmission in our 2005 Escape. It will drop to OD as soon as i reach 70km/h even if i've got the pedal half way down. I mumble profanities every time it does it lol.

 

Re: i want to punch an Electrical Engineer and baby in the f

If Schooter wants to kill his cruise control by installing a high performance cheesy accessory then he should just do it. If I read his original post correctly the fact that his cruise control didn't work wasn't ruining HIS life. He had gotten used to the fact it didn't work. It was bugging his DADDY-O! Schoot, you shoulda told your old man that if he wanted it to work so badly then he's welcome to pay to have it fixed! BTW Daddy-O, the cheesy accessory stays. If it's so important to you to have the CC work then pay for a work around! 'Nuff said!

If you want your hair to turn white over this type of issue i.e changed from incandescent to led lighting and everything quit working just google CANBUS It is used on some motorcycles now and more cars than bikes. This is going to be an "I just got my a$$ kicked" technology unless we, as consumers, are going to be empowered to easily program threshold voltages etc from a pc.

Woe the day,

Loren