rekmeyata

Not so much that we're old and can't understand the stuff, or refuse to understand, we use computers and smart phones all the time. But I think your point is that over complication isn't necessary no matter the age. Like you said, you had to leaf through your owner's manual to figure out how to change the time, when back in the analog clock days all we did was reach for the stem knob on the clock, pull the stem and change the time, that can be done with an electric or digital clock, but no, instead we have to leaf through pages of a book to figure it out. Other stuff like a simple placement of a car battery, it took me over an hour working on a friend's Chevy Lumina just to get to the battery so we could replace it! I then ended up cutting a bracket off because they didn't make a tool on the general market that could reach the bolt, but with all the crap that went on over the battery the bracket wasn't necessary anyways, that battery wasn't going to move. I found out later that a lot of mechanics did the same thing I did to that bracket! And that battery placement wasn't even the worse location, some Buicks you had to remove the front driver's wheel, remove the fender liner, and then remove brackets and bracings to get the battery out. One car model the battery is under the rear seat, which meant you have to remove the rear seat since it doesn't tilt up and forward to allow access. Some cars you have to take off the fuel injection system to get the rear 3 plugs out. All cars today require removing the dash to get to the heater core, that's an 8 hour labor charge for a $32 part! All they had to do was put into the firewall mounted by 2 bolts, and the core would fit into a a slot on the firewall, easy to excess and easy to repair. The list goes on and on.

What is funny is when you go into a dealership to look at a new or used cars, even the sales staff can't figure out all the crap on all the cars, there's too much variety between cars, whereas in the old days any sales person could figure out how to operate anything in the car. I have people tell me that they couldn't figure out something on their car even after reading the manual, take it to the car dealer, the sales person would sit in the car for about 30 minutes unable to figure it out themselves, only to say read the owner's manual and give up in frustration.

Then when something breaks it costs a lot of money to replace. For example, my neighbor has a Toyota Prius, the info screen died, $3,200 later it was repaired, really? Everything in that car is accessed through the info screen, not unlike a Tesla which would probably cost at least twice as much to repair. What happens if the radio in a modern car needs to be replaced, on most cars you can't simply put in a new head unit, you have to go back to the dealer and get the radio assuming it's still being made.

Unless you're a gear head and like to dink around with your bike more often than not, then trying to figure out how to bleed hydro brakes is a waste of my time! Which is why I opted for mechanical disk brakes on my touring bike instead of hydro, but there is a learning curve with mechanical as well.

And you brought up an excellent point concerning torque wrench necessity that is required on carbon fiber bikes, it's asinine if you ask me! If you get the torque values wrong you could damage the part and cause a crash later down the road. Most home mechanics either don't use a torque wrench thinking it's not a big deal, or they just take it in to the shop for that stuff, problem is even most shops don't always get the correct torque values, so when something breaks then what? You can't prove who was at fault, the mechanic that applied the wrong torque value or the material broke due to some fault of its own.

Simpler is always better. They can make high tech cars without all the complications if they wanted to.