A non-response response

Some notes: Rugged Ridge is an importer of Chinese-manufactured Jeep parts. Bushwacker is an American company that claims you should buy their product because they're made in America. So who gives better customer service? Well, let's see: > ________________________________________
> From: Badtux
> Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 10:52 PM
> To: Customer Care
> Subject: Replacement of a single damaged component
>
> I have a LJ and flat flares. I ran the passenger front flare into a tree
> while offroading and crumpled it. No big deal, it's a Jeep, I just
> straightened it back out and screwed it back on with a bigger washer
> where the screw pulled through the flare and all is well. Except now I
> want to sell this Jeep and that flare looks wrinkled. Is there any way I
> can buy just that piece (the flat C-shaped piece)? Your retailers don't
> stock components, just whole sets, so they're no help here...

On Oct 17, 2011, at 9:21 AM, Customer Care wrote:

> Hi Badtux, Thank you for contacting Bushwacker. You can purchase a front pair from your local retailer. This is much better then purchasing a complete set of 4 flares.
> The part should be 10055-07 >

> Sincerely, >

> (redacted)
> Customer Care
> Bushwacker, Inc.
>
> Due to the large volumes of email we receive, please reply to all with history and keep your responses at the top of the email.
>

To: Bushwacker Customer Care:

Hello, thank you for your non-responsive response. I remembered that I had three members of a set of Rugged Ridge 7" oversize flares in storage and purchased the missing flare (ironically the same one -- passenger front) from Rugged Ridge via their vendor Quadratec, and am replacing your flares with the Rugged Ridge flares. Again, thank you for your lack of service.

Sincerely,
Badtux

BTW, the fender flare came in today -- the day after I ordered it, drop-shipped from Rugged Ridge. Yeppers, appears that the Chinese have better customer service than the Americans. So I should support the American company... why?

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Fucktards at Chiseler Corporation...

... had a design defect in the OBDCII wiring for the 2005-2006 Jeep Wrangler which won't allow the heated O2 sensor readiness test to complete and thus the Jeep won't pass emissions, but the fucktards want to charge an arm and a leg to implement the TSB that fixes the issue -- which involves cutting the crossed wires and un-crossing / re-soldering them so they go to the right place. And of course because emissions testing is only required for cars that are 6 years of age or older, I detect this bullshit on their part only after the emissions warranty (5 years / 50k miles) is over.

A word of advice to anybody wanting to buy a car from Chiseler Corporation: DON'T. These asswipes are the most crooked, evil sons of bitches on the whole fucking planet. I can't *BEGIN* to list the ways that they refuse to stand behind the quality of their piss-poor piece of shit products. Anybody who buys one of their products better damn well know how to do their own work and how to fix shit themselves, because their dealers just swap out one defective part for an equally defective part over and over again (like the gas tanks on the 2001-2010 Jeeps that can't withstand E10 gasoline as mandated by the Feds in many locations, it causes the check valve gasket inside the tank to swell and stop sealing, meaning that a) it's no longer crash-worthy and b) gas spits out the hole when the tank is full, instead of the check valve stopping it). You also better be damn good at fabricating your own replacements or fixes for parts that were defective from day one and still won't work today, such as the oil pump drive assembly in the 2005-2006 Wrangler, which is completely broken and will ruin your cam unless you fabricate a way to lubricate the top end of the assembly (which is sealed WITHOUT ANY LUBRICANT AT ALL and will eventually seize). Chiseler is *STILL* selling defective OPDA units *TODAY* that will ruin your camshaft just as surely as taking a sledgehammer to it.

So anyhow: To anybody thinking that Fiat's acquisition of Chiseler would change things: It has. FOR THE WORSE. Fiat completely cut off ALL independent mechanics, who no longer are allowed to use the scan tool needed to repair recent-model Chiseler products (only authorized dealers can get the web site authentication codes needed to download the codes and definition files into the new tools), and Fiat/Chiseler *NO LONGER SELLS FACTORY SERVICE MANUALS FOR THEIR VEHICLES*. None. Nada. Nope. Zilch. If it breaks, they require you to take it to the dealer, period, so that the dealer can swap in *ANOTHER* defective part identical to the original that is *GUARANTEED* to break and cause major damage.

Summary: If you buy a Chiseler Corporation product, you're fucked in the head. These are some evil sons of bitches. You want a product from a company that's doing it right, that stands behind their product, buy a Hyundai/Kia (Kia is owned by Hyundai, different nameplate). Just sayin'.

If there was any alternative to the Jeep Wrangler as a serious offroad vehicle, I'd buy it -- but, alas, there isn't. Not sold in the United States, anyhow. Suzuki refuses to bring in their Jimny ever since Consumer Reports panned it as "dangerous" (it used to be sold here as the "Samurai"), Land Rover Defenders and Mercedes G-classes are selling for six figures here because only the most luxurious models are imported (not the basic cheap models sold elsewhere) and aren't as good offroad as a Wrangler in any event, and so forth. It just pisses me off that I have to support Chiseler Corporation in order to pursue my hobby of ghost-towning and mine exploration, sigh!

-- Badtux the Wrenching Penguin

If you stand still you will be passed

Just for fun I went to fueleconomy.gov and did a search for cars with best fuel economy and... hold it. What's this? A Hyundai Accent? A Hyundai Elantra? 30mpg city, 40mpg highway? WTF is going on here? Did they put a 20 horsepower engine into these things to get that kind of mpg?!

And the answer is... no! The 1.6L engine in the Accent produces more power than any other competitor's subcompact car engine, while the 1.8L engine in the Elantra is makes more power than even Honda's 1.8L engine while having better fuel economy because it's mated to a 6-speed dual-clutch transmission rather than a 5 speed conventional automatic transmission. What's going on is that that Koreans have matched, and SURPASSED, the United States when it comes to automotive technology. For the Accent they just released a GDI (Gas Direct Injection) engine that produces more horsepower than any other normally-aspirated (non-turbocharged) engine of its size on the planet. Direct injection is the technology that diesel engines use to squirt diesel fuel into cylinders to precisely meter how much fuel goes into the cylinder. It requires special fuel injectors that can take being in the middle of an explosion 3000+ times per minute, but gives much more precise fuel metering. Doing it to a gasoline engine brings that same precise fuel metering to the table, but because gasoline burns faster than diesel fuel does, you get horsepower, not just torque. GDI has been used in some high-end engines for performance prior to now, but this is the first large-scale application in a low end car for the purpose of getting fuel economy.

Furthermore, they introduced a 6-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission which also happens to be their "manual" transmission too. Normal automatic transmissions lose power in the "torque converter", a sloshy thing that uses vanes on one side to slosh fluid around to push on vanes on the other side. A dual-clutch transmission has a pair of clutches like a normal manual transmissions and simply uses electronics rather than cables or hydraulic fluid to actuate them as well as to shift the gears. So they basically created a way to get the fuel economy of a manual transmission out of an automatic transmission. This isn't a new concept, VW's been doing it for a few years now (but for performance reasons rather than fuel economy reasons) and ZF has a dual-clutch transmission that Chrysler is in the process of building a factory to build here in America that's currently used in a number of high-end European makes (again, though, for performance rather than fuel economy), but Hyundai appears to be the first manufacturer to do it across their entire low-end line.

What this basically says is that you can't stand still. You can't refuse to innovate. You can't mark entire realms of science off-limits because they are "un-Biblical" and de-fund the schools because they're "liberal". Or else you're toast. South Korea has 1/6th the population of the United States. 25 years ago, they were a third world assembler of other people's parts, creating cheap piece of shit cars that fell apart almost as soon as they got off the boat. Today, 25 years later, they are world class, producing designs of their own making that are as good as or better than anybody else in the world. They didn't do that by de-funding their schools. They didn't do that by proclaiming that Jesus prohibits teaching of physics and biology because they contradict the Bible's creation story. They did that the old fashioned way -- by valuing education, innovation, and hard work. You know... like America used to be, before we started worshiping ignorance and started electing Presidents based on whether we'd like to have a beer with him rather than because he was, like, smart and shit.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

Over at Moto-Tux...

Toyota is the new Philip-Morris.

Discuss over there...

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

On GM and Hummers

It is fashionable to diss GM. The problem is, GM's cars really aren't that bad technologically speaking. Oh yeah, they're bland and have about as much personality as a blender, with a few exceptions here and there, but they are technically decent cars that suffer only because they've been designed to a cost point. Most of GM's automotive line other than Cadillac is today what Japanese cars were back in the 1970's -- cars that you buy because they're cheap and get good fuel economy, not cars you buy for excitement or high quality fit and finish.

GM's trucks are even better than that. Other than the lamentable Chevy Colorado / GMC Canyon, which has the best fuel economy of any small truck sold in America but the aluminum engine head has been problematic, GM makes the best work trucks in America. Dodge and Ford make go-to-the-mall trucks. But when you want work done, you buy a GM truck, because they have a lower bed, torquier engines, more rugged transmissions, higher load capacities, and heftier towing capacity. They're not stylish like the Dodge mall cruisers, or luxurious like the Ford mall cruisers, but they work.

Of course, GM has their stupidities named Hummer and Saturn. Saturn was a good experiment that GM abandoned to create just another badge-engineered line. Hummer... well. I understand GM is trying to sell Hummer. If John Holmes bought Hummer, would that mean we all get hummers? Sounds... exhausting! (Bada boom, yeah, this whole post was setup for that line :).

So anyhow: GM's biggest problems are solvable:

1. A dealer network incapable of selling GM's fuel-efficient automobiles. They're a buncha good ole' NASCAR boys who are more comfortable selling trucks and Corvettes and big iron than small cars. GM needs to punt most of the dealers and take on dealers who are, like, less than 600 years old and who speak English rather than NASCAR.
2. Too much debt. GM's debt both to its pension fund and to bondholders was managable when GM sold 60% of the cars sold in America. Now it's not. Solvable via bankruptcy.
3. Too high of an expense basis. GM has too many factories for the amount of cars that it sells, and too many of all kinds of employees for the number of cars it sells (other than engineers -- GM doesn't have too many engineers) and leases far too many buildings on long-term leases that it doesn't need anymore but can't dump because breaking the lease would be too expensive outside of bankruptcy. So yeah, bankruptcy solves this one too, since all contracts -- labor, leases, etc. -- can be voided by the bankruptcy judge.
4. Hummer and Saturn. Duh.
5. Dull unadventurous management that approves too many boring cars and that flubs the rare attempt at exciting cars (Pontiac Aztec, anybody?). Okay, so this one isn't going to be solved by bankruptcy. But Toyota proves you can sell boring cars, as long as they're high quality.
6. Poor fit and finish of cars due to engineering to lowest price point possible. Well, this can be solved, but it's going to take a long time before GM can shed their reputation as a bottom feeder manufacturer of cheap shitboxes. But dumping all that overhead ought to allow them to invest some money into this area, so hopefully the bankruptcy will help here too.
7. GMAC. This is now owned by Cerebus Capital, not by GM, and thus GM is no longer able to offer competitive financing. This has to be solved. It's unclear whether bankruptcy will help solve it.
8. The banking industry meltdown in general. It's hard to get a car loan now. People don't buy cars if they can't get a car loan. Toyota is suffering the same problems for the same reason.

So anyhow, I'm not as pessimistic about GM's chances as many people are. Their core technology is sound, their cars are boring but are competitive at the price point they've been engineered to (i.e., they're engineered more to Hyundai price and quality than to Honda price and quality), and their current (new) management is unimaginative but quite capable of running the car company that GM has become -- a car company that makes bargain cars at a price point for people who are interested in basic transportation and don't care that the cars are cheaply built. GM can go on for many years doing that, as long as their expense overhead has been cut down to size. It might disappoint those who remember when GM was the largest car company in the world, but (shrug). Everything ends, nothing lasts forever. The days when GM was a leader in the automotive industry are over, by and large, unless they come up with something game-changing. Which I don't think the Volt will be, alas -- too expensive, too slow, too short-ranged. So it goes.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

In which the penguin is very rude

I don't like half-ass crap that ain't worth a shit. If you've ever worked on a car, read my rant and you'll probably nod your head, because you've encountered cheap-ass aftermarket parts that ain't worth puttin' on your worst enemy's car too. Otherwise, avoid, I use bad language on something that won't interest you.

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Chrysler to survive

The only hangup right now is the assholes who hold Chrysler debt, who want 100 cents on the dollar rather than 0 cents on the dollar. They're going to come around, President Obama has essentially told them that if they don't accept Chrysler stock in exchange for their debt, they're going to get 0 cents on the dollar -- he's going to give Chrysler a bankruptcy bridge loan and have a bankruptcy judge write off their loans altogether.

It's fashionable to pooh-pooh Chrysler's product line. But their mini-van line is the best in the world, so good that Volkswagen is buying it and re-packaging it for sell both in the USA and elsewhere rather than develop a new minivan of their own to replace the now-defunct "Euro-Van". Their Jeep line is still the most offroad capable in the world and is legendary amongst offroad enthusiasts -- there is no substitute for a Jeep when you want to head up Isham Canyon. The problem with their car lines is that they were gutted by Daimler-Benz -- until the Germans raped Chrysler, Chrysler had the most fuel-efficient car lineup of any American manufacturer, even their large cars were fuel-efficient front-wheel-drive cars powered by six cylinder engines rather than being huge gas-guzzling V8-powered rear-wheel-drive cars. Fiat is going to help them fix that. So for any true car enthusiast, this is a win-win situation. We get to preserve some best-in-the-world technology with the promise of a lot of new technology to come.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Rick Wagoner is out at GM -- Obama said to GM, "not a dime more as long as Wagoner is CEO", and Wagoner quit before he was fired by the board. Given Wagoner's unblemished record of failure as a manager, I agree with Jerry Flint: good riddance to bad rubbish.

You'll note that neither Ford nor Chrysler are being asked to change management. That's because both companies already have new management rather than the management that got them into trouble. That is not, however, stopping the tighty righties from getting their panties into a knot over the firing of Wagoner. Nevermind that any investor investing money into GM would have said, "not a dime until Wagoner is gone" because the man was clearly utterly incompetent, for some reason the job of a rich white man is more important to them than the jobs of the tens of thousands of working people that Wagoner's mismanagement has eliminated.

But then, the Republicans only pretend to care about those tens of thousands of working people anyhow. What they are is the party of rich white men, in the end. Anybody who fails to see that is being blinded by ignorance and propaganda, because every single Republican policy -- *EVERY* single Republican policy -- is intended to benefit rich white men at the expense of, well, the rest of us. So now they huddle together and whine in defense of yet another rich white man -- Rick Wagoner -- while saying not a yelp about the millions of Americans who've been thrown out of jobs over the past year by the Bush Depression. How suprising.

-- Badtux the Unsurprised Penguin

PS: The rich bastard is heading into the sunset with a $20M retirement package, so the tighty righties sure are getting their panties in a knot about nothing, we won't find Wagoner destitute and homeless and begging for pennies on the streets of Detroit anytime soon... alas, given how many of his victims have been reduced to that.

The ITALIANS?!

Over on the Jeep forums we were pondering who was going to get Jeep once Chrysler collapsed. After all, the brand has been through so many owners and been such a cash cow to so many people over the past 60 years that the notion of Jeep going away seemed ridiculous. Willys, Kaiser, AMC, Renault, Chrysler, the brand's been around.

So anyhow, there were the speculations about GM buying Jeep and trashing its Hummer business, the long shot about Ford maybe buying Jeep. The Germans? Nope, they'd tried, and just don't "get" Jeep. The French? Been there, done that, they lost their butts on AMC-Jeep, doubt they have any interest in doing it again. The Japs? Nope, they don't operate like that -- they don't buy brands, they build them up themselves. The Chinese? They're not ready to enter the U.S. market for at least another three years, their current cars can't pass U.S. safety standards as designed (they're working on re-designing to meet U.S. standards) and Jeep doesn't work as a stand-alone brand, it needs a car partner to take up the slack when Jeep sales are down (Jeeps are play items so sales are best when the economy is good, while cheap cars sell best when the economy is bad). The South Koreans? Ah yes, the South Koreans *do* buy brands. Say hello to the Hyundai Wrangler, I speculated!

But now I open my Google to find that, well... the EYE-talians are comin'. Fix It Again Tony. FIAT. Talk about your surprises.

Fiat's been in the United States before. Lost their butt because their shit is too small and slow and unreliable for the USA, skulked out with their tail tucked under their asses and stuck to Europe thereafter. Thing is, half of the world drives Fiats. They're small cheap-ass cars (their largest car isn't even as large as a Honda Civic) and when they tool up for new lines of Fiats, they sell the old tooling to someone in some depressed place like Brazil or Yugoslavia or Russia for them to build Fiats under their own nameplates, so you have half the world driving Fiats that aren't Fiats but are, if you get what I mean.

In other words, they sell exactly what Chrysler *doesn't* sell after being raped by the Germans (who cancelled all of Chrysler's small-car projects because "Americans can't build small cars" -- nevermind the Dodge Neon, which at the time certainly was a small car and a fairly competent one at that albeit a bit dated and in need of a redesign). Which makes them truly a good match for Chrysler -- each sells vehicles that aren't in the other company's lineup.

That said, the Curse of Jeep shall continue. Every company that has owned Jeep or part of Jeep has ended up in the dumps. If Fiat gets Chrysler, my guess is that they'll go the same way as Renault. Them Euros just don't "get" American car culture, and I doubt they ever will.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

And the bottom falls out...

Chrysler LLC today reported total November 2008 U.S. sales of 85,260 units, down 10% versus October 2008 (94,530 units), and down 47% from the same month last year. This compares to Ford off 31%, Honda off 32%, Toyota off 34%, and GM off 41%.

Note the Honda and Toyota sales figures. This is *not* a Big Three problem. This is an industry-wide problem. Chrysler and GM have been hit especially hard, but nobody else is selling sh*t either.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

On invisible hands and the Big Three

So the notion is that the invisible hand of the marketplace will magically fix all things, and thus we should just allow the Big Three automakers to collapse.

Well, there's a number of problems with that notion. First of all, invisible hands, like invisible buddies that bums down at the waterfront talk to as they shuffle around in their bath slippers pushing their carts full of their life's possessions, are just that: Invisible. Imaginary. They don't exist. You might as well expect Casper the Friendly Ghost or Donald Duck to bail us out. So let's start talking about real things, rather than about imaginary friends that will save us all. Praying to your invisible hand will solve our problems about as soon as praying to Casper or to Allah or Jesus will.

Okay, now that we've dismissed invisible friends as our salvation, what now? The first thing to do is to prevent a deflationary spiral. The evaporation of so much wealth in the economy is inherently deflationary. The problem is, capitalism works only when there is a slight level of inflation to "prime the pump" so to speak. We found that out the hard way in 1930-1932, the Federal Reserve refused to expand the money supply because the prevailing ideology of the time said that'd cause runaway inflation a.k.a. Weimar Republic Meltdown, and the whole economy went into a deflationary meltdown as a result because in capitalism, people can't pay their bills during a deflationary period. Paulson dumping all that money into banks is the most effective way of preventing a deflationary spiral and I'm glad Bernanke finally talked him into doing it. Unfortunately, the amount dumped into the banks so far, about $120B, is child's play compared to the $4 *TRILLION* in housing wealth that has disappeared out of our economy. At current reserve requirements, he needs to dump another $280B into the banks to offset the disappearance of that $4 trillion.

Okay, on to the next issue. We're trying to prevent 1930-1932, remember? So what's the next thing that happened in 1930-1932 that we're trying to prevent? Well, that is a collapse in industrial production with resulting massive unemployment. And remember, in the U.S. system healthcare is tied to employment, so moving all those people off the employment rosters also results in a disastrous number of uninsured. GM alone provides health insurance to 1.1 *MILLION* people. If the Big Three automakers collapse, we're talking about the loss of roughly 2 million jobs and roughly 5 million more added to the rolls of those without health insurance.

Now: Just throwing money at the Big 3 isn't going to fix things. When Nissan was in this same situation in 1999, new management was a precondition of accepting the Japanese government bailout. We should probably insist on the same for GM if we bail them out (Chrysler already has new management -- they just kicked the Germans out, remember? -- and Ford will survive with loan guarantees and doesn't need a major bailout). But we can't just let them collapse. Two million unemployed people would send the unemployment rate soaring above 10%, and the current Medicaid system would collapse with 5 million more uninsured thrown into it.

In the long term, you are correct that the market will find jobs for those people and that the economy will recover. But in the long term, we're all dead. In the short term, we're trying to stay alive until we can make it to the long term. Call it socialism if you want. Me, I call it pragmatism. But economically speaking, bailing out the Big Three makes a lot more sense than relying on an invisible hand to bail us out. Because invisible hands are, in the end, imaginary, while the jobs and health insurance provided by the Big Three are real.

-- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin

Over at Moto-tux...

I ask, Should we save General Motors?

-- Badtux the Automotive Penguin