Comment by jojobas

Comment by jojobas 11 hours ago

Export cars were made with some special care, for years buying a car destined for export was preferable to a brand new one built for domestic market, even if "scratch and dent".

My father always carried a bunch of membranes for the fuel pump, a spare accessories belt, distributor, fuses and possibly something else. Every item in the list was a result of limping somewhere with a vague hope of finding the part in stock - crap quality compounded with deficit made pretty much every trip a bit of a gamble. Driving schools also taught maintenance and troubleshooting, having a private car was perceived somewhat like a mechanic hobby.

I doubt it was the norm with Western/Japanese cars by the 70s.

lnsru 11 hours ago

Probably it’s worth mentioning that the repair shops as we know them today didn’t exist in the world of Soviet cars. So everybody was responsible for his car and the owners were forced to spent weekends under the car in garage blocks sharing tools, knowledge and beer.

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somenameforme 9 hours ago

The manuals for the Lada were epic. In a quick search for an original one I came upon this [1] which is an English version one, which is even better than what I was looking for! It describes the entire car's operation and mechanism in extensive detail along with descriptions of how to replace parts, what might go wrong, and more.
I'm not sure that 'just send it to the repair shop' was an overall improvement in society in so many ways. In modern times those shops are infamous for exploiting people's ignorance and ripping them off to an absurd degree, and it primarily affects the lower socioeconomic groups within society, since the upper groups tend to cycle through relatively newer cars more regularly, in part to avoid having to deal with long term maintenance issues.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-6025672/mode/2up

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- ACCount37 8 hours ago
  
  Repair shops are a necessity.
  Not everyone can learn even the basics of car maintenance. There are a lot of drivers on the roads today who wouldn't be able to do even something as simple as top up the oil or change the tires. And actual repairs, even on older simpler cars, even with an exhaustive technical manual and modern learning aids like video tutorials or AR overlays? Fat fucking chance.
  There are ways around that. You can keep the cars simple to repair and also expensive and unavailable, so that only the people with tech know-how and/or willingness to learn it get them. Make cars as tools for professionals and tech enthusiasts, like PCs were in the 80s or construction equipment is now. Or you can make the cars cheap and disposable enough that if one fails, you can just send it to a scrapyard and get a new one.
  I don't like either of those workarounds, so repair shops are the least bad option.
  
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  tgv 3 hours ago
  
  I visited Rumania around the year 2000. I remember being surprised by the sight of a whole bunch of similar Dacias at the end of a (muddy) street, in various state of disrepair. The person we visited explained that people were repairing their cars by taking parts from other cars, as there were no spares, or they were very expensive (the average Rumanian was pretty poor at that time). And since nearly everyone drove a Dacia 1300 (tried to guess the model; they looked like a Renault 12), there were plenty of donor cars around, and people learned how to fix their cars from their neighbours.
  That can't last forever, of course, but it shows there are other ways.
  
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  somenameforme 8 hours ago
  
  > Not everyone can learn even the basics of car maintenance.
  Why do you think? Outside of extremely rare disabilities, I do not understand why you would believe this.
  
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- phatfish 6 hours ago
  
  My dad would always buy a "Hanyes" manual for our second hand cars in the UK, as inevitably there would be something to fix. These were comprehensive 3rd party manuals.
  I have also gotten them for newer early 2000s cars. Never had to use one for my 06 Vauxhall though. Apart from some standard things that really need a repair shop (replacing the exhaust for example) I've never had an issue or breakdown.
  The cars I see on the side of the motorway are always new, feels like there was a period before electronics really took over that most cars were pretty bulletproof.
  
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- xattt 6 hours ago
  
  You’re looking at a repair manual, which would be expected to describe operation and function in detail. These are available for all cars if you know who to ask.
  I recall looking through owner’s manual for a domestic VAZ 2101. It was standard stuff, but certainly didn’t go into detail about knolling your car.
  
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- eloisant 6 hours ago
  
  Why can't we have both?
  Ability to self-service your car but repair shop if you don't have the skills, tools or don't want to do it yourself.
  
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xattt 6 hours ago

The Canadian export versions of the Lada full-size sedans had doors reinforced with beams for increased safety. So structurally, they were indeed built a little better.

There were several other features like western carburetors and emissions controls, but these were likely be a “temporary” improvement for the domestic market as those parts wear out and would likely be replaced with local parts.

The thing about JDMs is they tend to be more desirable than export versions, because of whatever quirkiness that gets left behind at the time of export.

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jojobas 4 hours ago

There's no such thing as a Lada full-size sedan. The longest one was something like 4.15m long. Contemporary American "mid-size sedans" were over 5 meters long and even "compact sedans" were quite a bit bigger.

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- xattt an hour ago
  
  My mistake, I meant the 2106/2107s that were sold in Canada. I am not sure if wagon variants were part of the lineup as well.
  I said full-size to mean the “largest” RWD sedan offering to contrast with the 2121, 2108 and variants that were also sold in Canada. Make no mistake these cars were small compared to contemporary offerings.
  
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janisorlovs 10 hours ago

Anything with “export” variant was considered better (in consumer goods 100%). Even butter

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Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago

Which has now looped around because you can get cheap 'export' beer in grocery stores here (western Europe) which is pretty much guaranteed to be produced in the same breweries as the premium brands like Heineken. These breweries never stop producing because empty tanks are wasteful.

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