America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
These new engine technologies are really cool if you enjoy driving performance cars, and it&#x27;s amazing how it&#x27;s possible to comply with EPA requirements while delivering so much power, but all these systems add a lot of complexity.<p>Direct fuel injection, turbos and fancy transmissions are the min technologies which make these powerful efficient cars possible, but they&#x27;re all impossibly complex to service!<p>DFI leads to carbon fouling of intake valves, because port fuel injection &quot;washed&quot; fuel over the valves, cleaning them and burning up residue. Turbos are high RPM, high heat parts which have nowhere near the longevity of a modern engine, and there are lots of cars with 8 and 10 speed automatic transmissions to get every last bit of efficiency out of the engine.<p>All these expensive technologies make for less reliable cars that need more maintenances, and cars are much younger when scrapped because they&#x27;re simply not economical to fix. Your local transmission shop won&#x27;t rebuild a 10-speed auto, they&#x27;ll buy a remanufactured one from a specialist, which costs many thousands.<p>It&#x27;s a bummer for a weekend mechanic like myself, that cars are becoming so impractical to run for a long time. I consider it wasteful to scrap a perfectly nice ten year old car because of a bad transmission or blown motor, but there are increasingly more of these.