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Just when you think you've heard it all!

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bonneyman:
Wife is looking for a newer used car, so we hit a car lot yesterday. Guy was referred, seemed nice and up front, but then told us some weird thing. Newer cars have microchips in the headlights.
In a front end fender bender, almost always a headlight get broken. Rather than let shops get a Chinese replacement for $100, manufacturers put microchips into their headlights that talk to the car computer and won't let it run with a non-OEM replacement! (Like that married car stereo thing from years ago). And the OEM headlight costs $2200! Pardon my French, but  :91:?

Car radios can be gotten around he said, but they get you with the headlights. Is this true?

DeadNutz:
That's sucks if they are doing things like that. The wife is wanting to get a new Tacoma or Tundra but the only models anywhere near us are standard cab 4 cyl Tacoma's. Any trucks that exist like we want are going for a premium so forget it for now.

I have been researching tires as the Tacoma needs some bad and I barely made it with the worn ones through the winter. I stopped by the local shop that is part of a big chain with locations in most of the places I drive in this area which is nice if you have a tire problem. The prick guy in the store who I have never seen before was very abrupt with a poor attitude and said the tire I wanted was the most expensive one. I said I wanted a price on the other All Terrain tires including what is on it now. When I asked to see the lowest priced one at $190 he just said I wouldn't like the tread design but showed me the tire.

I was mainly there to see if the $190 tire was the same exact one I can order from Walmart for $107 each and it is the same exact tire. I have probably bought at least three sets of tires from that store but I am done with them. Ordering the tires from Walmart today.

slip knot:
I finally talked the wife down from the new car binge, I think?  She was dead set on a Toyota Highlander. But they kept stalling her, seems they are having a hard time getting new cars in because of the wuhan flu. seem to have shut down a lot of upstream production and now the auto manufacturers are having hard time getting parts. She wanted a brown one but they just couldn't find one in brown. She was going to order it and the salesguy told her some cars have been on order for 6-8 months already.

goodfellow:
Don’t know if the headlight chip is legit or not George, but given the technology available, it wouldn’t be a stretch to have an embedded chip in pretty much every high dollar component in a car today.

Chips are as cheap as paper clips and easily manufactured, and I’m sure the whiz kid auto designers are making good use of the technology to increase their company’s bottom line.

Techno overload is one of the prime reasons I’ve avoided Euro cars like the plague.

Good luck with your search.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

bonneyman:
Well, I just did a search of prices of a headlight on a 2019 Toyota Camry. Just pulled a make, model, and year out of the air that was late model. Price was $1,900 and change! Computer "pack" for that headlight is $534. So the car lot salesman wasn't BSing.

Wife's car is a 2002 Buick Century with 150,000 miles. Engine is fine, overall it's great, still gets 27MPG average. It's been under covered parking and garages most of it's life, paint is just starting to dull. It's just plastic pieces going and a few electronic issues like the odometer doesn't always light up and TRAC idiot light comes on intermittently. So she's beginning to look as she knows it's getting up there.

But the guy told us it's trade-in value is only $800, though we could get $2000 for it on Craigslist. So, I sell a great working car and can buy one headlight? I think not! :33:

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