That's why I won't touch new equipment with a ten foot pole. I buy old stuff and then end up having to do major rebuilds. I realize this is somewhat of a luxury, and damn is it nice.
In the last calendar year, this is basically the highlights (routine maintenance excluded):
On my Kubota L3010 I added remote hydraulics so I had to take all the bodywork apart. Discovered some rust, put about 20hr of panel beating, welding, and paint into the floor pan (NLA part, unfortunately). About 20hr after I got it all back together it started leaking hydraulic fluid from the clutch housing. So I get the privilege of doing all that disassembly again to split the tractor and replace the front driveshaft seal (suspected). It's a minor leak, so far, so this might wait a few years.
The 1998 12V 2nd gen Dodge is its own saga--new transmission, clutch, a bunch of paint work. Rebuilt the entire interior. Currently working on cleaning up wiring in the engine bay, killer dowel pin fix, fixing oil leaks from the injector pump gasket and vac/power steering pump, serp belt, crank balancer, etc. Still need to drop the fuel tank and replace the sending unit, as well as re-seal the axles.
My 1995 Land Cruiser just got new plugs, distributor cap/rotor, belts, crank balancer, front main seal, oil pump o-ring, etc. Should be good until next summer.
My 1999 Benz got some new A/C o-rings, all the low pressure fuel lines replaced, some rust repair (welding, panel beating, paint, undercoating, etc) on the front right jackpoint. All new stainless brake lines (https://www.linestogo.com/ 100% will buy from these guys again). This car is kind of sacrificial, eventually its engine (OM606) is going in the Land Cruiser in front of a purpose-built NV4500 transmission. If the rust doesn't get it first (ski bus duty), I'll probably shred the 722.6 by turning up the engine too much.
So it's not a small amount of work. But no reverse engineering is required. I can just read a book and follow the instructions therein and do literally anything that needs to be done on those vehicles.
Reading codes is only part of it. For the last quarter century or so (some manufacturers more than others) if you replace certain components (radio, any computer module) you need to update the ECU to recognize the new component. This requires proprietary software and in many cases proprietary hardware as well. These "features" are marketed as an "anti-theft" mechanism. This renders some repairs basically impossible for the end user to perform.
The fact that they've been allowed to build systems like that is appalling.
Why would you pay extra for some website the company could just take away from you on a whim? I have the bound paper repair manuals for my 1998 Dodge truck, my 1995 Toyota, and my 2002 Kubota tractor. Nobody can arbitrarily take those away. Why can't companies these days just print a shop manual and be done with it?
>Why can't companies these days just print a shop manual and be done with it?
They would be losing money without overpriced repairs. That's why they lobby so hard against right to repair.
Even with some kind of right to repair it still seems they're trying to keep you hooked on their resources.
But as you said, service manual + schematics would be great for some people. But companies will fight tooth and nail against it. They lose control over obsoleting older products.
right but without the part supply under control someone could just do it themselves so they need both, though it's true plenty damage is done software-only
Yeah this could just be some vibeslop doing normal computer stuff. AI agents are famously incompetent at reasoning about database transactions. This seems like the sort of failure you get when you try to do distributed systems without knowing how--brings us back to the early mongodb days. Or it could be deliberate. Or, as you say, both.
Either way, is this a company you want to trust with intimate secrets? "Oh, but they passed SOC2!" Lol.
I have Haier Arctic heat pumps that are made in China. They've been great so far. I've also worked with suppliers in Shenzhen for one-off custom electronic devices that would put western companies to shame in their communication, efficiency, turnaround time, cost, and engineering quality. The new transmission I just put in my truck was made in China too.
I currently have R410a heat pumps with minisplits, when they're off warranty sometime in the future I might consider putting propane in them. The main question would be whether the oil used with R410a is compatible with propane as a refrigerant.
This is probably a little bit "dangerous" in the sense that I'll have high pressure propane in the line sets and minisplits inside the house, but it's a very small volume of propane and not really any more dangerous from a fire perspective than my propane fired condensing gas boiler.
[edit] a little internet sleuthing indicates that hydrocarbon refrigerants "might be" compatible with basically any oil, so I can probably just continue using whatever oil is in it.
This kind of coercive, threatening rhetoric is really not surprising at all. This is how tech companies operate.
What stands out to me is the naive lack of operational security on the part of academics, who should know better than to touch this SaaS crap with a ten foot pole.
I'm imagining all of the potential targeted customer lists now. Grab all those sweet .edu, et al logs without anyone thinking the wiser- until you release a stolen solution. What've they got on .gov?
It's the kind of thing that should make people think, but I wonder to what extent anyone does anymore when it comes to this kind of risk of a vendor stealing from you.
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