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Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
(www.ifixit.com)
Celebrating/talking about repairing stuff, the right to repair stuff, and the intersection of tech and solarpunk ideals.
What does it mean to use what we have, including technology, to try to build a better, more environmentally just world?
Now do cars.
Cars have started becoming harder and harder for home mechanics to repair already from early 2000s, and that's definitely not a good thing whether you like or dislike cars in general. Making things harder to repair doesn't reduce them, just increases waste
Early 2000s? Try mid 70s. That's when all the electronically controlled stuff and emissions sensors came in. Pre-emissions cars are dead simple to make work.
I would argue there's a difference between necessary complexity and planned obsolescence.
The more primitive electronics are still pretty easy to work on and fix though. OBD helps with diagnosing, and the sensors are usually simple enough to swap out for a new one if they fail, in most cases. If an ECU fails, that's usually as simple as swapping a cartridge, like on an old console.