Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultramaroon
I get the nay-saying, and I mean that in a positive sense. Risk to benefit ratio, though? Assigning merit to the idea? Those are slippery slopes, and are why I chimed in here. The OP was to explore the potential change. Since no one took the stance in favor, I decided to do so with some requisite caveats.
There's a great deal involved in doing it right but it can be done. Benefit schmenefit. Of course it's silly but so's a snooker ball for a shift knob.
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Well a snooker ball for a shift knob is not re-engineering a whole primary system of a vehicle. I guess that my dislike of the idea stems more from my stance on needless over engineering for the sake of over engineering. Many times a year I have to look at an engineering proposal that somebody spent weeks on just t say "that is very nice and would do the job but bring me back something that is 50% easier to maintain and at least 25% cheaper to build". They always do.
When we were building the new assembly plant I spent a great deal of time in Detroit monitoring the engineering firm contracted to design and build much of the line equipment. Now, this was not some mom and pop shop but the leading automation company in the world. The whole reason I was there was that they had a horrible tendency to want to make everything overly complex. The best example of this was the task of installing the three 5/16 (socket size) bolts that hold the rotor splash shields on. They proposed this massive device that looked all the world like a minigun on a swing arm. The operator would place three 1/2 inch long bolts in the sockets, swing the thing in place, line it up with the holes, pull a trigger and wait until it hit the preset torque and stop. then they would swing it back and start all over. This task was given a 20 second cycle time. So, I told them that it would never work and to make something simpler . They went over my head to the corporate engineering director and he said build it as designed. Well guess what? It didn't work. Try standing back almost 4 feet and line three small bolts up with holes you can hardly see due to the bulk of the equipment. The 20 second cycle time was extended to over a minute and that just could not happen. After fighting with corporate for a week we eventually pulled the massive thing and gave the operator a small pneumatic had driver which I wanted in the first place. The cycle time went down to 10 seconds and the operator was actually even able to do a second task as well.
THIS is why I dislike over engineering and moving a battery to the rear of the car for no appreciable advantage is certainly that.