Erm...

Don't know for sure.

My old employer designed that parking brake system though (I worked on it a little bit - mostly the torsion lock system), and as I remember, it was a "drum in hat" configuration - meaning that the service brake (sometimes called "foundation brake"... meaning the brakes that are used for actual braking in normal use) was a disc that had a little drum brake inside of it for the parking brake.

If I remember correctly, what is called "dynamic stopping" (using the parking brake to decelerate the vehicle in an emergency...) was NOT required until recently. Prior to this, parking brakes WERE NOT "emergency brakes"... all they were designed to do was hold the vehicle on a hill while parked.

I think that the Federal standard for brakes was changed to require dynamic stopping using the parking brake fairly recently. If so, then the "drum in hat" configuration would most likely not be adequate to stop the vehicle in a reasonable amount of time... which would then either point to a system that used the foundation brakes (the disc in the case of the GMT-800), or a switch to a drum brake to give enough swept area to handle the dynamic stopping portion of the Federal requirements and save some $$$. Drum brakes have massive swept areas compared to most discs.

Honestly, even in a truck, disc brakes on the rear are overkill. Drums work just fine.

GMT-800 is a foot brake anyway. Executing a dynamic stop with a foot brake is kind of tough, but can be done. Hand brakes make this a lot easier, but then you need a larger braking system because a hand brake can't generally supply the force and travel on the cable system that a foot brake can.

The trick with a foot brake is to hold the parking brake in the released position at the release lever while applying the parking brake. Sometimes the packaging of the release lever makes that hard to do.

It's damned near impossible to do it with a "push to release" parking brake.

 

For people who need to save $200 on a new car, the cars in that segment have most of those things as options. Although we know when you start making so many different wire couplings, or lack thereof, the price goes up all around. People don't think about that, they would rather save $200 on their car, then for everyone to save $300.

 

LOL, are people really supposed to consider the good of the auto industry when ordering option packages?

The thing that bugs me on most cars today - domestics in particular - is that you often can't just get one option. Take the Impala SS for instance. In order to get the bigger engine, you have to pony up for leather seats, 17" wheels, and the "premium sounds system." This brings the MSRP up to 29,215 base. Thus, if your someone who prioritizes a powerful V6 in your family sedan, you can get a 240 hp Accord for much cheaper because you don't have to buy a ton of crap with it. Of course, we all know that incentives and such bring the price down significantly, but does the average customer consider that when they're comparing models on the internet? It just seems sill to me to bundle completely unrelated options together. I for Buicks and Chevy's, and Saturns, the engine should just be another option and all of them should be interchangable (Pontiac and Cadilac are different as performance is a big theme for both brands). I know this makes it more difficult to manufacture, but tough noogies - the competition is doing it.

 

Is that true? Another reason GM blows bawlz.

 

That's a good point.

There are certain features in a car that become VERY inexpensive when utilized in volume, or piggy-back off of some other thingy that's already in the car.

For instance, outside temperature readouts inside the car.

Follow me for a second...

Modern vehicle engines need to know the temperature of the intake charge to make allowances for it in the fuel and spark tables. Our beloved LS1's have a intake temperature sensor installed in the lid.

Given a little software-based mathematical magic associated with any differences between the ambient temperature and some heating of the intake charge, you basically get that one for free. No extra sensor is needed, given a sharp brain handling the math. All you have to pay for is somewhere to display the information.

Heck, even if you're 2-4 degrees off, who cares? Is 91 degrees really all THAT different from 94 degrees? NO.

Here's another one...

A wheel with a given diameter will travel "X" distance. Since the powertrain knows that at 60mph in 4th gear it SHOULD be rotating a given number of times in a given time period. Now, almost all vehicles on the road have 4-channel ABS, and ABS requires a wheel-speed sensor (basically a Hall-effect sensor and then a reluctor ring with the poles arranged 360 degrees around an axle). All I have to do is count the number of revolutions of the wheel speed sensor, compare it to what I should be getting at a given speed for a given period of time and...

***POOF!***

I've got a basically free tire-inflation monitor without having to have an actual pressure sensor inside the tire itself.

Pretty damned cool, eh?

I've got a patent clearing shortly... well, more correctly, my EMPLOYER has a patent clearing shortly... that turns any cable system with a conductive core wire and an electrically isolated coil of conductive wire around it (all parking brake cables are built this way...) into a force sensor.

That one is basically free too, as long as you send the information to the body or powertrain controller and have them figure out what to do with it.

 

I will just say that we picked up one of the few stripped down GMC Sierra's that we could find brand new for less than the price of 60,000+ mile used ones. It deer hunts, and hauls mulch just as well as one with leather and Onstar.

 

As a customer, I want to build things a la carte. Sometimes I know more than the manufacturer does, such as when GM refuses to let a buyer order the G80 limited-slip option when the snowplow option is selected on a K2500HD (I think that problem has since been corrected, but there's always examples). Sometimes I just want a bare-bones vehicle. Sometimes, I want something in-between, and don't feel like plunking down $2000+ for a "convienence package".

As an engineer, I really wish everyone would settle on one trim level. The complexity that options drive in the supplied-component world is just mind-boggling. Car buyers end up paying a lot of money in the end so that people can choose between three different steering-wheel cover materials.

In the end, there's got to be some compromise between the two extremes, and I'm more than happy to let the car companies decide what's best. Keep in mind that there's some components that just don't get any cheaper with increasing volume. Some operations like leather wrapping are done by hand, regardless of volume (it'd simply be too expensive to automate the process at any realistic volume), so increased volume doesn't lead to lower costs. Other components have cost structures that are dominated by material or energy costs, such that there's no way to cut costs simply by cranking out more of them. Mr. Jimbo wouldn't understand that, however.

PacerX, I'd love to see that patent when it clears USPTO Like any proper engineer, I'm trying to think of all the different ways that could be done, and I'm very interested in the one you settled on. That being said, I've got little idea where I'd ever apply the concept (I'm involved with getting rid of such cables, rather than doing more with them).

 

I don't think the stripper cars should go, for pretty much the same reasons as everyone else who posted in my favor have listed. I would love to pick up a ls1 z28 1le stripper; I think it reeks of raw bad-assness, in a performance sort of way. I hope the new Camaros have a stipper version, because popular or not, people will still buy it, and it helps that affordable performance image.

I didn't have any idea the Solstice and Sky could be ordered with no options. Thats pretty sweet. Save alot of money on the frivalous stuff, and check off the performance boxes.

 

My parents '01 Impala was a non ABS car. But I never knew it until replacing a rotor or hub (memory loss).

That thing was an awesome stopper too! But I live in no-snow country too though..

 

This subject gets beat to death, so to speak within the Automobile Manufacturing community each year.

First......the plant would like to build all cars exactly the same.....lower costs and higher quality..........very simple. There's one problem......the CUSTOMER (I'm be facetious when I say it's a problem......) The Marketing Division, on the other hand, wants 150 million build combinations ...........that can be a problem.

The reality is that the more options you offer as free-flow, the higher the costs go. For instance.....it costs substantially more to design two window innnards......one for crank and one for power........further, there is virtually no weight savings anymore.........and exactly how many cars will you sell with crank windows? Further, if you don't package the power windows with power locks and power mirrors, it requires different wiring harnesses.......

(segue to 'battle story'.......).......when we developed the traction control system on the V6 Camaro/Firebird, the package came back that you had to also order fog lamps..............I went berserk (as I am wont to do on too many occassions......).....and yelled "Why???? so the Car can SEE the ice first????????????????"

........there was some silence and our chief engineer......quietly explained to me that it requires the heavier wiring harness that includes the fog lamps.

Good point.............BUT........how much more for that heavier harness? ( I was shocked at the cost, by the way.....) We finally decided to increase the price of the traction control to include the costs of the heavier harness with a male dummy plug put in the fog lamp outlet........

Once again I digress (It's almost 3am.......)

I want to say that the 1997 Camaro had over 15 million build combinations......sorry, but I think that's a bit much. Yes, I love the idea of ordering a 'one-off' car.......but I also know that dealers then order cars that sit and sit and sit because they don't have a particular option.......so......we went thru the option packages.........looked at order rates.......and (and this is important) we looked at the SOLD ORDER option ordering rates.......and simplified the order process by packaging options.

Now....to the customer who would want to order a new Camaro with radio delete.air delete.heater delete........we're not ever gonna make you happy.....sorry about that......but it's a different world than it was in 1969....both in terms of economics......and also in terms of technology.

Hope that helps to understand why options are packaged........

(and if not, ask me earlier in the evening!!!

 

but not style from what i hear.

 

Inductance.

A coil around a conductive core is an inductor... as long as you apply an electrical signal to it.

One day I just kinda mumbled to myself:

"Damn, that cable there sure looks like an inductor."

And then it took about 3 years to realize that if you hit it with an electrical signal it IS an inductor.

Then it took about another year to realize that due to the fact that the cable changes shape under load, it might be a variable inductor.

When you pull on an armored cable like a parking brake cable, a couple of things happen:

1) It tries to straighten out, and the conduit changes in length (compresses).

2) The coil of steel in the conduit increases in diameter, like a coil spring being compressed... the diameter increases.

Because of #2 in particular, now your inductor is behaving differently when under tension (one of the considerations for inductor design is the distance between the core and the coil). The change is predictable within certain limits, and there ya have it.

All you do is measure change in inductance through any number of means. I prefer "pinging" the inductor with a square wave off of the controller clock - it saves on power, and the signal is already present - and measuring the change in the "ping" after passed through the inductor as part of an itty bitty little oscillator circuit can be done with a counter... and counters are cheap...

The company has pretty much decided against using it for anything. They don't see a market within their core business. Personally, I think there's a market for sensing tensile force in a cable - particularly in things like cranes or tall structure stabilization during construction... maybe even bridges...

Whew... talk about a thread hi-jacking. Sorry. I just think it's pretty darned cool.

 

No you're not....

My job would be MUCH easier if I didn't have customers to deal with. Or maybe it's managers? I can't remember....

 

Let's talk about roofracks.

 

Well...if we're gonna hijack a thread.....

What's you're beef with roof racks?