11/34 irks

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Friday 13 October 2006 04:53 pm, Jay West wrote:
> Ya know... if you're going to design and manufacture a "modular" power
> supply like is in the 11/34A/BA11K, with those nice regulator modules...
> wouldn't you think it could be designed so you could pull them out to
> replace or add without having to remove the backend of the chassis? That's
> just silly.
>
> Perhaps I'm missing it. It appears that you take off the top cover, undo a
> holding screw in the back (one per regulator), and undo the connector for
> that regulator underneath. But the two screws underneath and inside? Those
> don't seem to be removable without taking off the back end of the chassis.
> Icky. GrumbleGrumble...
>
> Jay

Being a hardeware repair kinda guy,  this has been a pet peeve of mine for a 
very long time.  I have run across some stuff that was designed to be easy to 
work on,  and in some cases which actually got better over time.  And while 
in some cases there may be slight extra costs incurred to add some bits,  
there are other cases where just a little bit of consideration for such 
things in the design process can make all of the difference.

"Classic" example (and yes,  it's over 10 year old :-):  I was trying to 
change out the battery in a Lumina APV.  Like a lot of other stuff,  there 
was a brace that ran across from the sides to the front,  and you typically 
unbolted this thing if you had to and swung it off to one side.  And in this 
case you had to because the battery was sitting under it.  Only in this case 
you couldn't just do that,  because the bits of plastic that were bolted on 
top of it had to get out of the way first -- so to put a battery in that 
vehicle you had to drop the driver's side headlight!  Note that this could 
have been alleviated by simply contouring the plastic to allow the brace 
bolts to be accessed,  and indeed the plastic _was_ countoured -- just not in 
the right spot.

Automotive stuff in general seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes 
on for being able to work on it,  but the trend seems to be in all sorts of 
manufactured product.  Or maybe I'm just getting grouchier about it...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, dealiest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of spac, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin