350'000 BMW's to be recalled due to brake problems.

.

.

My, how strange it is that every time a modern car is designed the manufacturers feel compelled to re design the wheel !

Let me explain. BMW has announced the recall of over 350'000 vehicles due to what they term " A loss of vehicle power braking". What they mean is that the servo assistance to the cars braking is not working correctly and so the driver may well have to revert to "mechanical braking".

Servo's have been fitted to most makes of car for several decades, yet a system which simply involves a chamber with a vacuum present acting upon a piston which multiplies the force applied to the brakes when the driver applies them, has been found to be faulty. Surely this simple mechanism which works fine on every car i have ever owned during the last 23 years (23 vehicles in all) seems to have been "tweaked" by BMW to probably claim yet another innovation for the company!.

There is an old engineer's saying which goes "If it ain't broken, don't try to fix it". BMW and all other modern car manufacturers should take note of this mantra!.

P.S I have owned several Mk1 and Mk2 VW Polo's...they never even had servo's, and it didn't cause me any problems with driving them :-)

The car in front is a Toyota...because its brakes are faulty and its throttle is stuck open!.

The car manufacturer Toyota has been in the news a lot recently due to a spate of accidents (some sadly fatal) and near misses involving several of its models which it appears are having problems with their brakes and accelerators.

This started to make me wonder about just how over engineered and complex some of the "basic" systems now fitted to modern cars have become.

Gone are the days when a throttle was linked to the engine via a pedal linked to a cable and attatched to the carb , now they are  connected to a potentiometer in a black box, or some other weird and wonderful arrangement. Brakes,once upon a time,used to be directly connected to a piston which then (through hydraulic action achieved by the driver pressing a pedal) would apply pressure to pitons in the callipers and thus clamp the brake shoes/pads onto the disks/drums of the car. Not so now of course, now it all has to be done via a computer system to ensure "optimum performance".The question is, are car manufacturers just getting a little too clever for their own good, and are the public becoming "lab rats" to help with their research ?

As you are well aware, Scarlett (My Scirocco) is now almost 23 years old, and at this moment in time i am feeling so glad that she is not burdened with all the clutter and gizmo's that all modern cars seem to be.

I would say that given the choice of choosing a car to travel any great distance in right now, and given a choice of my old "trusty steed" or some all singing all dancing box of wires and chips set on four wheels, i know which ignition key I would be turning!.

Sometimes driving something with less is better than being let down by something with (apparently) so much more!.