Subaru SCREWES Customers With This Design Choice

Still working through Audio issues, sorry lol
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[@FyresGames]

I'll send that to Louis Rossmann. This is gold.

[@anasevi9456]

it is, and as I'm sure there are some subie fanboys trying to make excuses for it; inexcusable too. You just remove the copper where needed to isolate audio electronics from a noisy pcb, even dirt cheap PC motherboard makers have known how for years. This is literally designed to break, and warrants a class action imho to refund every last customer whom had one of these headunits break, and a full recall to replace them all with corrected designs.

[@FyresGames]

@@anasevi9456 It is 100% design to fail.

[@chasefournier]

Yeah feel free! Tbh I'm curious what his take would be on it.

[@abcdef20]

​@@anasevi9456the volume and tuning knob isn't even actual analog electronics. They are encoded pots that send a digital signal back to the computer inside the radio that is playing music. The actual audio portion of these newer radios is so limited that you can have a small isolated module and leave the rest of the board to handle things like touchscreen input.

[@SnareX]

Mechanic here. I also do board repair. The manufacturers have been trying their best to make it so you can't fix your own

[@Mrdogedog]

It's 100 percent intentional. They actually have to program a machine to route that slot out of the board, place the pcb into the machine, and press go. It actually costs more to make that slot than it would if the pcb were solid. That slot makes the pcb more expensive, harder to fix, and more prone to failure. All to sell you a whole stereo system when the pcb cracks and brings the whole car to its knees.

[@JVHShack]

Seeing this make me want to pull the stereo out of my 2018 Subaru Legacy and preemptively fill those cuts in. The touch screen already needs replacing as it is and it has only 15k miles on it.

[@Maplicito]

The sad thing is how expensive a car radio is to replace too. The radio in my 2013 Dodge Journey was starting to go on the fritz several years ago, so I replaced it with a Chinese Android deck - but I was pretty leery about buying from an overseas company that I had never heard of, so I certainly looked into an OEM replacement first. A USED one, without GPS was going to cost me over $1000 CDN. Instead, I got the Chinese one, with GPS, with 4G functionality (that I use), with way more extended functionality than the OEM deck, for $600 CDN. The OEM equipment is almost always inferior to aftermarket stuff, but costs substantially more - and like you proved, some of it is intentionally built to fail.

[@markgilbert9930]

A new business opportunity for you.

[@dev9614]

Sounds a lot like those lifters gm refused to acknowledge

[@CWH11]

OH MY GOD IVE BEEN SAYING THIS WITH MY 2019 OUTBACK

[@DocZoidberg549]

To be honest, out of my 4 late 90s OBS trucks two went out. At least they made it 20+ years. You do great work.

[@GuyX2013]

That's how they design their engines too

[@dokov]

Nah, that's not on purpose - they are just incapable of designing a good engine.

[@j.lietka9406]

V. Frankenstein is smiling!! Great fix!

[@airborneSGT]

My 2020 STI has a radio straight out of the 90s. CD player is a nice throw back 👌

[@alecswanson8844]

Any chance for a repair for the faulty touchscreens?

[@rootbeer666]

Does the reverse camera still work? I'm fairly certain they would have to replace the headunit free of charge because the reverse camera is now required safely equipment same way an airbag is. The replacement will probably fail the same way after a while if they haven't redesigned the part.

[@ddogg9255]

Good stuff. Subbed

[@skeleton_craftGaming]

Imo if they're going to say that you can't repair your own boards and it not so you will board by board, they should at least you know make it so their boards are structurally sound.

[@svids998]

And the volume knob PCB does not need a cutout like that.. its not like volume knob needs thermal isolation!

[@svids998]

Why solder wick to hold it structurally down? I would have used gap fill epoxy.

[@chasefournier]

I like metal

[@K2teknik.]

@@chasefournier Sorry but your repair will sooner or later break too at the solder wick because you flooded the wick with solder, vibration, from the car or the operation will break the solder wick.

[@ZiggyTheHamster]

It almost looks like it was supposed to be a separate part that popped out of the assembly on purpose, but then some manager said they couldn’t spend $0.05 on a couple 4 pin connectors, so they routed traces across the break off tabs and went out for a beer. Or maybe it’s supposed to be a compliant mechanism and it’s supposed to flex like this. But if so, it still needs a damn cable for the signals!

[@Nothing_._Here]

The actual reason is more income. You have too much faith in the honesty of corporations.

[@matthewharr6372]

I don't know how my 2021 radio PCB looked but I swapped it with a double din pioneer screen asap. That radio is absolutely trash. Subaru sound systems on base model crosstreks are hot garbage and a 60 dollar single din cd/bluetooth sony/pioneer receiver is SO much better sound wise. How they managed to go so cheap on this radio is beyond me.

[@Treeclimbingexpert]

I don't know anything about this kind of stuff, but I watch and subscribe anyway. I did not know solder could be used as a support like that, very interesting. Is that isopropyl alcohol on the qtips? What % if so? Also what year is the car? Is it designed to fail after the warranty has run out or is it still in the warranty window?

[@anonony9081]

I don't think I will ever buy a modern car. I'm going to find one that is old and reliable and uses as few digital components as possible. Also interesting that ESG score doesn't take repairability into account. They have no problem tossing tons of batteries and other still useful components into landfills as long as it means you're buying more

[@eugenecussen3735]

why not just bond the board with non conductive resin?

[@chasefournier]

I like metal

[@ryokaix]

Probably would have to be a high heat one, and a lot of those need to be cured for several hours at a high temperature to set properly. Probably not worth it.

[@sompka1]

Gluing things is never the right repair when your a professional. Glue always fails.

[@cyclost]

Isn't this an intentional breakaway so that whole circuit board won't shatter if someone accidentally slaps the control button? Considering this is the second post/video that I ever see someone mentions this "problem". Also why it will cause the car battery to die?

[@abcdef20]

You do this kind of design for thermal isolation or for isolating high voltage from a lower voltage. But neither of these things would be necessary for a car radio. There's really nothing I can think of that would require this. The tiny bridges make this board weaker than if it was completely solid so it's not like you're protecting the board from potential damage from someone slamming the buttons. There's nothing in the knob circuitry that would get hot or need to stay cooler than the rest of the radio and there's no dangerous voltages inside a car radio. I design circuit boards for extreme environments and would never do anything like this unless I intended for that part of the board to snap off. As for the car battery, there might be some standby voltage going through that portion of the board and the trace damage caused a small short to ground which would slowly drain the battery. The radio does need some power when "off" to save settings (although many cars now retain settings even when you pull the battery).

[@jimethota]

Well I feel stupid buying a brand new forester last year with that exact radio in it. I wont be pushing the buttons in ever now

[@shadowopsairman1583]

Their engines too

[@chavsi8173]

Name one brand that is not behaving like this

[@chrisyboy219]

To be fair they only designed it this way because they couldn't figure out how to make it rust itself into an early grave like the rest of the car.

[@Lazyman1975]

That definitely looks like their way to reassure they can get a couple more thousand dollars out of you.

[@Lazyman1975]

A question for you. I recently purchased pure copper soldering iron tips as I was curious and I wanted to test them out. Have you ever tried them?

[@chasefournier]

Never tried them, but they did look intriguing when I saw them a couple years ago.

[@RBRetroBunker]

Thats why i drive Saab 95 from 1999

[@chasefournier]

Haha facts 💯

[@peterpersson1967]

This is fraud. No more Subaru cars for me as the last was a rotten apple. Now I understand why. 😢

[@mfx1]

Not intentional, I can see why they thought it was a good idea which is to provide some overtravel for the switch so if it's pushed hard the flex of the PCB takes it rather than the switch but they didn't make it substantial enough. If you think it was intentional consider the amount of time they would have had to have spent testing it to ensure it failed as desired vs the expected financial return on that failure and that just doesn't make sense. Whoever owned that vehicle must have been hitting those buttons pretty hard.

[@whothef4900]

Found the Subaru employee

[@K2teknik.]

Yes the first break was just happening and then the car owner just hit the thing hard and many times and it totally broke off at four points at the same time ? The design is clearly to make the pcb flex, not by much just a little, this design cost money so they have done it for good reasons we just do not know for sure what reason. To think that it is designed to break on purpose after the warranty is over is a bit strange, I am not sure this video tells us the full and true story about this event.

[@billynomates920]

i'm an av engineer for subaru and i can tell you now that we design this for... no i'm not. i have no clue. why do you do that subaru?

[@sompka1]

i doubt this was done intentionally. They probably want that isolated for god knows why and the engineer got a bit out of hand with it. Trying to intentionally build things to fail would result in major issues and comebacks under warranty and that's definitely not what their trying to have happen. Imagine thinking you can design these little bridges to fail at a set time between the time the warranty expires and the time its no longer worth replacing the head gasket (this time not under warranty) and throw the car away. Seems unlikely. Not defending subaru, I just don't think their maliciously trying to make boards physically weak. Their just stupid.

[@ssobarzog]

I agree. I've been working on this field long enough to know sometimes there are design errors so bad, you can't imagine is because stupidity and something much larger and sinister is going on. But no, it's always stupidity.

[@ilikenwf]

What a horrid design. Show this one to Rossmann too, he'll eat it up.

[@chasefournier]

Haha if he sees it I hope he doesn't eat my work 😂💀

[@ilikenwf]

@@chasefournier I feel like he criticizes his own repairs hardest... KZbin suggest actually suggested a relevant, interesting channel in yours, look forward to watching more. I did comment about Linux on your TV emmc reading video - most smarttvs probably run android or linux and so the filesystem is likely native to Linux unless encrypted.

[@chasefournier]

I think you're right, I definitely appreciate the kind words! And hope you enjoy all the videos!

[@StormHawksHD]

What a total fail - Defs intentional design.

[@ovalwingnut]

ShOcK & AWE (and not in a good way). Is it possible that Subaru didn't design that PCD but Boeing? That design is so a·tro·cious /əˈtrōSHəs/ that I can't wrap my tiny little head around it. I just don't want to believe anybody or anything is responsible for that. The world going forward is screWed Thank you for the video. Cheers from So.Ca.USA 3rd House On the Left.

[@sameyeam5582]

Thank god they phased that out.