What I find most interesting is the use of spatial organization when taking the Jeep apart. You could probably walk those guys out half way through, bring in a different set of guys, and they could put it back together by just looking at where the pieces are on the ground.
This is generally taught by good mechanics. I know my father, who owned a mechanics garage when he was younger, did this whenever he disassembled anything. I once saw him dismantle a motorbike clutch and reassemble it without looking at where he placed a thing, and this was over several days as he had to get replacement parts in the intervening time.
Now I ask, how much would these guys make if they could do things with that speed in a real mechanics shop where fully disassembling a vehicle likely has 20+ hours of labor tied to it.
For one, everything would be bolted down with the bolts torqued to spec, instead of just strong enough to hold things together for a demonstration run.
Also things tend to rust and taking oxidized stuff apart without breaking it takes quite a bit of time and preparation, sometimes multiple days (if the part is precious enough, for instance on classics it can definitely be worth the extra effort).
Then there's the accessibility of parts, this is a ladder chassis car, which means that the chassis and the body are two separate parts. That makes for a vehicle that is very easy to disassemble at the expense of a higher weight (and so reduced fuel economy) higher manufacturing expense and less safety in the case of an accident.
So you'd never ever get this kind of performance in real life situations.
When I saw this, I imagined doing the same thing (alone) with my old 1987 Toyota pickup. It is difficult for one person to completely remove the body (I've had to raise it by myself to install body spacers) from the frame, but once the body is off, the rest of the truck would disassemble easily. Most of the effort is dealing with rusted/frozen fasteners. The rest of the vehicle comes apart fairly easily. Working on these older, simpler vehicles is pretty straightforward.
Contrast with my 350Z: it would take days to accomplish the same thing. Much more integrated system and access is more difficult.
I do the same thing whenever I take electronic devices apart. I never really thought about it, though.
Actually, I tend to use spatial organization a lot. For example, I can leave myself a reminder just by moving an object in my room to an unusual spot. For example, maybe I think of something right when I'm about to go to bed. I might just put my glasses somewhere slightly unusual (but not somewhere hard to find) and then I'll remember to think about what I was supposed to when I wake up.
Yes I do that all the time too. If I have a particularly good idea while I'm in bed, but am too lazy to get up and write it down, I'll usually stack some objects on my dresser in a weird pile, and when I wake up I see the pile and remember what I had thought about.
Sadly this kind of spatial organization ability is mostly lacking in computer interfaces, although that seems to be changing recently with things like Panorama in Firefox 4 (and other things I'm probably not aware of).
It's not completely lacking. I can just move a file to a different place on my computer's desktop, just as easily as I could move a real file on a normal desk to leave myself a message.
The interesting thing is that it doesn't even have to be relevant to what it's supposed to remind me of. In fact, the more unique (and thereby, less relevant) the change is, the better the odds are that I'll remember what I want to.
The primary downside is that it makes you more sensitive to people moving your stuff around. They generally have no clue that they could be disrupting something.
The key is to put things down where you'll think to look for them when you want to pick them up again. The same principle works when deciding how to structure code.
I really recommend the whole chapter this quotation comes from, and for that matter the whole book (Wind, Sand, and Stars, or in the original French, Terre des hommes). It’s a fantastically optimistic take on the relation of humans to technology (the specific example is airplanes, but the argument is quite general).
oh, and just for completeness, the quotation in its original form:
« Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher. Au terme de son évolution, la machine se dissimule. »
or in the not-quite-literal translation by Galantière:
“In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness”
This is neat. Heck of a job. I probably couldn't do it anywhere near that fast.
But...
When I watched the video I got a sinking feeling regarding the comment thread on HN. Sure enough, I come back here, and see people praising the simplicity of the design.
Ha ha. Surely you jest.
This is engineering compromise, but heavy on the compromise. The Jeep they used for this video didn't have a radiator, only used two lug nuts per wheel, and didn't have any brakes. (Note how it coasted to a stop.) A Jeep in actual, drivable condition would take a least an hour to field strip to the same degree, and one that had any significant mileage would take even longer still, what with rusty bolts and seized connectors.
And even a Jeep in running condition compromised a lot to reduce the number of parts. You can have a car that's as simple as a Jeep if you're willing to give up:
Air conditioning.
Airbags.
Any kind of modern emissions controls.
Modern engine diagnostics.
Electronic stability control and ABS brakes.
Cheap maintenance.
Decent fuel efficiency. (Jeeps are pretty heavy, thanks
to the simple design, have lousy aerodynamics, and an
carburetor-fueled engine that isn't afraid to waste gas)
A roof.
Any kind of sound insulation.
Doors.
Jack Barath wrote a column[1] on the death of the basic car, and it boiled down to "people won't buy a car without these features"; along with some bonus wibbling about government regulations (see "emissions controls" in that list above) that would make such a car illegal to sell.
I thought his column sucked[2], but the point is that a basic car is not impossible, or a relic of ancient technology that is now lost to us, but because outside of a few specialized applications, such as military vehicles, "basic car" is actually a codeword for "a car that sucks", and I would confidently lay money that the dozens of people expressing admiration for the Jeep's elegant design would hate to be forced to drive one.
You've summed up neatly what I've tried to do miserably in another comment. While I was fascinated when I first saw the video, the questions that kept bugging me were: What was this design optimized for? What were the design goals behind it?
While the original source does not answer these questions, I came across a lot of answers here in the comments but none of them are substantiated yet.
If the design is optimized for the 4 minutes effect (which it seems to be, based on the compromises made) then I do not think this is simple design and I wonder if it would have the same effect on everyone if they took over an hour to field strip an "actual, drivable condition" Jeep like you say.
I guess, if we had good batteries, we could make a simple electric car. (Though if you optimize for an objective, like simplicity, other goals, like mileage or comfort, probably suffer.)
I remember reading somewhere that only a small percentage of Jeep owners actually take their vehicle off-road. Someone high up in the organization suggested that they no longer build Jeep trucks to withstand off-roading so they can sell them for a lower price. The suggested didn't last long - kudos to the people at Jeep for sticking to the principles that make their cars unique.
I bought a Jeep ages ago, and decided to try it out off-roading. I went to a Jeep Jamboree weekend and spent an entire day going down what seemed like impossible trails and through muddy streams and more. It was cool that an absolutely stock Jeep had no problems on the day, despite the fact most of the other Jeeps with me were totally tricked-out for real off roading.
I really respect Jeep for continuing to engineer each vehicle to do this. (Or at least they still did when I bought mine 10 years ago!)
Unfortunately, they've been moving away from sticking to that offroad capable mantra across the product line.
"In 2004 Jeep started using a special 'Trail Rated' badge on certain Jeep vehicles to mark that that vehicle trail worthy according to Jeep's specifications." [1]
I think even if people were willing to let go of some features that require additional parts, just getting a car made that would conform to modern security and environmental regulations would probably be an impossible task. It's not like we forgot how to build like that or that car companies want to waste money with superfluous parts.
totally get that, and i don't want to give the impression that it's a simple thing to ask for, but there is definitely something here that is enviable.
think of how fixed gear bikes made a comeback in a market swelled with ridiculous mountain bikes that were simply overegineered for what they were needed for ( or poorly manufactured with hindering mechanics ).
People can appreciate a simple design, that's easy to maintain and fix.
Why? Crumple zones are simply part of the vehicles material designs and require no additional parts. A piece of sheet metal with engineered weak points takes as many parts in a vehicle as piece of sheet metal. Both form the hood of the car just fine.
> It's not like ... car companies want to waste money with superfluous parts.
Built in pre-market Satellite Radio isn't a superfluous part, especially when you can't opt out of it. The 'man-step' from Ford isn't superfluous? It's the most redundant feature in any work vehicle as it's less 4" lower than the top of the wheel and is placed where a toolbox is, making it impossible to use in the vast majority of vehicles it is placed. Whilst using the wheel (the method used probably since shortly after Ford released the first truck) allows you to grip the side, and gives you enough height to lean over and fully reach into the bed.
Companies place superfluous parts into their vehicles all the time. DVD players and LCD screens help with environmental regulations and vehicular safety? Really?
If so, don't you hate it when people come up to you and suggest that programming Facebook is no big deal and maybe you should help them with that next weekend?
You just did that.
I am not an automotive engineer, but large swathes of my family are and I have had many discussions about their work from an engineering point of view. You would not believe what goes into just that crumple zone stuff, nothing the word "simply" applies to. Did you know there are entire engineers dedicated to making sure the cars pass rather stringent noise emission requirements from the body (that is, not the engine)? It's hard enough to get cars to pass specifications without adding in yet more restrictions about the nature of the cars. (Or adding $20,000 to the price.)
A lot of automotive complexity comes from the evolutionary nature of their designs. If you built a gas turbine electric car you could have far fewer moving parts. But you would add a new set of basic downsides that you would need to tweak. By the time you had something with reasonable tolerances, materials, pollution, noise, and vibration levels you would probably have built something almost a complex as a modern engine.
I'm mostly talking about the engine, chassis and transmission section. Whether the whole entertainment or "lifestyle" sections are superfluous or not doesn't event matter, as this really doesn't increase maintenance costs or makes the car itself that more complex. That's pretty orthogonal to the basic design. You could revamp a Model T with DVD players if you'd want to. I'm not saying that we need all that all that added stuff (AC, sound etc), but that even the essential components nowadays require a high level of complexity.
To get a reasonable amount of safety, you have to be either very cleve or apply huge amounts of brute force, i.e. build a friggin tank. Which probably still won't be as safe as other vehicles, neither for the car itself nor the one it hits. And the fuel economy will be utterly atrocious, especially if you want to keep the engine simple and user-maintainable.
I'd like to be proven wrong, but I think that it's simplicity, safety, performance – pick two. Maybe not even that, depending on current laws, standards and morals. I doubt that even something like the VW Beetle or the Citroen 2CV would be feasible today. You'd either end up with a gas-guzzling tank or a not-quite-car like the Vespa Ape, if simplicity is a constraint.
Again, I'd like to be proven wrong. Then at least I know what car to buy next.
Don't forget that this is not a unibody car, but a rolling chassis. The crumple zone concept does not really work for a rolling chassis because it transmits the forces in a completely different way compared to a unibody with subframes.
That was pretty obvious (that it had been prepared), you can see how plenty of the parts are just popped on/in and not bolted on, but that does not change the fact that it drives in and drives out and is disassembled in to it's main sub-assemblies in a ridiculously short time.
If they did the same thing having to drain fluids and so on it would likely be a lot more messy, and more risky (and a bit slower) so I can see why they didn't choose to do it that way.
Some military jeeps had air cooled engines so that the cooling could not be damaged by an impact of munitioned. Shooting out the radiator was a common tactic for disabling a vehicle.
I'm pretty sure I saw a guy lift out a large vertical rectangular object from in front of the engine, fairly early in the video. When it was put back in, he reached way down in between it and the engine, like maybe he was re-attaching the bottom hose (presumably without a hose clamp, or any fluids). But I could be wrong, I only watched that part twice, and I wasn't concentrating on the radiator.
Does anyone know if this is an older model that has since been over complicated? Or if this sort of vehicle is available for civilians? What a cool toy, and seemingly a cool way to learn more about vehicles/engines. Kept simple enough, seems like it could even be affordable..
That's a vintage military jeep. These are available to civilians, if you can hunt one down. Based on the tires and the model, I suspect it's WWII era. Even modern humvee's are way more complex. I doubt you'd want one as a daily driver though.
If you get a jeep made since 1995, it's definitely way more complex. The jeep in the video doesn't have the same emission controls and safety requirements of a modern vehicle.
Modern jeeps still shars some of the same design principles. For instance, tub on frame -- they lift the tub off of the frame. The cabin of a jeep is like a bathtub on a wagon.
The suspension in modern jeeps is far more complex in order to give a smoother ride -- the jeep in the video has leaf springs on front and back. Modern jeeps typically don't have leafs in the front.
Jeep CJ's were the first consumer models available. Some of the older ones may be close to that simple.
I drive a jeep. I think it's awesome. For the same reasons I like it, most of my passengers hate it:
- it's loud (soft top or top down you basically have to yell to hear each other, forget listening to the stereo on road trips)
- it rides rough -- you get thrown around
- it has almost no features. I have a heater, headlights, three speed wipers (off, too slow and too fast), manual windows/mirrors and a button to reset the trip counter
Also, it's a bit of a money pit. It's super rugged, but when you take it into the bush, you push the machine to its limits. I'm not really an expert in vehicle repairs (spent my teen years on computers instead of with my dad in the garage), but I'm definitely getting more into it as a way to save money.
I get about 15 L/100KM (~15mpg). It's as aerodynamic as a brick flying sideways, so you can't really do anything to improve gas mileage.
That all being said, I love my jeep. I can't see myself not owning a jeep in the future.
If you're interested, I still have J10 stepside (very rare, 1100 made) in a barn in Ontario, you can have it if you want, for free.
I'd rather see it with someone that might breathe some life back into it, I'm Europe these days so I most likely won't be seeing it again. And with the price of petrol here what it is I can't see it moved here either.
Yes, absolutely. A lot of Jeep owners will tell you that pretty much everything on them can be fixed with a $10 socket set from wal mart.
I love my Jeep because when my dog and I crawl into the thing covered in mud, I can just hose it out the next day. There are holes in the floor that lets the water drain out when it gets rained in, and I know that there are very, very few places on the planet that it won't take me if I ask it nice enough.
There is definitely something to be said about simplicity in engineering. I feel more connected to my Jeep because I can see everything working. There is no abstraction level, it's all just mechanical.
It's the same feeling I got when I first started using linux. I could see everything working which, for my brain, was awesome.
someone mentioned further down the thread that it is a willys which by looking at it I would agree but I am not 100% sure without psychically looking at it and it's plates. I guess that is the beauty of these machines in certain ways they have not changed much. It is somewhere in the era of 40's or 50's, as you mentioned. One thing to bare in mind about these machines is that they are designed for a specific purpose and that purpose is not that great for a standard civilian vehicle. The military jeeps where all dowel and pin fastened which allowed them to be broken down and repaired rapidly but it was at the sacrifice of high speed. With items like the leafs dowel and pinned they rattled like an SOB at any thing over 40mph which results in a pretty wild ride.
The suspension in modern jeeps is far more complex in order to give a smoother ride -- the jeep in the video has leaf springs on front and back. Modern jeeps typically don't have leafs in the front.
A lot of modern off road suspensions are a 3 or 4 link suspension set up. They can be dowel and pinned as well, and can be broken down faster than a leaf sprung vehicle, but again you suffer from the fact that they is play in the suspension components, that is not there with a bolt fastened suspension.
The point is, that while it is a great engineering feat to build such simplicity, there is also some huge sacrifices that you make to achieve such simplicity. Safety and high speed performance being the top two.
The JEEP is a great machine and I recommend them to anyone who wants to get into off-road motor sports, they are probably the best beginners vehicle one can buy. As they can grow with someone as they get deeper into the hobby.
As well there is no other off-road vehicle available that has the aftermarket availability of products that JEEP does. I say that as an owner of a 68 Bronco. The JEEP is a well respected vehicle for motor-sports hobbyist. It is one that they got right from the beginning. The original Bronco and the International Scout are great choices as well.
IIRC Around 1995 (I thought '96 but could be wrong) emissions standards were made stricter and cars made since then need to have computers that monitor the emission systems.
Seeing "super rugged" and "money pit" separated by a single word is amusing to me. By my standards, my Toyota Prius is more rugged than most cars. It doesn't take me everywhere I want to go, though.
It's a money pit because the only way to get spares is to find a junker (and even then all the rubbers will need to be replaced with whatever you change out) or to machine them.
This is a 60 year old car, it's not like you can walk in to your local car part store and order some parts. You're going to be buying your parts from places like this: http://www.willysjeepparts.com/ which will happily charge you a good sized premium for the parts because they're being made in much smaller series than for cars that are still 'current'. And that's assuming you do the work yourself, if you let someone else do it for you it'll cost quite a bit more still.
They also need quite a bit more maintenance per mile driven than a modern car because the engine clearances are not to be compared with modern stuff.
But if it came to your 'prius' or that 60 year old beast and we had to cross 50 miles of bush I'm pretty sure which one I'd pick.
A prius is not a rugged car, not even a little bit, it's a delicate piece of beautiful engineering.
I don't know about the Prius specifically but I feel like people underestimate modern economy cars. I've taken my 96 Saturn and my friend's 00 Sentra through some improbably bad terrain, and the combination of light weight and front wheel drive means that you can generally slide across a lot of crap that would technically high center such low vehicles, if you have some momentum.
Despite common perception cars are not designed to fall apart.
Sometimes being less rugged is a feature. Modern cars are designed to have the front crumple to absorb energy in a collision, reducing the impact on the passenger area.
A dashboard that's soft and light may be easier on the head and save gas, but it sure is annoying the way they dry out and crack from mere heat and sunshine.
Modern engines last longer, but I think that's mainly due to the process the Japanese developed for easily producing hard steel (amounted to a simple additive). Engines aren't worn out at 100,000 miles any more.
Yes, the crumple zone in a 60 year old car is you.
So best not to get in to an accident, but that goes for any vehicle, including modern ones. Sudden deceleration is a real problem, all the crumple zones do is change that from 1 ms to 15 ms. (that's a huge difference in terms of impact on your body, but still).
The dashboard in a Jeep is steel, but don't worry, in most accidents you'll be thrown clear of the vehicle on to the street, with a little bad luck in front of other traffic. Chances of you hitting the dashboard are much slimmer than you hitting the pavement.
You don't want to roll one either...
Materials science has come a long way since the 40's, I don't think you can compress the 60+ years of research resulting in our current engine life in to 'a simple additive', and it was definitely not just the Japanese that worked on this.
They do deserve a lot of credit for ceramics to metal bonding processes, but there too there was plenty of international collaboration.
Ruggedness depends on what you're asking the car to withstand. I'm hoping mine will withstand 150k-200k miles without unplanned maintenance :-) But right now I'm in the embarrassing position of trying to borrow a car from my mother to drive to a trailhead my Prius can't get to, so I appreciate your point.
More recent Jeeps are much more complex- HOWEVER, they remain on of the simplest cars money can buy from what I've seen. In an era of huge plastic coverings in your engine bay and twenty thousand different gizmos, the engine bay of a 6-cyl Jeep Wrangler still looks to me like an engine from the 60's.
I have been considering getting a Jeep for much the same reasons. I figure a late 80's model.
It looks like a CJ-5 to me (may be an older model though), which is a pretty basic old design. You can see it does not have power steering, power brakes (actually I am not sure it it has any brakes), or much of anything for the instrument panel.
It is really just a frame and basic drive train with a body tub on top. Cool video though.
I saw this video on a 4x4ing forum this morning. My 99 TJ is no where near this simple. I wish it was though. Jeeps are money pits and it would be awesome if I could do repairs with a handful of tools.
I've long wanted someone to build and sell a dead-simple car like this today. With modern emissions and safety standards, it might well not be possible.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that, and it's very much in the spirit of what I had in mind (though not as much so as the Willys). But note that they lost much of that simplicity in the Europa - the version that meets EU safety and emissions requirements - which ballooned the price from US$2,000 to US$6,000.
in a few years you might be able to build an electric car that is this simple. safety standards will still be an issue, but all you really need is a frame, steering, batteries, 4 wheel hub motors, and a computer.
I've always been impressed by how easily a VW Beetle's engine can be removed. People have similar contests to see how quickly the engine can be swapped:
I've heard it said that you can't fully understand how a thing works until you are capable of completely taking it apart and then reassembling it back together again in it's original working condition.
Maybe that's a necessary condition, but it's certainly not a sufficient condition.
I've disassembled (and reassembled) quite a few things that I didn't fully understand. I did have to take notes for some of the more complex devices, though, or I'd have never gotten the wires reconnected properly.
This is a great example of teamwork and practice, but, I don't get it. Why is this engineering? Why is the ability to take a Jeep apart and reassemble it in 4 minutes "simply great design"? Is that what Jeeps are for?
It takes a lot more forethought and skill to make something complex simple than it takes to make something simple complex. That is what makes Apple's products stand out and it is incredibly hard.
The "engineering" here is not what the guys in the video did, but what the guys back in WW2 did to design a vehicle that could be stripped and reassembled in the field.
By saying "that's what Jeeps are for" you are just taking it for granted... Vehicles don't grow on trees.
Looks like I failed miserably at asking this earlier, but I'm just looking for a reference to the stated design goals. If it is the reason you state, I'm just looking for a reference to it.
Asking "what Jeeps are for" was meant to get at the design goals and I did not mean to dis what is otherwise a very fascinating design choice.
I hear you man, but to me good engineering is also about the problem it is trying to solve and I did not find a reference to that in the original source, so was just asking for more information.
I see. You and 3 buddies are driving along the road in Burma during WWII, and you run over a landmine. Two of you are dead, two of you are injured. You drag your concussed, burned selves to the next base. You get first aid, pick up parts from the depot, get a ride back to the jeep, repair it under fire, and drive it back to the base.
The fact that you can easily pickup and install the parts quickly in a mine field while under fire is a big plus.
How does the ability to take a Jeep apart and reassemble it in 4 minutes (by 8+ guys) help you in "doing major repairs at the side of the road with people shooting at you"?
In a hostile context like you describe (if that's what this is meant for) don't you think there might be other design considerations?
The british army stick with a 10year old version of the land rover for the same reason - you don't want to be in a ditch in Afghanistan trying to fix a computerized engine management system with a hammer.
The point I've been trying to make is that simplicity/great-design has a context and that context is missing in the original source. Everyone here seems to be adding context, but I have to take their word for it because they are not presenting it with any supporting facts. e.g., a reference to where the British army claims to be sticking with a 10yr old version of the land rover, to avoid having to deal with computerized engine management system malfunctions in hostile situations.
While I can see and agree with the point that people are making, I would just prefer if they were substantiated.
