Cascade Failures – There comes a time…

[Bryan]

Good day, all!

Due to my recent experiences with a 1998 Ford Ranger XLT with the 3 liter 6 cylinder engine, I’m rapidly coming to the likely unpopular opinion that there comes a point in time where it’s inadvisable to do -ANY- repairs on a vehicle.

This all started with an intake plenum that burst when trying to drive my new acquisition home. The very first repair was an intake job, replacing the upper and lower control arms (those ball joints were AWFUL!), drain and fill on the trans, and an oil change.

Typical maintenance stuff, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until the head gasket blew out. Took it to a mechanic (since I lacked the time, confidence, and equipment to do a head job). There was quite the discussion on this forum about that… the mechanic dumped stop-leak in the coolant system much to my (and everyone else’s!) dismay.

Now here is where things take a turn for the worse and heads south very rapidly. It wasn’t but a month after the head gasket going bad that numerous other parts started to fail. I took it to a different mechanic and he confirmed my worst fears:

1) Leaking coolant from behind the timing cover.
2) Rear main seals failing.
3) Front pinion seal and bearing failing (On the output shaft of the trans to the driveshaft).
4) Front universal joint failing
5) Rear universal joint failing
6) Rear pinion seal and bearing almost gone ( can lift the driveshaft and WATCH the pinion rise!)
7) Rear differential ring and pinion gear worn, in need of replacement. Normally, you’re supposed to have like .020 of an inch slop there.. I had over 3/4 of an inch rotation with the truck in neutral and the e-brake applied.

Needless to say, the repair bill was going to be QUITE high to get this done.. and there was no guarantee that something ELSE would jump on the ‘Replace me next!’ bandwagon. To my eyes and in my opinion, this truck was in Cascade Failure mode and something had to be done.

That truck is gone now, and an almost literally new Ranger has taken it’s place (2011 Ranger, with only 4800 on the clock! 6 cylinder 4.0 liter engine with a 5 speed stick!).

But here is my question to you all: Is it indeed possible for parts to wear together so evenly and so perfectly meshed that it becomes inadvisable to repair? If you swap in a part that’s so far out from the others it’s connected to, could that not then put increased stress on the elder part and cause IT to fail next… all the way on down the line?

Is it possible that there comes a point in the life of a vehicle where you simply SHOULD NOT effect any repair out of the (to me, at least at the moment..) valid concern that it will put the vehicle in question into a Cascade Failure sequence?

What do you all think?

-Hinoki

PS: I’m glad I have the new truck! Driving it even ONE DAY showed me just how far out of spec the old one was. Night and day difference, it is!

Topic

[Walter Cheryba]

Hello Hinoki,
You have experienced something I have preached for YEARS! Many manufacturers design their vehicles with planned cascading obsolescence. In my experience FORD is number-1 in this category, and Nissan is number-2. Most of the other manufacturers (in my opinion) design a major component failure into the life of the vehicle where an owner looks at the cost of the repair vs the value of the car and simply says forget it. I’ve experienced a lot of unfinished diagnostic stories because owners have simply walked away. The cost was not worth it to them. The automakers know that automotive DIY’ers are too small a percentage to worry about yet we are not forgotten. They continue to raise the prices of parts to us that have been sitting on the shelf for years. In the case of FORD they simply “obsolete” the part after restricting its production by the aftermarket through patents etc. Nice trick! Sarcasm and bitterness come with reality-it is the bonus package! Don’t keep that “new” Ranger too long or you’ll be back at square one. Think about this, why are lease terms so short, some of it is residual resale value, that’s bean counting. Some of it is because the manufacturer knows when the cascade or the major component failure sequence begins. Conspiracy theory thinking? I’ve been so accused. Enough!

[Jameson]

sunset is right. I have seen this many times on fords and nissan. In fact I had a Nissan Altima in the failure mode. And the customer declined all the reapirs, and asked for advise on what to buy. This is a regular customer too. So I told her, a Honda or Toyota.

You made the right decision by walking away from it, altough you probably gained some experience from it, so that is always good.

[Steve]

I agree with the “Cascading Failure” thing. Seems that’s been my experience over the years. Some of it probably my fault for letting little things signs & symptoms go until they can’t be put off any longer. But I still think the engineers try to make today’s cars pretty much fail-proof for 100,000 miles or so and don’t car much after that point. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but i still think the engineers actually design some parts to fail after a certain point. After all, the auto industry survives by people buying NEW cars/trucks. They don’t make squat if we try to make them last 200,000 or 300,000 miles.

[Author]

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