Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[tom66]

The owner's manual for my 2021 CR-V hybrid is pretty clear about the possibility of "creeping" if you take your foot off of the brake pedal. It really feels like the car has a standard gasoline engine and automatic transmission.

Thing is, my other cars have manual transmissions, so this whole "brake" thing is alien to me.

My PHEV creeps under pure EV mode.  It will stop if you press the brake, but if you just tap the accelerator it will continue to creep.

I don't mind creep mode, even for an EV, it makes it much easier to drive at low speeds because modulating a brake to slow down gives you more control than alternating between an accelerator and a brake.  You just have to make sure you've switched "modes" in your mind at low speeds.

[IDEngineer]

...modulating a brake to slow down gives you more control than alternating between an accelerator and a brake...

Good manual transmission drivers don't have to switch between the accelerator and the brake. I just came back from a fun ~2 hour drive to get lunch and even in the twisties I hardly touched the brake pedal. Shift to keep the engine in its responsive midband range and you can do everything but a full stop by modulating just the accelerator pedal. Look up "leading and lagging throttle".

EDIT: I realized that "throttle lag" has a different meaning to many people - implying "slow response time" - than what I meant above. To be clear: In a given gear at a given speed, there is a throttle point where the engine is perfectly sync'd and is neither putting energy into the drivetrain nor bleeding energy out of it. If you back off a bit more, the engine will start slowing down the car and that's called a "lagging throttle". Conversely, if you push into the throttle a bit more, the engine will start speeding up the car and that's called a "leading throttle". If the engine is in its midrange (usually 3-5K RPM) it can have sufficiently fast response that you don't have to use the brakes, so your foot never leaves the one pedal. Another alternative is heel-toe but that's mostly for shifting, not ongoing driving.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I'm talking about conventional gasoline powered vehicles that automatically stop the engine when you stop the car. They are NOT as seamless as a hybrid because they lack the large battery and electric motor that can get the car moving, they just have a conventional engine and starter motor so there is a lag as the engine starts up.

I'll second this. Earlier in this thread I joined the complaints about these auto-stop engines, and I too meant traditional ICE engines that behave this way. We now have a brand new hybrid vehicle (our first) which obviously stop-starts its engine frequently and I will concede it manages that cycle much, much better for all the reasons already described above.

I still come back to wondering why we don't have after-market drop-in replacement engine management controllers. I understand the use case is low and what not, but if they can churn out fake i-phones, there should be a market for people annoyed with the factory hardware of their cars. Or is that proportion of car owners way down in the noise?

[james_s]

I'm talking about conventional gasoline powered vehicles that automatically stop the engine when you stop the car. They are NOT as seamless as a hybrid because they lack the large battery and electric motor that can get the car moving, they just have a conventional engine and starter motor so there is a lag as the engine starts up.

I'll second this. Earlier in this thread I joined the complaints about these auto-stop engines, and I too meant traditional ICE engines that behave this way. We now have a brand new hybrid vehicle (our first) which obviously stop-starts its engine frequently and I will concede it manages that cycle much, much better for all the reasons already described above.

I still come back to wondering why we don't have after-market drop-in replacement engine management controllers. I understand the use case is low and what not, but if they can churn out fake i-phones, there should be a market for people annoyed with the factory hardware of their cars. Or is that proportion of car owners way down in the noise?

We do, kind of, I've been running Megasquirt in one of my cars more than a decade now. It's not really "drop in" though.  A large part of the reason such things don't exist are the fact that the vast majority of people have no interest in replacing their engine management, and a larger issue is that at least in the USA they are illegal for street vehicles because it is considered tampering with the emissions control devices. I would guess that at least 98% of cars go from the showroom to the scrapyard with nothing more than a bumper sticker or seat cover in the way of modifications.

[james_s]

...modulating a brake to slow down gives you more control than alternating between an accelerator and a brake...

Good manual transmission drivers don't have to switch between the accelerator and the brake. I just came back from a fun ~2 hour drive to get lunch and even in the twisties I hardly touched the brake pedal. Shift to keep the engine in its responsive midband range and you can do everything but a full stop by modulating just the accelerator pedal. Look up "leading and lagging throttle".

I think he's talking about creeping, which is crawling around at <5mph such as in a parking lot. It's an issue for manual cars too since I sometimes find myself wanting to go slower than the car goes in 1st gear at idle.

[IDEngineer]

...at least in the USA they are illegal for street vehicles because it is considered tampering with the emissions control devices...

[California has entered the chat]

This is a huge problem for car enthusiasts. Engine Control Units (ECU's) are now serialized with the VIN of the vehicle, and checksummed with that VIN. When your friendly neighborhood DMV does your annual inspection and plugs into your OBD-2 connector, their device automatically confirms those things. If you're running a "tune" in your ECU, it will come up on their device and you don't pass inspection.

I'm told the process for applying and getting approval for modifications is so expensive and onerous that very few projects can justify it. So they don't. And thus your freedom of choice is restricted - again.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm all for pollution reduction. But they should simply measure actual noxious output at the exhaust pipe (like they used to, with those sniffer things they shoved up the exhaust pipe at the inspection stations). What a novel concept: Actually measure what you care about! If the car meets its standards, it passes - no matter how it got there. Instead, California (and others?) demand that you leave things utterly untouched.

Fortunately, lots of more reasonable states don't care about serialized ECU's and such. They either measure the actual output, or don't inspect at all. It shouldn't surprise anyone that lots of car enthusiasts are moving out of states like California and into states like Idaho and Tennessee (just the first two I can think of). I live in Idaho and we are free to experiment with ECU's to our heart's content.

Here's an interesting question: What if you chose to install an electric drivetrain in an ICE car? Engineers have done this as home projects. In a reasonable world it would "pass" emissions since it doesn't have any. But something tells me California would cut off their nose to spite their face and find fault with you "tampering" with the vehicle. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[james_s]

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm all for pollution reduction. But they should simply measure actual noxious output at the exhaust pipe (like they used to, with those sniffer things they shoved up the exhaust pipe at the inspection stations). What a novel concept: Actually measure what you care about! If the car meets its standards, it passes - no matter how it got there. Instead, California (and others?) demand that you leave things utterly untouched.

Fortunately, lots of more reasonable states don't care about serialized ECU's and such. They either measure the actual output, or don't inspect at all. It shouldn't surprise anyone that lots of car enthusiasts are moving out of states like California and into states like Idaho and Tennessee (just the first two I can think of). I live in Idaho and we are free to experiment with ECU's to our heart's content.

At least here in WA they finally shut down all the emissions testing and inspections. Modern cars burn so clean that there was no point, the cost of running all the inspection sites and all the fuel wasted on cars idling away in line at the test stations more than offset any environmental benefit from the small percentage of cars that failed the test. There are just not enough older/modified cars on the road anymore to matter.

[rsjsouza]

I still come back to wondering why we don't have after-market drop-in replacement engine management controllers. I understand the use case is low and what not, but if they can churn out fake i-phones, there should be a market for people annoyed with the factory hardware of their cars. Or is that proportion of car owners way down in the noise?

There is indeed a market for people annoyed by this. 

https://www.thedrive.com/news/43394/worlds-first-v8-swapped-tesla-model-s-is-officially-on-the-road



(sorry, couldn't resist)

[IDEngineer]

At least here in WA they finally shut down all the emissions testing and inspections.

Yep, we were still living in Spokane when that happened. I was frankly surprised since drivers were required to PAY at the state-operated inspection sites, so presumably they were (mostly?) self funding. It's a rare net-zero bureaucracy that goes away like that.

However, I'd say you're at risk for WA State getting the whole serialized ECU nonsense. It was my experience while living in WA State that Olympia desperately wanted to be "North California", in many cases simply duplicating whatever CA did. I vaguely recall one state legislator openly stating that, something like "We'll wait to see what California decides to do, and follow their example". If that's the attitude, WA residents could perhaps save a bunch of state taxes by just making it formal and letting Sacramento run Olympia via Zoom.

[james_s]

Yep, we were still living in Spokane when that happened. I was frankly surprised since drivers were required to PAY at the state-operated inspection sites, so presumably they were (mostly?) self funding. It's a rare net-zero bureaucracy that goes away like that.

However, I'd say you're at risk for WA State getting the whole serialized ECU nonsense. It was my experience while living in WA State that Olympia desperately wanted to be "North California", in many cases simply duplicating whatever CA did. I vaguely recall one state legislator openly stating that, something like "We'll wait to see what California decides to do, and follow their example". If that's the attitude, WA residents could perhaps save a bunch of state taxes by just making it formal and letting Sacramento run Olympia via Zoom.

Well I'll keep my classic cars on the road for as long as I possibly can, then if I ever buy something newish it'll be an EV so I won't care. Any ICE powered car I ever own will be old enough to not have such nonsense.

[IDEngineer]

I wonder if CA respects the federal "after 25 years anything goes" rule. The feds are quite strict about importing non-production foreign vehicles but there's an exemption if it's 25+ years old. CA likes to go its own way, so who knows.

[TimFox]

A long-standing pet peeve.  I just got back from my first road trip in a while, and was reminded about the excessive noise made by hotel/motel heating/air-conditioning units.
HVAC is a "mature technology"--surely there is some way to make a unit that can be mounted only a few meters from ones bed and not keep the victim awake during a hot or cold night.

[james_s]

They exist. Inverter drive mini split systems are extremely quiet, but they're expensive.

[IDEngineer]

Some of the larger hotels also use centralized HVAC and control the vents into each room. Those seem to be in tall, recently built structures as opposed to the "every room is an island" motel-like places that *I* tend to frequent (examples: Quality Inn, Courtyard).

[TimFox]

Yeah, my last trip was in a fairly-new Courtyard, which was otherwise perfectly comfortable.
When I had frequent business in Las Vegas (in the dull and boring area south of the airport), I always stayed at a nearby Courtyard.
I would leave the air conditioner running full-blast during the day (while at work), and let the room warm up with the unit off so I could sleep at night.
The problem seems to be that 240 V AC is easier to get to each room than any kind of pipe or duct from a central facility.
I do remember, however, household window air conditioners that were not as loud as the wall-mounted units typically found in this class of hotel building.

[Circlotron]

A long-standing pet peeve.  I just got back from my first road trip in a while, and was reminded about the excessive noise made by hotel/motel heating/air-conditioning units.

About ten years ago we stayed in a motel for several nights. The outdoor part of the split system A/C was on the roof and it must have been inverter driven because it never stayed at a constant speed. The rpm would gradually glide down over about 30 seconds and here and there it would hit a resonance with either the roof structure or the air volume and room dimensions and pretend to be a subwoofer. It sounded like a large truck in the distance using it's exhaust brake coming down a long hill. So glad to get out of there.

[Ed.Kloonk]

A long-standing pet peeve.  I just got back from my first road trip in a while, and was reminded about the excessive noise made by hotel/motel heating/air-conditioning units.

About ten years ago we stayed in a motel for several nights. The outdoor part of the split system A/C was on the roof and it must have been inverter driven because it never stayed at a constant speed. The rpm would gradually glide down over about 30 seconds and here and there it would hit a resonance with either the roof structure or the air volume and room dimensions and pretend to be a subwoofer. It sounded like a large truck in the distance using it's exhaust brake coming down a long hill. So glad to get out of there.

The blokes should use rubber mounts. Sometimes on older systems outside tho, the rubber feet can deteriorate. One I've seen the blower fan motor in the condenser had a crook bearing. That was an interesting noise. And a bonus light show at night too, apparently.

[mansaxel]

Yeah, my last trip was in a fairly-new Courtyard, which was otherwise perfectly comfortable.
When I had frequent business in Las Vegas (in the dull and boring area south of the airport), I always stayed at a nearby Courtyard.

There's a good hotel on the strip, the Best Western Plus Casino Royale. 3 or 4 stories, access directly from car park to rooms, very easy to get in and out without passing slot machines, close to the monorail, and every room with a coffee maker and a fridge. AC central and quiet. I make a point of staying there when being forced to Vegas. 

Also, it does not smell of moldy carpet with cigarette smoke. Which is my pet peeve of the day.

[SeanB]

AC fan motors being BLDC or PSC motors really depends on manufacturer. Daiken has been BLDC since at least 1980 for pretty much the entire range, putting a 24VDC power supply into the indoor unit to operate it, but other manufacturers have stayed with the motor they had, PSC. The motors though all are nearly identical in dimensions and shaft, plus all have compliant rubber mountings, along with the cylinder blower having compliant rubber bonding both sides for the drive and non drive end, and almost all use the same styles of NDE bearing, a sintered oilite bush or a self lubricating nylon bush in rubber. Low noise, and low vibration as long as it is clean. Speed control is generally noise free on both, the BLDC has speed control with a 0-5V input from the controller, and the PSC has triac speed control on the board, or has a few tappings and optically controlled triacs or small relays to give 3 or 4 speeds. Pretty much the only noise is the air flowing, and for the outdoor units almost all, except for the more expensive inverter types, the fan motor is a PSC motor with at most 2 speeds, simply because it is rugged and durable in extremes of temperature.

The hotel AC units that are noisy I will say are all window wall boxes, where the biggest problem is the fan motor has to drive both fans, and has no rubber noise damping at all, and is on a resonant steel plate, with the compressor being on rubber, but with time the rubber goes hard, as it is running hot all the time. As well service is never done, they might pull the filter out and clean it, but unless you pull the entire unit, take it outside and wash it down with a hose, it will clog up with time, especially as they use the condensor coil to evaporate the water pulled out from the evaporator, so as to avoid having a drain connection.

You used to get the drain kit with the units, but they removed it, along with the hole in the pan, so as to save the cost of putting in the drain, which also means the compressor sits in water, and the fan slings it into the condenser coil ,rotting it from the inside out, so after 5 years, when the compressor warranty is up, you need to replace the unit if you actually want cooling, as the fins are all rotted away on the inner layer, and clogging up the outer.

Split units come with drains for both indoor and outdoor, as the heat pump versions need it, and thus you get it for both, as the only difference between them manufacturing wise is the reversing valve and the extra wire in the cord kit, and in most cases you just get the heat pump version anyway, for the same price. Do not need the heat pump simply take the remote, and change the option bit using the remote, to the non heat pump version, and get cooling only. Noisy units are generally not serviced, and the drain pan is pretty easy to remove off the indoor unit, and then wash it, blow out the drain line, and then wash off the coil with coil cleaning detergent (not acid or alkali coil cleaner, neutral so you do not rot it), pull the drum fan out and wash it clean, and wash the outer housing along with the filters. One hour job to strip, wash and reinstall, and only a dozen screws typically to remove for the lot.

[Bassman59]

A long-standing pet peeve.  I just got back from my first road trip in a while, and was reminded about the excessive noise made by hotel/motel heating/air-conditioning units.
HVAC is a "mature technology"--surely there is some way to make a unit that can be mounted only a few meters from ones bed and not keep the victim awake during a hot or cold night.

oh good god this.

[Bassman59]

...modulating a brake to slow down gives you more control than alternating between an accelerator and a brake...

Good manual transmission drivers don't have to switch between the accelerator and the brake. I just came back from a fun ~2 hour drive to get lunch and even in the twisties I hardly touched the brake pedal. Shift to keep the engine in its responsive midband range and you can do everything but a full stop by modulating just the accelerator pedal. Look up "leading and lagging throttle".

Yep, this was my point. My little Honda S2000, now 17 years old and not quite at 100,000 miles, is on the original brakes. It's also on the original clutch.

Since most drivers have no idea about manual transmissions, they are surprised to the point of almost rear-ending me when I downshift to decelerate when coming to a stoplight. They can't figure out that I'm actually slowing down even though the brake light isn't on. I have to heel-and-toe when doing this just to hit the brake pedal enough to let the tailgater behind me know I'm slowing down.

[free_electron]

the iconification of software. Case in point : the "hamburger" menu.
I literally spend 5 minutes figuring out what the hell the "hamburger" menu is. Somebody was explaining something to me and said , just click the hamburger menu ... the what ? yeah, the icon that looks like a hamburger . so i look aroudn for something brownish , bulging on top maybe a green and red strip (lettuce tomato) .. nothing.. i gave up had to ask : where do you see this ?
top left. the three horizontal lines.

WHAT ARTCLOWN HAS INVENTED THAT ? AND WHY CALL IT HAMBURGER MENU ?

This is ridiculous. you go and explain somebody in china to click the hamburger menu ...

[Zeyneb]

the iconification of software. Case in point : the "hamburger" menu.
I literally spend 5 minutes figuring out what the hell the "hamburger" menu is. Somebody was explaining something to me and said , just click the hamburger menu ... the what ? yeah, the icon that looks like a hamburger . so i look aroudn for something brownish , bulging on top maybe a green and red strip (lettuce tomato) .. nothing.. i gave up had to ask : where do you see this ?
top left. the three horizontal lines.

WHAT ARTCLOWN HAS INVENTED THAT ? AND WHY CALL IT HAMBURGER MENU ?

This is ridiculous. you go and explain somebody in china to click the hamburger menu ...

Yeah man, totally agree. not just software also product packaging, and "instructions" like for a car fuel filter installation. Usually I can't figure out what they mean. Ask another person and they have no clue either. Although English is not my native language I would very much prefer that over those ridiculous icons and pictures.

[james_s]

The hamburger menu has never really grown on me, although I do recognize that many things are named in a somewhat abstract fashion and it wouldn't make much sense to have a menu that literally looks like a hamburger. Once you know what that thing is called, you will know what it is the next time somebody mentions it, none of us are born innately knowing what every word means, we have to learn them as we go along.

Back to pet peeves, I'm too lazy to look and see if it has been mentioned already but I absolutely cannot stand people who agree to plans and then bail out at the last moment. I've gradually purged most of these flakes from my life but new ones pop up all the time. We make plans for some event, they agree to do some part of it like driving one of the cars and picking up someone else, etc and then right up at the last minute when it's too late to invite someone else they text saying they can't make it because of some lame excuse. My time is valuable, don't tell me you're gonna do something unless you're gonna do it come hell or high water. If there's a death in the family, you get seriously ill or some other legitimate excuse that's one thing, but many people are habitual flakes and I can't deal with that.

Another one that I cannot stand is impulsiveness. I have known multiple people who make major life decisions on a whim that shifts with the breeze. One day they're perfectly happy where they are, another day they're putting their house up for sale and moving somewhere else. Then they change their mind and they're going to stay, then they trade in their car seemingly out of the blue for another car, and so on. It drives me nuts, I don't like inconsistency.

[james_s]

Yep, this was my point. My little Honda S2000, now 17 years old and not quite at 100,000 miles, is on the original brakes. It's also on the original clutch.

Since most drivers have no idea about manual transmissions, they are surprised to the point of almost rear-ending me when I downshift to decelerate when coming to a stoplight. They can't figure out that I'm actually slowing down even though the brake light isn't on. I have to heel-and-toe when doing this just to hit the brake pedal enough to let the tailgater behind me know I'm slowing down.

I generally don't downshift unless it's something like a mountain pass where there is a risk of overheating the brakes. I remember discussing this decades ago and the conclusion was why put wear on the engine, gearbox syncrhos and clutch instead of the brakes? Brake pads are cheap, easily replaced consumables. Every other part of the drivetrain is more expensive and more effort to service. Engine braking would be perfectly sensible if it regenerated fuel back into the tank but it doesn't, it just exchanges wear of a cheap consumable for wear on expensive core components. On top of that there is the safety issue you bring up, slowing down substantially without the brake lights illuminating increases the risk of an accident. For the vast majority of typical driving it seems to offer very few advantages.