Inexplicable Engineering Decisions

[BillyHW]

If you're an engineer and want to come up on stage so the rest of us can throw tomatoes at you, that would be great.

If you're an engineer and you want to 'splain to me these crazy engineering decision, I'm all ears.

Does anybody have any other crazy engineering decisions to add?

1. Why the heck is the fuel pump and fuel filter in the gas tank so that you have to take apart the gas tank to get at them?

2. Why is there no dipstick on the automatic transmissions?

Sponsored

 

[AZCrawl]

#2 - Because they are sealed transmissions nowadays, you don't need to service them for 100k miles.

 

[BillyHW]

#2 - Because they are sealed transmissions nowadays, you don't need to service them for 100k miles.

100k, that's practically infinity!

 

[bbb_fatboy]

1. Why the heck is the fuel pump and fuel filter in the gas tank so that you have to take apart the gas tank to get at them?


Not certain about the Wrangler redesign, but other installations of the fuel pump within the fuel tank are for pump cooling purposes. It's common on high performance motorcycles.

 

[AlexK]

Also because electric fuel pumps are incredibly noisy and having them immersed in a tank of fuel keeps them quiet as well cool.

 

[BillyHW]

Cars managed to run just fine with serviceable pumps and filters. Issues of cooling and noise could have been addressed while still making things serviceable.

 

[Nate]

A fuel pump is not a “serviceable” item that requires maintenance.... while yes it does have a mesh filter screen to keep debris out of the pump, it’s not the same as the “in-line” filters that you service to keep smaller debris out of the injectors. It’s a two stage system of filtration.

As already stated it’s been done this way for a long time now. Even in manufacturing we submerge our pumps in the coolant tanks so they prime, cool and pump efficiently.

 

[roaniecowpony]

Fuel pumps have been in the tanks of most U.S. vehicles for a long time. Maybe as long as electronic fuel injection has been common on these vehicles. My 99 GMC had it in the tank. $1000 for a replacement at the dealer. It hurt my wallet when it went out on the road. As someone noted: it's for the cooling of the pump.

To me, the "Inexplicable Engineering Decision" I'm perplexed about is the decision to have our chassis hand welded. With robots today, this is a perfect and very prevalent use of robots in auto manufacturing today. Labor cost is reduced with robots, time to perform the tasks, and quality consistency are all improved greatly. FCA must be paying labor next to nothing for it to be competitive with robot welding.

 

[jruss]

If you're an engineer and want to come up on stage so the rest of us can throw tomatoes at you, that would be great.

If you're an engineer and you want to 'splain to me these crazy engineering decision, I'm all ears.

Does anybody have any other crazy engineering decisions to add?

1. Why the heck is the fuel pump and fuel filter in the gas tank so that you have to take apart the gas tank to get at them?

2. Why is there no dipstick on the automatic transmissions?

The fuel pump, as mentioned before, hs been found in the tank since 90’s. Not uncommon.

There is no dipstick on the transmission for the same reason that there are no grease fittings on a modern vehicle. Because materials, technology and clearance are better and owners, operators and users of these things are much much worse.
I should add that I haven’t actually put forth the effort to look and see whether or not there is a tranny dipstick...fiat is on the hook for that for 34 more months.

 

[Torero]

If you're an engineer and want to come up on stage so the rest of us can throw tomatoes at you, that would be great.

If you're an engineer and you want to 'splain to me these crazy engineering decision, I'm all ears.

Does anybody have any other crazy engineering decisions to add?

1. Why the heck is the fuel pump and fuel filter in the gas tank so that you have to take apart the gas tank to get at them?

2. Why is there no dipstick on the automatic transmissions?

#1 all the reasons above plus a very important one. Changing from carburetor to fuel injectors the fuel pressure required went way up. Therefore a much stronger, hot, noisier pump came up. A big plus of having the pump in the tank with highly pressurized system is that you don’t need to “prime” the pump. If you ever run out of fuel with the pump outside the tank you’ll live the nightmares we lived with old diesels when run out of fuel. Air would get in the system and it was hell. Carburetors didn’t care about air. A fuel injector does. This is getting too deep. Bla bla. Lol

Sponsored