Horrible Wimpy Switch Design.

897 Views 11 Replies 4 Participants Last post by njvagabond, 10 d ago

Tijoe

Discussion Starter · 13 d ago

I've seen cheap inexpensive car parts many times in my life, but this one takes the cake for being a piece of garbage! Today I was wiping down the paint around the trim where the sliding door closes, when with very slight force hit the "Side Loading Door Ajar Switch" with a microfiber cloth. Sproing! I see a piece of plastic pop away and hit the ground. WTF! I pick up the small piece and see that the little piece of plastic holding the body of the switch detent and a spring is hollow and less than 1/4" diameter.
Any side load on this part and it is toast!
I ordered a replacement, for $21, but it will probably take 2 hours to remove inner trim panels to gain access to and replace this little piece of garbage!
I super glued the small end piece back on, and there is a slot in the bottom of small piece that is impossible to push back in to the base with the spring in place.

Anyone else break this piece of crap?

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njvagabond

· #9 · 11 d ago

Tijoe said:
I see that in 2019, the switch could be purchased for under $10.00. In 3+ years, the price has doubled. I am sure there is no greedflation involved.

pbethel said:
Did you hear about the time they shut down the country in a knee jerk reaction to a new strain of an old virus? And paid people more to stay home than they would make working?
$14. and change from Rock Auto. Not doubled.

Asdrew's post is from 10/19 so call that 3.66 years ago. Now of $11.33 on Lasco so 5% per year increase (not 5.4% ... cuz compounding)
List price has gone from $14.89 to $16.09 so 8% total ove that time so less than 2% per year increase.

FYI average inflation since 1960 is 3.8%

So the FACTS seem to point to franchise greed dealers as the issue in THIS case not the pandemic or FOMOC.
(may in fact be worse dealer greed as there could also be additional increases baked into the crazy shipping fees for on-line ordering). Not defending FOMOC or most all other industries. Looking at prices/profits there is no doubt that they have been excessively greedy over the time period being discussed. Perhaps more tax cuts/de-regulation/corporate control of the gov't would help. BTW - I do like that word greedflation ... gunna steal that.

Back on topic.
FWIW $16.50 isbest landed price I found with google shopping
Maybe retrofit a higher quality switch or others ?

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njvagabond

· #12 · 10 d ago

Tijoe said:
record profits

Gross profit is not a particularly good measure for the financial performance a business that has high fixed costs/overheads. Net income is more meaningful ... especially over the long run ... you know ... bottom line?? Neither necessarily has a strong correlation to pricing since it is highly dependent on volume. Of course in the short run there can be all sorts of financial shenanigans or other non recurring transactions ... see $800M profit in 2022 on sale of remaining stake in Rivian. BTW - not sure where they stand these days, but IIRC the financial arm, not auto sales is where F has made a lot (most?) of their profit for many years. You'd need to dig into the financial statements to get a handle one that.

My CPA dad taught me a long time ago that the #"s in a financial report are pretty much meaningless, unless you can understand what is in the footnotes. And even at that, those are just the minimum the corporate crooks feel that they need to disclose to stay close enough to compliant with financial reporting requirements.

Net income can be defined as company's net profit or loss after all revenues, income items, and expenses have been accounted for.

Ford Motor net income for the quarter ending March 31, 2023 was $1.757B, a 156.5% decline year-over-year.
Ford Motor net income for the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 was $2.886B, a 75.05% decline year-over-year.
Ford Motor annual net income for 2022 was $-1.981B, a 111.04% decline from 2021.
Ford Motor annual net income for 2021 was $17.937B, a 1502.42% decline from 2020. (typo here ??? )
Ford Motor annual net income for 2020 was $-1.279B, a 2821.28% decline from 2019.

Dunno how much of this is the reason for or caused by current efforts to transition to becoming an EV manufacture. But that's a different discussion.

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