When The System Doesn't Work

We'll all raised from birth to live within The System...at least, to a degree. Civilization is an ordered system. Systems increase productivity by simplifying otherwise-difficult tasks, or by organizing needed information for easy common access. Humanity is dependent on systems of varying kinds, and spends a great deal of time working on the design, maintenance, and improvement of the various systems it has created. Just consider for a moment, the wondrous variety and complexity of the systems we have created: food distribution systems, financial systems, credit systems, knowledge systems, educational systems, transportation systems, governmental systems.

And yet, all too often, even when well-designed and maintained, those systems fail miserably at what they're supposed to do. There are number of reasons for these failures. One is that systems are not only very good at increasing productivity of human beings, they are also excellent at encouraging their human users to quit thinking. A few years back, when we were having our deep financial difficulties, I ran into a myriad of problems getting my creditors to work with me, and it was nearly always because "the system won't let me do that". If I had a dollar for every time I heard that while I was trying to negotiate with them to get things under control...well, I wouldn't have needed to negotiate because I could've paid everything off. (It was funny how The System tells you that, if you have trouble, the first thing you do is contact your creditors to get them to work with you...even that part of The System failed me.) I even had one creditor, a company I had been dealing with repeatedly for over 5 years, tell me that they couldn't do anything for me because my account was not old enough (i.e., "my System won't let me help you.") In short, none of these people could get past their individual System...meaning that, even if I told them, "I'm going to be considering bankruptcy," it didn't phase them. In fact, none of them were able to turn their brains back on until I called them to notify them that I ACTUALLY HAD filed bankruptcy...and by then it was too late.

I didn't write this post to complain about those systems, though...that's all water under the bridge. I actually wrote this post to talk about the Bronco. You will recall that in my last post, I mentioned my struggles with how to move forward. I love the Bronco very much and don't want to part with it. However, in spite of its obvious utility for me, it is not an economical car. This isn't a huge issue, but I WOULD like to maybe save a little money, you know? As with any old car, I can either spend more money on preventative maintenance, not only oil changes and such but also the replacement of aged components, or I can wait for these various things to fail and replace them after the fact. And usually, those things are not small-ticket items when replacement time comes.

On Monday, though, the decision was made for me. We went to a dealership in the hopes of finding a suitable replacement. I even had one picked out. However, we've all heard the stories of how lending has dried up (unless you have pristine credit). I ran into this reality firsthand, as I was informed that while the dealer used to have a couple of banks that would lend to those in Chapter 13 plans such as myself, those banks are no longer doing so. So, with no suitable capacity to borrow, and with no interest in going to a "Buy Here, Pay Here" place to pick up a plain-jane sedan (why don't I just throw the towel in altogether and get another minivan?) or pick-up truck (if I were going for one of those, I wouldn't be dumping the Bronco anyway).

So I gave up and decided to just start fixing it. First order of business: the busted tailgate window. This is obviously a key, since a back window that won't close properly in the middle of an Oklahoma summer (when thunderstorms are still common) is not a good thing. So the focus of the past couple of days was replacing that bad motor. This is, interestingly enough, not a difficult job. First, you open the tailgate and remove the tailgate access cover, which is on the top/inward-facing portion of the tailgate. Then you pull the window up all the way so it's out of the way, making sure to prop it up with something so that its weight doesn't mess up the regulator or anything. Take out the three bolts holding the motor in place, unplug the motor, and remove. "Installation is reverse of removal" (a standard line from any number of auto-related shop manuals). The whole job would normally take 45-60 minutes, mostly because the access is so tight inside the tailgate itself. I looked online and found several suitable replacements but decided to go with Autozone because they actually had one in stock at a local store, meaning I wouldn't have to wait a couple of days and/or pay for shipping (The Internet is awesome for buying but if you want something quick the premiums are pretty high. So that means you're paying a lot, or you're waiting a week or more to get what you ordered. I hate waiting, and I hate paying extra, so I will almost always take a local option if it exists and isn't negated by extra cost. In this case, not only did Autozone have it in stock, but it was $50, the same price I found it online, so I would get it cheap AND quickly. Win-win.)

And here's where the Autozone System comes in. They specified a window motor to replace the one I had, and so that's what I got. I got home with it, though, to find that the orientation of the motor was not correct. The original motor bolts on and points to the passenger side of the vehicle, while the replacement I got wanted to bolt on but point to the passenger side. This would seem to be OK except that the center crossmember inside the tailgate was in the way. So even though the Autozone System said this is the correct replacement, it obviously was NOT, because it did not fit correctly. So, slightly frustrated, I did a little more research in Autozone's online system and found that the next part number up was an identical motor but with the opposite orientation, pointing the same way as the original. (It also, oddly enough, is exactly $4 more than the specified replacement, even though it is identical in every way except its orientation of installation.) So I drove back to Autozone, specified the replacement, swapped it out, paid the extra $4, and went home fully believing that all would be well.

Except, as you might guess from the tone of that last sentence, it wasn't well. The new motor was absolutely correct. BUT...the body of the part around the mounting holes and gear were plastic and slightly bigger and beefier than the original. Within the tight confines of the Bronco's tailgate, this meant that the part was correct, but did not fit in the area of the mounting bracket because it had...well, too much girth. Also, one of the three mounting holes was out of place, by about a quarter inch. At this point, I was getting angry, and mostly because Autozone's system failed in TWO ways: first, it specified a part of the incorrect fit, and second, it did that TWICE (incorrect orientation and incorrect size for mounting). This demonstrates a key issue that leads to the failure of many systems: the old adage we computer geeks know as "Garbage In, Garbage Out". The system will only report what it's told to report. The Autozone System was told that this part would correctly and successfully replace the tailgate window motor of a 1986 Ford Bronco. I had just proved that this was not the case.

So who told it that it would? Most likely, someone who simply went by some sort of Ford part number interchange list. You see, not all parts are unique to all cars; automakers don't like making different versions of things to do the same thing across different models. So they'll often use a successful design for a large number of models over several years. So the tailgate window motor in my Bronco is actually nearly identical to the electric window motors that Ford used in many of its vehicles in the same time, not just tailgates, but door windows as well. Also, third-party manufacturers will build parts for the automakers to use in their models, and they might sell the same part to several different automakers, who all use this part in their cars. An example of this was, when I had the 1998 Zebra Land Rover Discovery all those years ago, the fuel pump went out. A good friend of mine at the time, who had a 1997 Discovery and also was having fuel pumps issues, discovered that the fuel pump it used was identical to that used in a late-90s Chevy Impala. It was expensive to get one listed as a Land Rover part (around $300) but cheap to get the SAME PUMP listed as an Impala part (about $90). This is good news, because it means parts can be plentiful and thus easy to get when you need them. Try this same thing with an Opel or Peugeot or Fiat...you're walking into some VERY rough territory there. Parts interchange is a key thing for DIY guys like me...until someone screws it up, like they did here. This happens a lot, actually; I had a similar situation with the replacement flywheel I bought for the Mustang. The one I originally ordered from O'Reilly actually did not fit, in spite of the fact that their System said it was a correct part for my make and model. I ordered a different flywheel at Advance Auto Parts, and that one was correct. The newer system thus failed because the older interchange system failed by listing the part incorrectly for my application, and no "expert" ever bothered to verify in the real world if a part that is listed for a specific application would actually work in that specific application. In other words, the "experts" stopped thinking, because the System seemed to make thinking obsolete in that area. This is discouraging because interchange system failures thus complicate the budgeting and repair processes. If even the "experts" can't give you the right information because of their System, how are you going to get it right? Instead, since I'm the one who is actually thinking here, I end up solving my own problems outside of the System. Humanity may eventually die because it becomes too dependent on its Systems and ends up turning its brain off altogether. Is it any wonder why we still value "outside-the-box thinking" (i.e., thinking outside of the bounds of The System) so highly?

To demonstrate this final point, how did I solve my problem? Well, as I said, the body of the gear area on the motor were plastic...molded plastic, and a lot of it. So, I just took my air tools shaved off a substantial amount of plastic, taking care not to hit anything vital. I shaped it to as close to the original as the layout would allow, and drilled a new mounting hole in the correct place to fit the old mounting hole, and got it to go in correctly. And now the tailgate works even better than before. DIY WIN!!