The complexity of the motor vehicle
So I don’t sound like some ass making stuff up, here’s a little hint at the complexity of the motor vehicle, just for those people who have no idea. I’m going to start with something simple, the engine.
Seems like an engine should be the most complex bit, doesn’t it? the engine in most modern cars is the least complicated portion, and hasn’t changed- in principle- since Gottleib Daimler. Here are the parts that make up that engine:
1: Engine block. This is usually cast iron
2: Cylinder head. Some are cast iron, some aluminum.
3: Crankshaft. Cast or forged steel.
Not bad, so far. Except that those parts are machined at a level that most people cannot comprehend, and they are manufactured, for the most part, on machinery purpose built to a specific item (say, the 1.6 liter four cylinder) and cannot be re-adapted to other processes. Shit, the equipment used to check the quality of the casting, the forgings, the machining, is in the millions of dollars for a single engine style, and each engine has it’s own complete set, and each factory manufacturing that part has it’s own set, and they all have to be calibrated against each other! building a “Master” (a theoretical “perfect” specimen against which the tooling can be tested) is not only incredibly difficult and expensive but it must be RE done every so often because of the normal wear and tear that occurs in use.
OK, let’s proceed:
5:Lower bearing journals. (five)
6:Crankshaft bearings. (five pairs)
7:Lower bearing journal bolts(ten)
8:Pistons(four)
9:connecting rods(four)
10: Connecting rod lowers (four)
11 Connecting rod lower bearings (four)
12 Connecting rod upper bearings (four)
13 Wrist pins(four)
14 Wrist pin keepers (8)
Still seems pretty simple, don’t it? Well,it does until you understand that pistons aren’t round. In fact, pisons have a slightly oval (or in some, an ovid or egg-like) shape. This is for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here, except to say that it takes an incredibly complex machine just to MAKE a piston, and those machines are usually designed to make only ONE size and type- you can’t take a machine made to make Ford pistons and convert it (easily) to make Chevy pistons, it’s just not in the cards. Piston manufacture is it’s own damned engineering discipline, futhuchrisakes. Let’s move on.
15 piston rings- compression (8)
16 piston rings- oil (4, three parts each)
17 connecting rod bearing bolts (8)
Still doesn’t seem bad, does it? Wait, I’m barely getting started.
18: Crankshaft gear
19 Camshaft gear
20 Timing chain/belt
21 camshaft
22 camshaft bearings (5, assuming SOHC)
23 Cam followers/lifters (8)
24 intake valves(4)
25 exhaust valves (4)
26 rocker arms (8)
Sure, this is a lot of parts, but I’ve barely begun
27 intake valve springs (4)
28 exhaust valve springs (4)
29 intake valve spring seats (4)
30 intake valve spring keepers(4)
31 exhaust valve spring seats (4)
32 exhaust valve spring keepers (4)
33 spark plugs(4)
34 fuel injectors(4)
35 intake manifold
36 exhaust manifold
37 fuel runner
38 throttle body
39 MAP sensor
40 MAF sensor
41 EGR valve
42 EGR riser
43 valve cover
44 head gasket
45 valve cover gasket
46 torque-to-yield head bolts
47 oil pan gasket
48 oil pan
49 crankshaft front main seal
50 crankshaft rear main seal
None of this takes into consideration the dozens of sensors, the hundreds of fasteners, the distributor and controls, the cooling system, the lubrication system, etc.
Each of these components is developed, tested, gauged, checked, and manufactured at different facilities. Each of those facilities has whole banks of test equipment, some of which belongs to the manufacturer, some of which belongs to the individual company.
Each part is vital to the whole. And the time from engineering of an engine component by component, to the outsourcing of the individual components, to the manufacture of special testing equipment for those components, to the asseembly of the finished part ready to be put into a motor vehicle, is a lot shorter than you might expect- but it takes an ARMY of engineers, purchasing agents, manufacturing specialists, and the co-operation of internal and external resources by another team of planners. And that’s just the engine.
The point is, if gm “closes” or undergoes bankruptcy, a huge resource-a resouirce required to do the job at hand- is discarded. The pieces that hold the process together- billions of dollars, millions of components, thousands of people- those pieces are lost, and cannot be retrieved.
To illustrate this, there are a couple of classic examples.
The first was designed by that genius of the motor vehicle, Raymond Loewy. He designed the Studebaker Avanti.
The engineering difficulties were, for the most part,utterly insurmountable. Impossioble or not, they were dealt withj successfully by my namesake, a man with engineering genius equal to none (thanks, uncle gene) and though he was given a bucket of bad parts to work with, he managed, against all odds, to scrape together a car.
They made a bunch of them, actually, From 62 to 66 they made several thousand of them. And then they died.
The process of manufacturing a vehicle is difficult enough, but here’s the thing: America wants something new every year. And you can’t go on just giving them more of the same. And Avanti died. It has been resurrected every couple of years since then, it seems, but at the end of the day, it’s dead.
The exact same can be said for the DeLorean. John tried to make a car predominantly out of pieces of other cars, and he succeeded… for a while.
It’s a daunting task to build a car, let alone a car company. And the complexity involved in putting together the pieces of multiple cars and trucks, making them all work even moderately well together, getting the right products to the dealers in a reasonable time, and- and heres’s the tough part- Doing it AGAIN the next year, is astounding.
If Ford, or GM, or Chrysler dies, or goes into receivership, it may be that someone smart will take a bite of the more profitable bits, say the truck division- and keep it alive by force of will, for a while- but it will be dead, and it won’t be able to be revived. And there are layers and layers and layers of businesses that will be affected.
Sure, well run small businesses can and do recover from losing a large client, it happens all the time- but in the automotive industry that recovery is invariably at the loss of a lot of jobs and a lot of manufacturing capability. This is not conjectire, this is not a guess. I see this with my own eyes every single day, and i know wherof i speak.
10 comments Og | Uncategorized
Three totally un realted points. I do agree with you that GM is a monster of a size few can comprehend.
1: I think I heard once there were some where north of 4,000 pieces that made a v-8 engine.
2: My grand dad who was a machinist for several decades and had successfully converted several engins from gas to diesel gave up on grinding his own rings for the reason you have mentioned.
3: GM says they plan on burning 7 billion dollars before they run out of cash some time next summer.
Looks more and more like some one made a deal with the devil and there will be hell to pay.
yep, Paul, that 4000 parts is a good estimate.
I’ve rebuilt a VW Beetle engine, and that thing had a lot of parts. That thing was a lawnmower engine compared to any other auto engine out there.
I don’t know what the answers are, but… My instinct is that allowing an industry to die instead of trying to help it to get lean isn’t a great idea. Normally I’m as laissez faire as they come, but at least some of the problems that the economy has is due to earlier government meddling. It seems moral to help clean up the messes that they made.
I don’t know the answers either, Ted. But as you can see, the questions are more complex than they’re being made out to be.
If you do not mind Og, let us take it a step further. One ball beaing takes two differnt tubes (or forgings) made by a specialized still mill (bearing grade steel is not the same as sheet metal steel). These two pieces of steel are cut to shape, heat treated ground on the face, the ID and the OD. The raceway for the ball path must be ground and then honed. The tolerances are in the micron range. Then someone has to manufacture the balls. The balls are loaded into the rings after they are specially measured to make sure the proper interference and clearance is in place for the balls to roll properly. Grease is added, and that comes from an oil company. Special greases may be needed for high temperature etc., any old axle grease will not work. Then you have a seal molded over a piece of metal, and that comes from a manufacturer as well. The bearings need to be wrapped and boxed (another supplier) and shipped (another supplier).
To sum it up, to make one tiny component for one specific application takes a steel mill, a bearing factory, a ball factory, a seal factory, an lubricant factory, a packaging factory, a shipping company and each of those employes dozens to hundreds to thousands of employees.
A car takes dozens of differnt types of bearings. And we are not even talking about a complex component like the transmission!
So yes, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of jobs are affected here. Not all of them are high-pay UAW wage earners.
What amazes me is that I can walk down to Auto Zone and buy that ball bearing for around ten bucks or less.
I bought a Lama V4 4 channel remote control electric helicopter with gyro and LiPo Battery for $120, unbeleivable. Makes a great trainer and gift for a youngster, BTW.
Bankruptcy, though, is not fatal in all cases. In some cases it’s just a way to get some breathing room and hold your creditors at bay till you can figure out a way to regain profitability.
When I and others ask why bankruptcy doesn’t seem to be an option for GM, we’re not talking about Chapter 7 — we’re talking about Chapter 11.
The unions and the Democraps who love them, though, don’t want GM going into Chapter 11, because that might give GM the leverage it needs to break the unions, or at least to seriously set them back.
Maybe it isn’t that simple, but I work for a company that was in Chapter 11 for a couple of years and in all fairness, we kept going as if nothing had happened. Nobody lost their jobs, nobody broke their contracts with us, we just reorganized and kept going. Now I realize there’s a big difference between GM with tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales and the company I work for :) but the problem seems to me to be one more of scale than anything else.
Oh, and of course that little nitpick of the unions and the Dems not wanting to lose the death-grip they have on GM’s throat.
I tend to agree with Nathan here fellas. Why can’t GM rebuild itself not unlike Chrysler and Iacocca did in the Eighties?
I am conflicted here. I work for an automotive supplier. There is talk of layoffs all the time. My self preservation side says bailout, while my strict conservative side says bankruptcy.
Sure unions and other “legacy costs†are a problem for the Detroit three. However, the management and bureaucracy don’t seem to want to scale back to fewer models and product lines and just design cars that the public will buy. The Japanese have figured it out.
Furthermore there is plenty of foreign direct investment in the U.S. by foreign car manufacturers. Hell, Restructure sounds pretty good. I’d hate to see GM execs having wild outlandish parties on the taxpayer nickel like AIG.
Just Damn!
Sorry your comment got trapped, Dax. yeah, there are no easy answers- but I STILL say, hang the bastards that got us here, and they are clearly the ones who have already painted their parachute gold.
Union bosses, Bankers, although I do like a few, and Democrats got us here. Mix in a little kindness from us who know better and that explains why the devil has come around to collect what he thinks is due.
Hang on for the next two years, when we will, hopefully, be able to correct all the shit that will have happened.