I have stopped speculating as to why American car company quality is considered inferior to the imports. The reason for this is now I know why by example. When I did break from tradition and purchase a foreign car last year, I received an owner’s manual that was at least 3 inches thick. It was frankly quite a shock, but there is not a question you could think of that is not answered in that manual. Let’s compare that to a recent experience we had with our Dodge Durango. For what seems like the 20th time we had an electrical issue with this SUV. These issues have ranged from an all out dashboard power failure, a strange conflict that caused the blowers to go out when a random combination of radio and lights were on to the recent issue where the interior lights would not turn off even when all the doors were closed. Linda takes this SUV to various dog shows and uses the light wheel to shut off the interior lights so she can keep the tailgate open for the pups. All of a sudden, that switch would not work and the lights in the tailgate would not shut off even when all the doors were closed. Frustrated with the poor electrical systems, I headed out to see if I could remedy the problem, but as in the previous cases, no luck. Assuming another inconvenient trip to the dealer the next day, I decided to at least pull the fuse to save the battery.
I pulled off the fuse panel to see what I was in for:
The very first thing I notice is there is NOT A FUSE PULLER in the compartment. What does it take to verify that a .5 cent plastic tool is included as it rolls of the assembly line? Let’s just call that quality defect #1. My next task was to locate which fuse to remove (with my own tool!). The most obvious place to me would be on the fuse box panel – maybe a quick two word summary of what each fuse is for like interior lights or headlights or radio.
This was a big strike out, since all the cover had was 3 extra fuses (at least those were there) and although you cannot read it from the picture, it appeared to just have the fuse numbers on it – that of course is something I can obtain from the fuse itself and therefore completely useless to me (if it says something else, please enlighten me). For the meantime, I am naming it defect #2. No worries I thought, I’ll break down and get the user manual… all .25 inch of it and use the schematic in there to selectively pull the appropriate fuse. Wait for it… wait for it… (hit the page jump)
