Fixing Simple Things Shouldn't Be So Hard Because It Is A Social Justice Issue

 

The frayed belt on my 2012 Ford Fiesta

 I usually don't put off maintenance, but I had been waiting for my 2012 Ford Fiesta to hit the magic miles to replace the timing and serpentine belts simultaneously. In the last few days, it began to split and fray, necessitating replacement as soon as possible. Anticipating the need, I purchased a new belt at NAPA about a year ago, planning to do it myself. Over the years, I have replaced countless belts on cars, trucks, and farm and industrial machines. When maintaining farm machines, it counts as a basic skill due to their ubiquity. 

 

The Rube Goldbergian 1920s Nichols & Shepard Model D Combine with diagram  of one array of belts that of course the user was expected to be able to adjust and replace. Public Domain from my collection.

Yesterday, I looked into the details. The operation requires getting under the car and using a specialized tool that costs about twenty bucks. It is an item I would have to order unless I want to rent one from a nearby auto parts store for almost thirty dollars. While the stretch belt is a good piece of technology, like many things that were previously easily user serviceable, they could have made it easier.

More belt diagrams from the same Nichols & Shepard D. Imagine the nightmare if each required a special tool or the user to contact the dealer every time they had to make an adjustment? That is actually the way things are for many pieces of machinery or tech in our current zeitgeist. Public domain from my collection.

 A local shop told me they could replace it but then backed off when they found out it needed a unique tool. I will check with another local shop I have worked with next week and see what they will charge. The difference between what I will pay to buy or rent the special tool and what the shop will charge me isn't worth laying under a car and straining to replace the belt.

When I grew up, I liked to fix things. In the 1980s, it was still a world of repair where a person in their garage or a small-town mechanic with modest tools could do all but the most invasive jobs. As vehicles have progressed, while they have become safer, more durable, and more comfortable, they have mainly become impossible for the old weekend mechanics of my day to repair due to specialized tools and complex computer controls. Part of this is because vehicle companies that used to release repair manuals now guard information and make it hard for the average person, no matter how knowledgeable even to begin. The rest is the sheer amount of tools and equipment one needs to repair even basic things like a belt.

One way around the glut of tools one needs to repair things would be to draw on a "tool library". Tool libraries sometimes exist in association with local libraries or as independent membership oriented shops and makerspaces. I am a big fan of these because they make a lot of sense not just for car owners, but everyone, for all those tools you only need once a year or for special projects and for those who can't afford to buy tools. Here is an interesting example in Buffalo New York  How much money is wasted on tools and equipment people are compelled to buy just to do one job? I like the idea of the public library running it as an extension of its mission, since the dynamics of checkout are the same and it strengthens the library at the center of the community.  If I was able to run to the library or tool library and check out the tool I needed, I might have already installed the belt. My perfect library of the future would have a tool library with a makerspace and workshop space with everything from woodshop to metalshop to community garden. In the current age of challenged books and ideas, it might be safer to check out and give library patrons sharp tools rather than books.

For much of my life, I worked in communities where poverty compelled people to try to repair things themselves. If they couldn't do it themselves, they could count on a network of local formal and informal repair shops and "shade tree mechanics" to fix things for reasonable rates or even accepting things for trade under the barter system. I have seen the magic of necessity keep vehicles going or bring them back to life. You will never see more creative repair than in communities that can't afford to do things through expensive repair shops. Right to Repair becomes a social justice issue when communities already marginalized by car dependent infrastructure and development are further marginalized by being further burdened by the added costs of being unable to maintain their vehicles. 

Though I like what Tesla has done to push the electric car forward after it stalled a century ago, they have created the "iPhone of cars," making user or small scale mechanic service and repair as hard as possible. If, as I contend, the car is a middle-class object, a Tesla is the Downton Abbey of cars requiring an entire room full of maintenance staff you are compelled to pay for when you buy one because you can't fix it yourself. 

I am a big admirer of the ecosystem of small manufacturers of jeeps and jeepney busses in the Philippines where they build them from the ground up. They are naturally repairable because they have been built that way. Maybe we will have to go back to small scale craft building of vehicles so that people can get around. Probably not, since unlike the Philippines, the safety requirements of current vehicles would make it impossible.

Jeepneys are outlandish artistic creations that are so fun to look at and ride. I have driven by small manufacturers building them in garage sized spaces where they construct them from the ground up. I especially enjoy the thumbing of their nose at the big auto companies by these small manufacturers. They play around with trademarks as if to say: "come get us, we don't have anything you can take anyway".  Creative Commons image via Wikimedia and Christian Razukas