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Fixers Know What 'Repairable' Means—Now There's A Standard For It - Ifixit:
[Earlier this year], three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published. This official document with an unexciting name details "general methods for the assessment of the ability to repair, reuse and upgrade energy-related products." In plain English, it's a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff. It's also a huge milestone for the fight for fair repair.
We want to repair the stuff we own, so we can use it for longer. This is not only important because we want our money's worth out of the things we paid for, but because manufacturing new products is a huge and underestimated driver of climate change. So if we want to avoid cooking our planet, we need to stop churning out disposable electronics and start repairing more. Like, right now.
The problem is, industry won't do this by itself. Managers get ahead by showing quarterly sales growth, not increased product lifespans. Hence we need the government to step in, banning unrepairable products and helping consumers—that's you!—to identify the most durable products out there, so as to empower them to make better purchasing decisions. And in the EU, our political leaders are getting ready to do so.
But here's the rub: those leaders don't know what a repairable product is. If you ask manufacturers, they will all tell you their products are repairable. If you ask us, some devices clearly are more repairable than others, and some are frankly just not repairable at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @02:10PM (3 children)
What car requires this custom brake bleeding tool-set?
I've been bleeding brakes since about 1970 and, while slow, the same two-person method always seems to work (one pushes on brakes, the other opens&closes bleed screws). Really curious how some company managed to screw this up!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 06 2020, @04:16PM (1 child)
A Toyota Prius, which has some fancy stuff on its brakes because it's capturing some of the kinetic energy to charge the electric engine battery.
But that doesn't explain why nobody can get the equipment to handle it correctly if they're not a dealer, or why a 1-hour procedure costs $500.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @04:13AM
Ah, should have known. Some quick searching suggests that the Prius brakes are (at least partly?) brake-by-wire, so pushing on the pedal may not displace any brake fluid. Didn't bother to dig deeper, but good to know that there are systems out there which are truly different from standard hydraulics--thanks!
I've read that totally electric brakes (no hydraulics at all) are being prototyped by some of the major brake suppliers. They'd better have darn good water protection for all the electrics and connectors because the salt bath here in the winter is very rough. Not sure I'd want one of those cars after ~10 years of winter salt.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 06 2020, @07:01PM
ABS systems require some kind of external controller to cause them to open internal valves so you can purge the air out of them. There's no standard for that fun job- it all depends on car year, make, model. It could be through OBD2 / CAN interface, or proprietary ABS system interface.