Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy348
I guess I just need to start finding some awesome cars from the late 90s and early 00s...
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e39 540i or 530i with manual transmission.
That car is so reliable that your grandchildren will inherit it.....
Other than the occasional bushing or ignition coil or so. Simple fixes and easy to diagnose
Can you imagine having a flat screen instrument binnacle where for a specific model they all fail after 15 years and it's too difficult to make a replacement by that time?
I think in essence you want a car with less bespoke electronics but with obdII
If you look at early 90's cars with motormanagement but prior obdII, every manufacturer had their own system to diagnose problems.
Without that specific computer system it's impossible to diagnose a problem. The engine may be fine but if a sensor plays up, the ecu gets the wrong information. No way to tell what sensor that is unless you can read the ecu with that special system.
With obdII there are plenty universal readers.
But with systems getting more and more complicated, even components as a new throttle body have to be programmed again into the engine ecu, and that is not a generic obdII function. That is again that bespoke diagnose system from the manufacturer.
I had it on my volvo, slightly overfilling the oil (with less than 1/2qrt) gave an error that was not resettable with generic obdII software. I had to get the volvo vida system. Luckily you can get backdoor/hacked/copied systems on ebay for 100 bucks, but otherwise it's dealer$$ (buying an official factory diagnose system is more expensive than a new car...). And that of an oil message!
But will those chinese copies still be available on ebay in the year 2050? probably not....