Perhaps it's uncommon, but that doesn't mean it should be that way. The cost of a replacement electronic throttle module is a big deal to me. A big deterrant to me ever considering a new Volvo for sure.
FWIW, rumour has it that the Volvo module (original design was farmed out to Fiat BTW) costs Volvo about $400. Add in dealer markup and the 2+ hours it costs to replace said module... ouch.
That's a $1200 out of pocket replacement in most states. Most will fail well within 50,000mi, and in 48 states the emissions equipment warranty is something like 25,000 mi. In California (where said warranty is 7/70), some dealers have claimed that the throttle module is not covered by the emissions equipment warranty (the EPA says otherwise).
IMO the lousy throttle module is absolutely something important to keep in mind when considering a new Volvo.
A system with a purely electronic sensor can be made to be much more reliable than a system using a mechanical linkage to... a purely electronic sensor.
It can, but so far they have not been made this reliable. The mechanical throttle valves are pretty darn durable and reliable. The electronic ones are not. The Volvo branded units (and I suppose most other designs out there) rely on physical contact (i.e. they're not using an inductive pickup). to measure the throttle position. They wear out, somtimes in well under 50,000miles of driving. In contrast, the mechanical valves rarely wear out.
There are two common types of throttle position sensors. Potentiometers and simple switches.
Generally the switches are used to determine if your accelerator pedal is at the idle or full-throttle position. When the idle contacts fail, you will usually see a high... perhaps erratic idle, but otherwise the car should run just fine.
With failed potentiometers, you do indeed run the risk of significant driveability problems. The potentiometer measures the throttle position with an infinite level of gradations. These are usually used to determine when you're accelerating so that the car can inject more fuel. For cars with hot film (as opposed to hot wire) air mass meteres, this is because the film, while more durable, doesn't react to changes in air flow as quickly. On cars that use MAP sensors, often times the changes in vacuum aren't significant enough to determine precisely how much fuel to inject... especially when accelerating. Usually unplugging the device will allow the car to be driven (at least for a short while).
With your electronic throttle module, you have no such failsafe. When the throttle module fails, you'll be lucky to even start the car. Similarly the TPS is usually under $100, while the electronic throttle module can cost upwards of $700.
Right. Most electronic throttles fail in a way that leaves the throttle in an essentially closed position (perhaps open enough for the engine to idle). Your car won't be driveable and the failure is indeed dangerous.
With Volvo's P2 cars (S80, S60, new V70, XC90) you actually had to take the car back to the dealer so they could install an updated component and reprogram the ECU to the tune of $1200 or so.
Sure, cable actuated throttles can stick.. but the electronic throttles are far more expensive to deal with (and generally far more troublesome).
It's interesting to see mention of the SF MUNI system in the article summary. You think the computerized control will suck? Wait until they implement it, it will suck beyond your wildest dreams.
A few years back San Francisco switched away from shoddy Boeing rail cars to shoddy Italian made and styled (Pinanfarina styled even) Breda cars. This isn't really of much interest or comparison to NY, except for one tidbit. SF planned to use an Alcatel provided control system.
While MUNI is an amazing example of government waste and incompetence (employees were only required to actually show up to their jobs starting a few years ago)... the Breda job just takes the cake.
The Alcatel system was entirely untested, the Breda cars were too long, the Alcatel system couldn't handle Breda and Boeing cars on the same track, etc, etc. Even now, where the previous manual system would have allowed 4+ car trains, the new computerized system limits them to, I think, 3 cars per train because of their length. More trains per minute, fewer people per minute. It's pretty absurd. Blame it on Breda for not building cars to spec (they were custom built for SF). Blame SF for continuing to buy these $3 mil cars despite the known problems. This is on top of the fact that the suspension on the Breda cars was originally deafening. You could hear the trains coming for at least 1/2 mile. The Italian build quality was just abysmal. Subpar welds, etc, etc.
That said, I like the electronic control for those nifty signs in the downtown stations that allow one to estimate when a train is coming. Also, check out nextmuni.com.
The transponders are also used in some of the busses to great effect. Sure that means you can track some of them online. More useful tho is the sign within the bus that will tell you the next stop. Very handy at night when you can't see what stop and the driver of the bus is too drunk to call out the stops.
Of course all this is great fun, and it's been about five years since the Breda cars were bought. Guess what I saw today? A stopped MUNI LRV (light rail vehicle). Well, not just one. About every car that was supposed to run on the L-Tarval line. That's right folks. MUNI cars dead on the tracks from 19th ave to 28th ave on Taraval St. Sometimes you just need the human touch.
6 megabit down/608 kilobit up ADSL, 8 static IPs, 80mb web/e-mail space, 5 mailboxen, Linux shell acct, two commercial (newscene and supernews) nntp accounts w/out monthly quotas, CGI, POP3 over SSL, IPv6 tunnels, mbone connectivity, access to procmail and SA on their mail server, and awesome tech support. $45/mo promo for 1yr. I'm happy. Current $45/mo promo is 3/418 ADSL (everything else is the same).
Regional ISPs rule!
Re:let's see them sup up...
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
Pfft, you don't need a V8 or a turbo to get reasonable gains from your engine.
First off, turbobricks is a huge waste of time. It is however a great way to get a bunch of useless information (normally aspirated engines need backpressure... uh.. yeah, right) and maybe even blow something up. Fun as long as it's not your car. The mailing list isn't nearly as bad, but it's still not that great of a resource.
Anyways, if you were looking for better acceleration, here are the mods I'd do:
Change to a different cam. The stock cam on a 1990 US-spec 240 was the M cam. It's good for low end torque, smooth idle, and passing emissions tests. There are any number of other options out there. Volvo offered many hotter cams (H and K grinds being the most radical at 136 and 140hp respectively in a B23E, the A and B cams would offer a more mild improvement). The Volvo cams are pretty old designs and will sacrifice more low end power than the alternatives. A common aftermarket cam is the VX or VX3 (Volvo V-grind cam intake profile, X cam exhaust profile, the VX3 has the exhaust stuff retarded 3 degrees). Not a bad choice at all. Unitek (and their resellers like OJ Rallye) sell various staged cams. The Phase 0 and Phase 1 cams would be appropriate for an otherwise unmodified engine. By itself, the VX3 cam would give you another 10-15hp and bring your car up to the level of a non-intercooled 240 turbo. The hotter cams will give your electronic idle control fits.
The next thing I'd do is put in a different transmission (if you've got an autobox). The AW72L is a nice fit. It's found in the 16 valve Volvos (940GLE/740GLE). It's got a lower 1st gear, a taller overdrive ratio, higher stall speed torque converter, and the TC will lockup at speed. Better off the line power, and better highway mileage. Or you could have someone rebuild the stock AW70 in your car with a higher stall speed torque converter for more off the line power. Or you could go for a manual transmission. The M46 and M47 (made after 81 or so) units found over here have very low 1st gears (4.x:1), and you'd get to shift your own gears.
Still want more power? Towards the end of the run, Volvo put better flowing heads in some non-US B203s. I think the casting number ended in 530 or 531.
If you wanted more power, you'd want to make it safe to rev the engine past the redline (and the hotter cams will really improve the top end power). Unfortunately the ECU will cut fuel at about 6000RPM. Otherwise you'd want to go about blueprinting the engine.
The last easy option would be to drop in a new rear end. It's a standard Dana 30 (in any live axle 200/700/900 car) rear axle, and you Volvo even used some pretty short gears (4.10:1 units were found in the 16 valves I think, as well as some of the late 70s 240s). This would make highway cruising a pain however.
There are plenty of ways to 'hack' the Volvo engines, they're great motors. However, the fuel injection systems were either too crude (K-Jetronic) or too proprietary (LH-Jetronic) to be of much use. The Motronic stuff used overseas can be chipped IIRC.
Geez. Verizon does do CDMA, as do Alltel and a bunch of smaller regional carriers.
At this point Cingular and AT&T are also a bit more fsck'd than VoiceStream as they provide both "straight up TDMA" (IS-136 I believe) and GSM service depending on which market you're in.
D'oh. Time to go for someone other than SBC for DSL access. I too am moving to an area that AT&T broadband doesn't serve (this was my first consideration since it was so cheap). So I'm toying with the idea of DSL.
SBC offers 1 dynamic IP address via PPPoE, their standard e-mail and web server quotas for about $50/mo.
Brand X (a highly rated local ISP) DSL service offers 4 static IP addresses, 80mb of whatever space (e-mail, web, ftp, etc), 1gb/mo of web traffic, and shell access for $58/mo. Hmm.
Go check out dslreports.com, there are better options.
P.S. I used PacBell (now SBC I suppose) dialup access previous ($22/mo) to this local ISP ($18/mo - same 80mb of space, shell, etc). PacBell had enough trouble keeping the dialup stuff working (random nameservers going down, authentication problems constantly, occasional upstream problems), I shudder to think how their DSL service is.
Bah. I happen to think that KDE is rather Linux-centric, however, I've tried to work around quite a bit of this. In a way I resent that, because in actuality, all of the base parts of KDE 1.x work quite nicely with FreeBSD. The things that break tend to be apps that other people write (and I don't care about, and apparently none of the other FreeBSDers out there do either). However with KDE 2.x, I'm running into quite a bit of trouble with some oddly undefined symbols. However, all in all, KDE isn't by nature as Linux centric as a lot of people think it is. Damnit Jim, help make it non linux centric.
Sure, many of these OSS developers do this in their spare time. By paying them for the development, you encourage them to keep on developing. It's that simple.
You can already run your app under Win32. Get an X server for it and there you go. Sure it sucks, but if you want better, maybe you should send a donation along the lines of $1200 to the developers of the better product.
No, Linux is the way it is because of a bunch of zealots who started supporting the only "free" (non costing money) Unixish environment out there. If it had been released under something less restrictive than the GPL chances are it would be as popular, but then again we'll never know so don't spout off unfounded things like that.
Yeah and what happens to the Trolls? They go out of business and find jobs doing something non OSS related. Yeah that benefits us all in a big way, not. Consider how much Motif costs, and then consider that TT is charging $1200 or so per developer, not per user. For any company that's serious about Win32 development, this is peanuts. Besides if you so desired, you can run your Qt/X11 programs under Win32 with an X server. Just because you're too lazy to pay for software, doesn't mean people shouldn't charge for software.
Uhh, NetBSD and FreeBSD already have very useable USB drivers, and support for USB keyboards and mice. And yes Virginia, Linux isn't the only Open Source OS. That is if you consider the GPL open.
Oh blah. Have you ever used the STL? It's AWFUL and it bloats the overall size of your program hugely. It generates god awful warnings, and it isn't all that fast. Have you used the QTL? It's really a godsend, and it will work on more C++ compilers. Blah:)
Re:KDE vs. GNOME == Linux vs. 386BSD?
on
The Future of KDE
·
· Score: 1
Ehm. I'm too young to remember that, but 386BSD became NetBSD and FreeBSD. And actually quite a few people remember 386BSD and quite a few 386BSDers still work on the current free BSDs, such as the omnipotent Terry Lambert.
Perhaps they learned their lesson early on that look and feel lawsuits won't hold up. Or perhaps it's because they'd have to sue a German company. Or is it the DoJ case currently pending. By not suing SO they look like they have competition.
WordPerfect called them Coaches, and had equally tracky icons to go along with it. Wizard is a generic enough term I doubt that MS could sue "KDE" if they wanted. After all, who would they sue? If they went after individual developers they'd most likely have to take it to a German court. *grin*
Ehm, FreeBSD hasn't lost any devices or device names as long as I've used it. Get a life, get your head out of your ass, and do use Linux. You'll raise the Linux user's average IQ.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it's uncommon, but that doesn't mean it should be that way. The cost of a replacement electronic throttle module is a big deal to me. A big deterrant to me ever considering a new Volvo for sure.
FWIW, rumour has it that the Volvo module (original design was farmed out to Fiat BTW) costs Volvo about $400. Add in dealer markup and the 2+ hours it costs to replace said module... ouch.
That's a $1200 out of pocket replacement in most states. Most will fail well within 50,000mi, and in 48 states the emissions equipment warranty is something like 25,000 mi. In California (where said warranty is 7/70), some dealers have claimed that the throttle module is not covered by the emissions equipment warranty (the EPA says otherwise).
IMO the lousy throttle module is absolutely something important to keep in mind when considering a new Volvo.
--
alex
No, they don't. In fact there's usually prolonged periods of intermittent stalling and other driveability issues.
Check out the link. It's not uncommon or subtle.
--
alex
A system with a purely electronic sensor can be made to be much more reliable than a system using a mechanical linkage to... a purely electronic sensor.
It can, but so far they have not been made this reliable. The mechanical throttle valves are pretty darn durable and reliable. The electronic ones are not. The Volvo branded units (and I suppose most other designs out there) rely on physical contact (i.e. they're not using an inductive pickup). to measure the throttle position. They wear out, somtimes in well under 50,000miles of driving. In contrast, the mechanical valves rarely wear out.
--
alex
There are two common types of throttle position sensors. Potentiometers and simple switches.
Generally the switches are used to determine if your accelerator pedal is at the idle or full-throttle position. When the idle contacts fail, you will usually see a high... perhaps erratic idle, but otherwise the car should run just fine.
With failed potentiometers, you do indeed run the risk of significant driveability problems. The potentiometer measures the throttle position with an infinite level of gradations. These are usually used to determine when you're accelerating so that the car can inject more fuel. For cars with hot film (as opposed to hot wire) air mass meteres, this is because the film, while more durable, doesn't react to changes in air flow as quickly. On cars that use MAP sensors, often times the changes in vacuum aren't significant enough to determine precisely how much fuel to inject... especially when accelerating. Usually unplugging the device will allow the car to be driven (at least for a short while).
With your electronic throttle module, you have no such failsafe. When the throttle module fails, you'll be lucky to even start the car. Similarly the TPS is usually under $100, while the electronic throttle module can cost upwards of $700.
--
alex
Right. Most electronic throttles fail in a way that leaves the throttle in an essentially closed position (perhaps open enough for the engine to idle). Your car won't be driveable and the failure is indeed dangerous.
With Volvo's P2 cars (S80, S60, new V70, XC90) you actually had to take the car back to the dealer so they could install an updated component and reprogram the ECU to the tune of $1200 or so.
Sure, cable actuated throttles can stick.. but the electronic throttles are far more expensive to deal with (and generally far more troublesome).
Read all about it here.
--
alex
It's interesting to see mention of the SF MUNI system in the article summary. You think the computerized control will suck? Wait until they implement it, it will suck beyond your wildest dreams.
A few years back San Francisco switched away from shoddy Boeing rail cars to shoddy Italian made and styled (Pinanfarina styled even) Breda cars. This isn't really of much interest or comparison to NY, except for one tidbit. SF planned to use an Alcatel provided control system.
While MUNI is an amazing example of government waste and incompetence (employees were only required to actually show up to their jobs starting a few years ago)... the Breda job just takes the cake.
The Alcatel system was entirely untested, the Breda cars were too long, the Alcatel system couldn't handle Breda and Boeing cars on the same track, etc, etc. Even now, where the previous manual system would have allowed 4+ car trains, the new computerized system limits them to, I think, 3 cars per train because of their length. More trains per minute, fewer people per minute. It's pretty absurd. Blame it on Breda for not building cars to spec (they were custom built for SF). Blame SF for continuing to buy these $3 mil cars despite the known problems. This is on top of the fact that the suspension on the Breda cars was originally deafening. You could hear the trains coming for at least 1/2 mile. The Italian build quality was just abysmal. Subpar welds, etc, etc.
That said, I like the electronic control for those nifty signs in the downtown stations that allow one to estimate when a train is coming. Also, check out nextmuni.com.
The transponders are also used in some of the busses to great effect. Sure that means you can track some of them online. More useful tho is the sign within the bus that will tell you the next stop. Very handy at night when you can't see what stop and the driver of the bus is too drunk to call out the stops.
Of course all this is great fun, and it's been about five years since the Breda cars were bought. Guess what I saw today? A stopped MUNI LRV (light rail vehicle). Well, not just one. About every car that was supposed to run on the L-Tarval line. That's right folks. MUNI cars dead on the tracks from 19th ave to 28th ave on Taraval St. Sometimes you just need the human touch.
6 megabit down/608 kilobit up ADSL, 8 static IPs, 80mb web/e-mail space, 5 mailboxen, Linux shell acct, two commercial (newscene and supernews) nntp accounts w/out monthly quotas, CGI, POP3 over SSL, IPv6 tunnels, mbone connectivity, access to procmail and SA on their mail server, and awesome tech support. $45/mo promo for 1yr. I'm happy. Current $45/mo promo is 3/418 ADSL (everything else is the same).
Regional ISPs rule!
Pfft, you don't need a V8 or a turbo to get reasonable gains from your engine.
First off, turbobricks is a huge waste of time. It is however a great way to get a bunch of useless information (normally aspirated engines need backpressure... uh.. yeah, right) and maybe even blow something up. Fun as long as it's not your car. The mailing list isn't nearly as bad, but it's still not that great of a resource.
Anyways, if you were looking for better acceleration, here are the mods I'd do:
Change to a different cam. The stock cam on a 1990 US-spec 240 was the M cam. It's good for low end torque, smooth idle, and passing emissions tests. There are any number of other options out there. Volvo offered many hotter cams (H and K grinds being the most radical at 136 and 140hp respectively in a B23E, the A and B cams would offer a more mild improvement). The Volvo cams are pretty old designs and will sacrifice more low end power than the alternatives. A common aftermarket cam is the VX or VX3 (Volvo V-grind cam intake profile, X cam exhaust profile, the VX3 has the exhaust stuff retarded 3 degrees). Not a bad choice at all. Unitek (and their resellers like OJ Rallye) sell various staged cams. The Phase 0 and Phase 1 cams would be appropriate for an otherwise unmodified engine. By itself, the VX3 cam would give you another 10-15hp and bring your car up to the level of a non-intercooled 240 turbo. The hotter cams will give your electronic idle control fits.
The next thing I'd do is put in a different transmission (if you've got an autobox). The AW72L is a nice fit. It's found in the 16 valve Volvos (940GLE/740GLE). It's got a lower 1st gear, a taller overdrive ratio, higher stall speed torque converter, and the TC will lockup at speed. Better off the line power, and better highway mileage. Or you could have someone rebuild the stock AW70 in your car with a higher stall speed torque converter for more off the line power. Or you could go for a manual transmission. The M46 and M47 (made after 81 or so) units found over here have very low 1st gears (4.x:1), and you'd get to shift your own gears.
Still want more power? Towards the end of the run, Volvo put better flowing heads in some non-US B203s. I think the casting number ended in 530 or 531.
If you wanted more power, you'd want to make it safe to rev the engine past the redline (and the hotter cams will really improve the top end power). Unfortunately the ECU will cut fuel at about 6000RPM. Otherwise you'd want to go about blueprinting the engine.
The last easy option would be to drop in a new rear end. It's a standard Dana 30 (in any live axle 200/700/900 car) rear axle, and you Volvo even used some pretty short gears (4.10:1 units were found in the 16 valves I think, as well as some of the late 70s 240s). This would make highway cruising a pain however.
There are plenty of ways to 'hack' the Volvo engines, they're great motors. However, the fuel injection systems were either too crude (K-Jetronic) or too proprietary (LH-Jetronic) to be of much use. The Motronic stuff used overseas can be chipped IIRC.
McFly? Anyone home??
Geez. Verizon does do CDMA, as do Alltel and a bunch of smaller regional carriers.
At this point Cingular and AT&T are also a bit more fsck'd than VoiceStream as they provide both "straight up TDMA" (IS-136 I believe) and GSM service depending on which market you're in.
- alex
D'oh. Time to go for someone other than SBC for DSL access. I too am moving to an area that AT&T broadband doesn't serve (this was my first consideration since it was so cheap). So I'm toying with the idea of DSL.
SBC offers 1 dynamic IP address via PPPoE, their standard e-mail and web server quotas for about $50/mo.
Brand X (a highly rated local ISP) DSL service offers 4 static IP addresses, 80mb of whatever space (e-mail, web, ftp, etc), 1gb/mo of web traffic, and shell access for $58/mo. Hmm.
Go check out dslreports.com, there are better options.
P.S. I used PacBell (now SBC I suppose) dialup access previous ($22/mo) to this local ISP ($18/mo - same 80mb of space, shell, etc). PacBell had enough trouble keeping the dialup stuff working (random nameservers going down, authentication problems constantly, occasional upstream problems), I shudder to think how their DSL service is.
- alex
Bah. I happen to think that KDE is rather Linux-centric, however, I've tried to work around quite a bit of this. In a way I resent that, because in actuality, all of the base parts of KDE 1.x work quite nicely with FreeBSD. The things that break tend to be apps that other people write (and I don't care about, and apparently none of the other FreeBSDers out there do either). However with KDE 2.x, I'm running into quite a bit of trouble with some oddly undefined symbols. However, all in all, KDE isn't by nature as Linux centric as a lot of people think it is. Damnit Jim, help make it non linux centric.
Yeah, well, what do you expect? This is after all, slashdot.
Sure, many of these OSS developers do this in their spare time. By paying them for the development, you encourage them to keep on developing. It's that simple.
You can already run your app under Win32. Get an X server for it and there you go. Sure it sucks, but if you want better, maybe you should send a donation along the lines of $1200 to the developers of the better product.
No, Linux is the way it is because of a bunch of zealots who started supporting the only "free" (non costing money) Unixish environment out there. If it had been released under something less restrictive than the GPL chances are it would be as popular, but then again we'll never know so don't spout off unfounded things like that.
Yeah and what happens to the Trolls? They go out of business and find jobs doing something non OSS related. Yeah that benefits us all in a big way, not. Consider how much Motif costs, and then consider that TT is charging $1200 or so per developer, not per user. For any company that's serious about Win32 development, this is peanuts. Besides if you so desired, you can run your Qt/X11 programs under Win32 with an X server. Just because you're too lazy to pay for software, doesn't mean people shouldn't charge for software.
Uhh, NetBSD and FreeBSD already have very useable USB drivers, and support for USB keyboards and mice. And yes Virginia, Linux isn't the only Open Source OS. That is if you consider the GPL open.
Oh blah. Have you ever used the STL? It's AWFUL and it bloats the overall size of your program hugely. It generates god awful warnings, and it isn't all that fast. Have you used the QTL? It's really a godsend, and it will work on more C++ compilers. Blah :)
Ehm. I'm too young to remember that, but 386BSD became NetBSD and FreeBSD. And actually quite a few people remember 386BSD and quite a few 386BSDers still work on the current free BSDs, such as the omnipotent Terry Lambert.
LOL. I wish I could moderate that up :^)
Perhaps they learned their lesson early on that look and feel lawsuits won't hold up. Or perhaps it's because they'd have to sue a German company. Or is it the DoJ case currently pending. By not suing SO they look like they have competition.
WordPerfect called them Coaches, and had equally tracky icons to go along with it. Wizard is a generic enough term I doubt that MS could sue "KDE" if they wanted. After all, who would they sue? If they went after individual developers they'd most likely have to take it to a German court. *grin*
*smack*smack*smack*
Things for you to do:
Get a life
Learn how to code
Get your head out of your ass
Stop dragging your knuckles.
Because ActiveX is the ripoff of CORBA/COM. It's essentially an after the fact subset, much like Gnome.
Ehm, FreeBSD hasn't lost any devices or device names as long as I've used it. Get a life, get your head out of your ass, and do use Linux. You'll raise the Linux user's average IQ.