At 09:33 AM 2/20/2001 EST, Jan Eyerman wrote:
>And most VW bug owners
>will tell you that Bosch alternators, starters, etc also went 100,000 miles
>without problems (that is one of the rason why people loved their bugs-they
>went forever without needing repairs).
To the contrary, most Bug owners will tell you nothing of the sort -- I
have around 750,000 miles under me in air-cooled VW experience, ranging
from a '57 Oval to a '73 Bus, and I have spent a LOT of years hanging
around VW shops!
First, very few Beetles came with alternators. Most had generators, which
were good, so long as you cleaned the commutator every 10,000 miles and
replaced the brushes every 30,000 miles or so. The starters were okay, but
hardly set records for longevity. Thankfully, the generators, though a
bear to remove, were easy to work on in situ and the starters were easy to
replace. The solenoids were notorious for failing the first time you drove
the car through a dusty field or the like. The really nice thing about the
Bosch generators, of course, were hills. Ever notice how old Beetle owners
always park on hills? We used to kid each other about having graduated
from the "Robert Bosch School of Parking".
Second, my experiences range from San Francisco to Connecticut to Virginia,
and were uniform at all points.
Third, the reliability of Bosch products began to improve -- though not the
finish -- when production shifted from Germany to Brazil and Mexico in the
late 1960's.
Fourth, the Bosch distributors and coils are iron-clad, at least in the VW
applications, though I have a couple of friends who have old Volvos, and
they curse the ignition system in their cars. The all-vacuum distributors
are substantially less well-built than are the centrifigual and mixed
units, but still appear to be reliable enough, though I doubt if I've a
thousand miles on such.
I recognize Bosch has a reputation for reliability, but this just goes to
prove what a good marketing program can produce in the way of public repute
in contravention to the facts!
Marc
msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
|