Sunday 13 May 2012

Car part design = WTF

I spent a good part of today helping a friend fix the central locking on his car. It turned out to be a dry joint on a PCB in the locking module itself. Because of this the system though the door was open all the time and because of that it refused to operate the central locking for the rest of the car, cue a long walk around to the passenger side everything he came to lock up.

The actual repair took about 30 seconds and a bit of Google time researching the issue however we spent almost half a day getting at the locking mechanism, removing trim panels, wrestling with wiring looms. And when we finally liberated the lock it was hard to tell which end was which. It looked as if it was a space ship or had been designed by genetic algorithms or a room full of monkeys, I could simply not imagine any logic that would lead to this design. I really wonder how they come up with them. Are they given a space in which they must force a part like this? Is it form following function? Is it design for manufacture? I just don't know.

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