If the vacuum hose becomes disconnected the engine braking performance will be greatly reduced!... but if it becomes disconnected you'd be 'lucky' if the engine were running at all!

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The braking performance remains the same, it just takes a lot more pedal effort. The hydraulic lines are still operating normally.

Also, the engine might surge a little, but it will still run with a vacuum leak. It's not like the old days when spark advance was controlled by manifold vacuum.

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depends on a lot of things- you don't know what the buyer specified. There are many different ways to get the wrong hose.
Michael- usually, you get extra-high idle on a fuel injected vehicle when you open up a vac line.

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That sounds like something Toyota would say. It was the supplier fault.

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You really think the manufacturers are making their own hoses?

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I think you're onto something. In addition to engineering issues, recalls have a lot to do with a lack of real world long term testing.

Automakers have started to become too dependent on accelerated component testing and CAE. It does not replace real world driving. They want to build less and less prototypes to save money and these recall items will always fall through the cracks as a result.

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I must say, while I often disagree with your opinion, here you've stated fact. Nicely played.

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What an interesting comment.

Recalls don't correspond to quality when (Ford issue).

But they do when it's recalled a lot (M-B, BMW).
When it is due to pressure (Toyota, VW)
When it isn't done when it should (GM, GM).

What an odd pattern. A lot of people might have mentioned the Ford GT or Focus when talking about recalls, as both were recalled a lot (the X5 barely beating out the Focus).
When due to pressure, Ford's Powerstrokes might have come to mind and the video of one spitting fire showed up on YouTube (it's a minor thing, Ford says).

What a weird coincidence how your comments came out this way.

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Counteropinion:

*** Recalls DO relate directly to Quality ***

A consumer who receives a recall notice does not care why they have to be inconvenienced to fix the problem, they're simply bothered that they have one more thing to deal with. Excuses, justification and defensive positions don't make it any easier to accept.

I had to deal with a recall on an VW GTI -- the dreaded coilpack issue. VW's written notice advised me not to drive my car in its current condition (at the risk of violating my warranty and/or having an engine failure that could cause an accident), then they proceeded to tell me that the parts would take 3-5 months for the dealer to source. Do I think I cared that VW didn't manufacture the part or that they used it in 7 other models? No chance. It was just stupid and infuriating, and it was one more reason why I view VWs as having poor quality.

And to this comment -- "A huge recall count is also not really important" -- I say, hahaha!

Answer #1 -- Tell that to the 605,000 people who will be told that they need to schedule a repair.

Answer #2 -- Tell that to Ford's shareholders. I'm sure the number means a LOT to them!

Sorry to break it to you, but a recall of 605,000 cars is worse than 60,500 and not as bad as 6,050,000. To argue otherwise is insanity.

To most of us, cars are products, not engineering experiments whereby some level of design or manufacturing error is acceptable. Common sense and consideration of the customer experience are worth more than every technical explanation in the world.

-SiimianSpeedster

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I said "Recalls do not _directly_ relate to quality" and gave circumstances as to when they might and why, and why size isn't really a factor . Here's an example:

* On circumstance:

Here's a personal anecdote. My Fit saw a recall for the passenger side airbag wiring. Honda sent a letter about the fix (which I received two days before it hit Autoblog); the dealership had the parts and I was in an out in less than an hour. As far as I'm concerned, it was a non-issue, much like this Ford recall. Most recalls work this way; a quick in-and-out that isn't much noticed by the owner

My Saab had a recall noting a required reflash of the ECU. No notification from Saab and I only heard about it from the dealer after months of rough idling. It eventually resulted in a fouled throttle body and DI cassette. GM absolutely will not cover any of the trouble excepting the reflash, didn't notify owners proactively and has been really unpleasant in general. VW's handling of the coilpack issue was pretty similar; deny, stall and screw.

Again, they're both recalls, but how the manufacturer handled the circumstances made all the difference in my perception of quality.

To address the point about the X5: the vehicle was recalled over fifteen times in it's first year. Five or so recalls in the vehicle's lifetime is acceptable and something you might accept from what engineers have learned as service reports come in. Ten-plus in such a short time crosses the line into "shoddy engineering" territory and indicated a vehicle either rushed to market or a total failure in the quality assurance process.

* On scope:

Let's say that Jaguar has a recall on the X-Type that affects 100% of X-Types sold. The total number of cars affected doesn't even come close to the number F-150s or Camrys sold in a month. Now, let's say Toyota recalls all XV40-based cars and SUVs made in the first two weeks of January 2008. It's a small percentage (let's say 2.5% of the total sales of the Camry, ES, Highlander, RX and Sienna), but a large number of cars.

Which is the more "severe" recall? Even in pure cost terms, the Jag recall probably costs the manufacturer near the same percentage

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I don't understand your description of cost as a percentage of the vehicle as it relates to the real world.

If a car has been on the road for 3 years and sold 300,000 copies during that period, and all 300,000 cars have to be recalled at a cost of $250/car (including notification costs, parts and labor), that's a REAL cost of $75,000,000 to the manufacturer -- $75,000,000 of *unplanned* cost that will have to hit the manufacturer likely in one or two quarters of earnings.

Management and shareholders aren't any happier if a recall only affects a small percentage of mass produced cars than they are when a recall affects a high percentage of rare cars -- the cost is the cost is the cost. The primary copnsideration is simply "how much is this going to cost us in absolute terms?"

With regards to the quality question, I understand what you're saying, but the simple fact remains: if my car experiences 1 recall over the 5 years I own it and my neighbour's car experiences 5 recalls, the peception of relative quality is cemented in our minds, regardless of how well or poorly the dealers handle the repairs.

-SimianSpeedster

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"I don't understand your description of cost as a percentage of the vehicle as it relates to the real world."

It's a matter of scale. The absolute cost of this recall might be very high, but it needs to be put in perspective with the margins made on F150 sales. When this ends up on a profit and loss statement, I'd expect the cost of the recall to be charged against net profit, much as marketing or incentives would. Since Ford sells a lot of F150s, the percent of net profit this recall affects might not be as high as the aforementioned X-Type scenario.

I'm not trying to say this isn't costing Ford, but that it needs to be put into perspective: there's a lot of F-150s, any recall, no matter how minor or cheap, is going to generate a really large count, even if the percentage of vehicles affected, severity of the issue or cost of the recall isn't that high.

And yes, recalls suck, but circumstances make all the difference. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see "painless" recalls as a quality problem, mostly because:
a) You don't see truly awful cars that much
b) How you handle the recall and the issues it presents is far more important than just the act of a recall. Customers will tolerate bringing their car in, especially if they're treated well. They won't respond well to someone dicking them around when it comes to warranty claims or parts availability.

Quality is an interesting issue: people think that absolute product quality makes all the difference, and to a degree, it does. But since you're not going to get an absolutely reliable product, and since the gap between above and below average is pretty narrow, what really matters is customer service. VW (and other Europeans) and GM's problems with quality stem as much (or, in VW's case, mostly) from their abysmal warranty performance.

Toyota and Honda, conversely, have generally been very good in this respect (with a few notable exceptions) and a large part of their perceived quality is that, if there is a problem, they've been good at managing customer relationships in such a way that the customer goes away happy (Lexus, notably, is a _master_ at this). Ford, the Koreans and the other Japanese makes fall somewhere in the middle; Ford's warranty performance, notably, has improved greatly in the last few years.

Recalls are like warranty work. They're inconvenient, but if they're handled well (and you don't have Focus or X5 levels of recalls), the customer can actually walk away with a better opinion of the manufacturer because they've been given the impression that someone is actually standing behind the product.

Everyone would prefer to not have recalls, but since that's not guarantee-able, good recall performance is probably a more important goal.

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