I don't get it - would you would think you can hose out a consumer car like this, with the fabric seats and all that plastic trim? I've hosed out Land Rovers, but they're clearly an off-road vehicle designed for wading.
Only time I hosed out a car is my uncle's car when it ended up in the ocean. Was low-tide and tons of seagrass on the boat launch. Lost traction and just slowly slid all the way into the ocean. Actually turned out OK after a serious fresh-water bath and carefully drying out everything.
Hosing out a car under normal circumstances is insane. I recently worked on a Dodge 12V diesel 1994 truck. Removed all interior carpet and WIPED out all the nastiness and vacuumed up the bits etc. Got it down to the metal and really nice and clean. Then layered up on Dynamat in prep for installing a high-end sound system and got a great result.
Unless you've destroyed the vehicle anyway by dipping it in sea-water, don't hose out your car.
A really great check to do if you're buying used is to look under the driver's seat for rust. It indicates flooding. In the case of pickups, it means they either submerged it or used it as a mudder. Red flag. Walk away.
You’d be amazed at what you can hose out. My house flooded in 2019 - river flood, filthy silty water up to the roofline. Everything got dunked.
I decided I’d at least try hosing everything down. PC, NAS, TV, headphones, you name it, it got hosed, and then left in the sun to dry. Mud and silt had filled most of it, and I’d little hope any of it would survive.
Turns out, bar two hard drives, everything survived. The TV had water trapped in the screen for a few months, but it dried without any residue or mark, and was perfectly usable while the thin film of water between the screen layers evaporated.
But the car was a write off. There was no going back from an engine full of silt, and 100% cooked electrics.
Just a supplement to your point of water not always being fatal to electronics - I once found a PSP lying at the bottom of a lake. It was by a school, so I guess bullying had been involved. One thorough rinse later and it turned on. Battery and optical drive were shot of course, and the screen was seriously watermarked. But still.
I’ve sent many desktop keyboards through the dishwasher. Pop the keycaps off and put them in the flatware compartment first; allow 48 hours to dry before re-assembling and plugging in after. Even the cord comes out looking good as new.
My dads Toyota Hilux was a rustbucket when he bought it 20 years ago. Still runs "fine", despite lots of use in the intervening years carrying highly corrosive NPK fertilizer on the farm.
A bit of rust isn't anything to be scared of so long as you know it's there.
That said, it's generally good advice. You just chose one of the most overbuilt, reliable vehicles of all time - not great for generalizing to other cars.
I had an MR-2 for seventeen years. Near the end of its life, the passenger floorboard rusted through, so that if I hit a deep puddle the rug would be pushed up by the water, and you could watch the rug slosh back and forth. Big fun.
Look at the seat rails and seat mounting brackets. They're pretty much never galvanized, just painted a light matte black and work great as slow acting moisture detectors. Trim covers them up these days, but move the seat all the way forwards or back and you'll usually either see some of that metal or be able to get to a position where you can. They'll also rust over time due to long term high humidity from a leaking window or door seal, or shoddy crash repair, or a slow leak from the heater core, so even if it's not flood damage there might be other issues.
Don't you lol what me. You are making this about car shopping. mmaunder wrote about removing the carpet to clean. Ofc you don't remove the carpet of a car you want to buy. I would never had guessed that you meant 'see the metal' in a car shopping context, as it's as easy as breathing to flip some carpet over and get a sense of the floors state.
> A really great check to do if you're buying used is to look under the driver's seat for rust. It indicates flooding. In the case of pickups, it means they either submerged it or used it as a mudder. Red flag. Walk away.
which is probably what the parent post was addressing with how do you check this?
One of the metric I know is sensitivity - how many dB per watts can a speaker produce. Logic is that at lower watts amp has less distortion. For best results buy an amp that's like 10x smaller than required, tho you will waste tons of power (which then goes into class A/B/C/D/E amps...)
The author references the "hose" comment in the 1998 unveiling of the concept car that would become the Element, but I think they greatly underplay the degree to which this idea caught on with the public and in the press, especially in non-automotive publications.
I'm pretty sure it was an issue of Wired in the early 2000s where I read about this futuristic new SUV from Honda with, among other clever details, "a floor you could hose down." It became an unofficial selling point for the Element, and I would imagine most people exposed to the meme never knew the vehicle was not in fact designed for such a use until they saw this blog post.
Truth. I recommended a Honda Element to a friend of mine who wanted a cute car, but who had a tendency of destroying cars.
Among our friends, somehow the "hose down" talking point was common knowledge. This was maybe 16 years back, so I do not recall how we came to this idea.
They ended up buying a stickshift VW bug. Which they abused in many weird ways.
Props to your friend, I think it really takes some determination to destroy not one, but two Honda Fits (or Jazz, as it's called over here in Europe).
Nice little cars, I was looking at maybe purchasing one but unfortunately their "fame" got to them so that the latest generation/variant is a little over-priced compared to other models from the same class, or so it seems to me.
Still, count yourself lucky. In the US, they stopped selling them, opting to push people toward the HR-V instead. I'm not much of a car guy, but I have a Fit which I bought used for under $10k cash, low mileage, etc. The HR-V is significantly more expensive and doesn't offer anything I particularly need for the added cost, so if I were to replace my current Fit, I wouldn't be likely to buy an HR-V.
Daewoo Nubira: Drove it until the brakes fell off. Among other oopsies.
VW Bug: Among about $5k in damage from various bad decisions, eventually somehow got T-Boned on his way to traffic safety school. (Too many speeding tickets) He literally rolled up to traffic safety school in a wrecked car.
Fit: I have asked a few times about the Honda fits. First time went like, "Hey is that the same Fit as before?" "No, shutup."
My initial response was to suggest that next time you do anything like truth-or-dare, dare him to install a dashcam and press the save button and send you the footage every time. But that's obviously not really going to have a hilarious endgame at the end of the day, it's not like it'd be a lucky dashcam that's always in the right place at the right time capturing other cars. It'd just be awkward for everyone.
Objectively speaking (in the interests of constructive assistance) I wonder if this person may be somewhere around "low but definitely non-zero" on the Kevin Spectrum (ad-hoc definition taken from https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/219w2o//cgbhkwp/). If relevant, my next thought is whether some degree of cognitive issues may run in the family.
I've noticed that one of the significant impacts of the developmental delays and perpetual catchup associated with my high-functioning autism has been a deeply-ingrained awareness of not just feeling "behind the curve" like I'm perpetually scrambling to keep up, but having hard evidence left right and center that I really am not simply Getting Gud.
If this person grew up in either a hostile environment that cultivated a belief that it was impossible to ever do anything right, or simply a situation devoid of leadership to the extent he was left going round in circles due to lack of (for want of a better way to say it) developmental autocue, I could totally see some really terrible social anxiety, self-loathing, social detachment, and compounded awkwardness and depression developing from that.
Getting traffic-jammed at the entry to a speedway that always seems too fast to merge onto, or stuck in front of a street curb with duckling legs that never grow to the point of scaling, can have an impact over the long term - The Show Must Go On, and staying relevant isn't really a question in the fight for survival, so the only really viable option is to hack it and pretend that everything mostly works.
Extrapolating this status quo and envisaging the worst-case-scenario end state, I'd imagine it would be like waking up one day and realizing the biggest themes in my life were a) the giant delta between how much I pretend to have sorted out and what I can really keep up with, b) how much I'm pretty much blindly depending on some circumstantial alignment to happen soon to provide some opportunity to catch up and maybe get some confidence, c) the terrifyingly disproportionate amount of calling life's bluff I'm doing on a regular basis and d) how much I have have to cram this stuff into the nearest can and sit on the lid in order to cope.
If the situation I was in resembled the above, attempting to discuss it (particularly considering (d)) would probably produce a reactive and shouty mess. It would be very difficult. But it could prove life-saving.
I know a few classes of car destroyers. Some of them get into serious crashes. Some of them are more persistently mildly abusive or inattentive and do a lot of cosmetic and cleanliness damage. One person I know does ultra marathoning and uses his car like a locker room, so it smells like a great multitude of new bacterial species. Another one does zero maintenance and runs things until they don't go, ignoring all the warning messages.
This extends to road conditions. Getting stuck on medians, taking a corner in the rain too fast. Not noticing a tree while parking. Not noticing brakes making horrible screaming sounds. Not noticing after weeks of screaming sounds that the car starts diving for the left lane.
With my other comment upthread taken into account, and some awkward but necessary discussion about mental health gotten out of the way, I wonder if it might be an interesting idea to try track/rally racing.
My thinking is here that if your friend has ADHD, that naturally imposes a "don't want to develop focus on details because not interesting" <-> "unaware of details in everyday life because no developed subconscious awareness of them" problem.
Track and rally racing could neatly solve both sides of this status quo by merging them a la "oh no must learn to focus on details so as not to flip car and die". The idea would be to create a situation that is interesting enough to supercede the "I will treat this situation like a TV remote I have no idea how to use and push all the buttons on it until it works" instinct, by tuning the mental stimulus on the situation to correct for the inattentiveness threshold. A bit like putting music on to concentrate, just... faster. It's crazy enough it might work, *if* the caveats and risks can be managed.
Apparently race drivers have the lowest reflexes of any sport. That sounds both like a good skill to have if you're inattentive, and kind of mutually incompatible with inattentiveness in the first place (like if you're a race driver it would basically just kick the inattentiveness out the window to some extent).
Obviously this is a vErY bAd iDeA on its face, and would only be wise after some analysis of mental dysfunction and if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do (in terms of pacing and learning and not simply just going "yay!" *floor accelerator*).
I don't think he is mentally dysfunctional, beyond possibly ADHD. He just finished his PhD, and is fluent in 3 languages (English, Spanish, Japanese). If he finds something he's interested in, he'll dedicate his whole life to it and even minimize his social life until he's achieved whatever goal he's set out. I don't know what you'd call that. Driving is a thing he does in between the things he really wants to do, which is work and study mostly.
> if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do
Not really his personality. Definitely a "figure it out yourself" type, and puts boundaries around the help and advice he asks for. Fiercely independent is I guess what you'd call it, definitely because of how he grew up (which I gather his family housed him, and fed him, but he mostly took care of himself emotionally).
Definitely one of the more interesting people I know. Incredibly brilliant and talented at certain things, and wayyyyyyyy behind the curve in other areas.
> If he finds something he's interested in, he'll dedicate his whole life to it and even minimize his social life until he's achieved whatever goal he's set out. I don't know what you'd call that.
Zooming out into the abstract, it's interesting to observe the hazy relationship between ADHD and autism: https://web.archive.org/web/20220313151543/https://twitter.c... - this is IMO an (interesting) example of structural multitasking/executive function issues and not just generalized hand-wave obsession.
>> if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do
> Not really his personality. Definitely a "figure it out yourself" type, and puts boundaries around the help and advice he asks for.
I have to admit I'm actually the same as this, due to a combination of learning difficulties and compounded negative experiences associated with getting things wrong. I still typically view tasks or opportunities in a very guarded way and tend to put a lot of conditions on things in an attempt to pin down the "win" state.
Hmm, the trained driver could instead demonstrate several possible ways the car could be flipped, in a (very relatively) controlled and safe way.
> Fiercely independent is I guess what you'd call it, definitely because of how he grew up (which I gather his family housed him, and fed him, but he mostly took care of himself emotionally).
I was wondering about the emotional availability thing, very good point. It's so annoying how learning difficulties can be compounded so exponentially by receiving the wrong input :(
--
In a total coincidence I just discovered https://old.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin earlier today - when I first stumbled on the Kevin concept some time ago (from the specific comment I linked) I had the fairly "haha so dumb" stereotype response, but reading so many stories in one place a deeper theme emerges around developmental balance and equilibrium. Half of these people are not hopeless lost causes but adequately-functioning people with a couple of mental health issues that just happen to cluster too closely around the "??!?!" end of the cognitive dissonance spectrum in ways that on first impression look like things a person should "just" have sorted out, and which are entirely the person's fault (with no consideration of circumstances etc) if they don't. It's a tad depressing this is a very nonscalable perspective I guess. I'd probably be a mid-range candidate for that subreddit myself ._.
I am not clear if you are suggesting my friend is on the autism spectrum or not.
But let me say: I would be surprised if he is. You probably have a mental image of how he speaks, and how he relates with people and it is probably wrong.
He is a very charming person, as well as incredibly good at reading people. In his native language (Japanese) he can charm the pants off of anyone. I liken it to anecdotes of how Bill Clinton can win over even bitter political opponents once they meet in person. I have never seen anything like it. He is still pretty charming in his other languages.
He can talk with a total stranger for just a few minutes and come away with something incredibly insightful about their character that I had never understood even knowing those people myself for years. His PhD is in Business Psychology.
But despite all this he is also kind of an obsessive loner driven by interests. As I say, he is one of the most interesting people I know.
Thanks very much for humoring my curiosity and engagement :) I'm developmentally catching up on, well, understanding people in general (alongside *gestures at everything*, now I *can*) so I'm very interested.
> I am not clear if you are suggesting my friend is on the autism spectrum or not.
I actually have no particular leaning in either direction because I know I don't have enough data. Unfortunately this directly translated to me leaving the bit about autism hanging somewhat. I'm... not really sure how to "cross the T" in this instance actually.
> But let me say: I would be surprised if he is. You probably have a mental image of how he speaks, and how he relates with people and it is probably wrong.
Noted, and very interesting. (I incidentally have a giant void because I have no data.)
I think I vaguely understand what you mean - autistic people (particularly high-functioning types) tend to have a... very hard to describe oddity about their high-level presentation and carriage in general, the way they look at the world, their mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, etc. Kind of a cross between executive dysphoria and the ("and now we close the tab :D") unsettlement I associate with trypophobia (fear of holes in things) - it's like a random bunch of things are either missing or developmentally short-circuited in a way that's both hard to pinpoint but can be just... off.
Some autistic people seem to be able to technically absolutely nail communication, and in the grand scheme of improbable things I might go "......?" about whether this person has autism to some extent, but practically speaking I see where you're coming from since autism is an incredibly fragmenting disorder and communication is basically the pinnacle of psychological and emotional expression and dexterity (for want of a better way to put it), and requires a rock-solid foundation of cohesion in order to, well, not wind up as the above ^.
So, one less thing to have to worry about I guess.
> He is a very charming person, as well as incredibly good at reading people. In his native language (Japanese) he can charm the pants off of anyone. I liken it to anecdotes of how Bill Clinton can win over even bitter political opponents once they meet in person. I have never seen anything like it. He is still pretty charming in his other languages.
I've always wanted to learn how to do that - try as I might to focus on harmony and cohesion I tend to get tangled up in semantics about behavioral minutiae and trip over my shadow (as it trips over itself). I don't have great attention span in this area ._.
> He can talk with a total stranger for just a few minutes and come away with something incredibly insightful about their character that I had never understood even knowing those people myself for years. His PhD is in Business Psychology.
Coooool.
> But despite all this he is also kind of an obsessive loner driven by interests. As I say, he is one of the most interesting people I know.
Hrm. I just remembered something I forgot about reading on here a while back... it's in The Bookmarks, somewhere, hopefully I can re-find it again one day lol. It was about a person who became a master at picking pockets in entertainment settings, who'd had an experience with some sort of coordinational disorder - perhaps something like polio, or a neurological issue - that was able to be rectified around 4-7, but required he basically re-learn how to walk and coordinate his limbs. Reflecting on the article at the time I wondered if having to concentrate on relearning proprioception, coordination and dexterity at pretty much the peak mental learning/integration period left him with a much higher-fidelity conscious mental map of how those normally-subconscious processes work internally, and paved the way to naturally hone a 10x level of proficiency and fluency in how humans move, where their focus and attention is, etc.
Generalizing this idea, on the one hand the mental early-development integration process is kind of an incredible feat of empathetic normalization and search for balance and equilibrium, on the other hand its function and operation is not at all immune to influence by constitutional and environmental context. Extrapolating off of the bits about emotional availability mentioned upthread, I wonder if there's any correlation between early impactful/formative experiences and the present-day balance of equilibrium and cohesion (psychology, charm and perception) on one side of the coin, and guarded and wary learning/possibly executive focus/trust on the other.
It's perhaps plausible to imagine a self-healing/rebalancing process that identified a need to take charge and internalized that from a certain perspective (eg, an early deep impression that being hyper-aware of, understanding and winning other people would drastically improve survival instincts) and maximized for that. Now I'm wondering (from a systems analysis perspective) whether the hyperfocus/loner perspective was a sort of flip-side of that emotional commitment (eg due to what might be described as paperclip maximization), or simply the byproduct of ADHD.
Huh. I'm not really sure where to go with this now :) on the one hand building accurate understandings of how the human mind develops and works is something I greatly appreciate the opportunity to pursue, on the other hand my empathy isn't used to the "screwdriver acquired" and "now the personality is in several pieces on the table" bit! That part's awkward.
Reminds me of the time I parked at a shopping mall next to an oddly parked car which otherwise looked normal except for a small mountain of what I think were used coffee grounds between the driver's seat and front passenger seat. This was in Seattle.
I had looked at a Honda Element it was meant to be a utility vehicle of sorts meaning you could get it dirty and clean it easily.
The floors as I recall were tough, rough, bumpy plastic very thick. It was obvious the intention of the vehicle with a flat rear floor in the rear of the vehicle was meant to be used to carry things not just people.
I will say I absolutely preferred my 'farmer spec' base model truck that had, among other things, plastic on the floor rather than carpet. Much easier to vacuum and brush out the dried mud and dirt. Never did try to take a hose to it.
I was looking at one of these at the dealership in the early 2000's and the sales guy told me I could just hose it out after a day at the beach. It seemed plausible considering there was no carpeting and the seats could be folded up.
My roommate did the same. I remember him telling me that was one of the key reasons he bought it as he was an avid camper and would take the dog along and let everything get dirty then hose it out.
I have never owned an Element. I have never considered buying an Element. I would say I have above average awareness of the car market and am a competent DIY mechanic.
With that preface, I have recommended an Element to multiple acquaintances on account of (seemingly) being able to hose out the inside!
Whatever the root of this perceived 'capability', the dissemination of it was remarkably effective. If you asked me why I thought this, I would say that my recollection was that the official marketing campaign highlighted it as a feature.
In 2003/2004, when the Element was initially marketed to the US market, I specifically recall seeing ads that indicated I could do such. Nearly bought one for that reason. Bought a Civic SI instead.
Yeah, when I started looking at them, the sales guy at a dealership directed me to where I could find an on-ramp to bomb around. (After going very slowly to get there, past the usual speed traps.)
Since then, I've moved to an island on the west coast. Roads are where the terrain allows, and nothing is straight or on a grid. Perfect!
Ah, yes. I've never had one, but did get to go for a spin when my manager rented one to try out. My son's RX-7 is also a blast, or at least was when he had it running. <wink>
I don't know where the meme came from but I've heard it from two independent Honda Element owners, and it comes up on random SEO-spam blogs as a benefit of the Element if you're searching for "dog-friendly" cars. I never thought to question it myself - the trunk area does look like something you could hit with a hose. Glad this made #1 on Hacker News before I bought one!
The whole floor is covered by a plastic sheet. It looks like it's safe to hose out, and unless it's damaged, it will hold pools of water. I never intentionally hosed out the whole interior of mine, but I did spray a lot of water around the front seats when I first got the car from someone who never cleaned it. The water pooled up to the point that I had to scoop it out and towel the rest. I suspect it was a bad idea, but if you saw it you'd think it's the best way to clean it.
In most cars it's okay to get the carpet pretty wet for cleaning, but you need to suck it dry with a wet/dry vac or proper carpet extractor and b)immediately dry it out as much as possible, like leaving it in hot sun with the windows and sunroof all cracked a bit and a fan or two circulating air around. Letting the car get pretty hot and then driving it around for a bunch with the A/C on will help, too. Car AC systems are very powerful.
However, some car companies put control modules in the passenger footwell (like engine control modules, sometimes ABS or airbag controllers), so it's worth looking at a parts diagram or googling around first.
Having driven Land Rovers in the form of series, defender and discovery, I wouldn’t hose one out either. The upholstery rots and stinks and the fittings go rusty too. If you’re doing wading and off road stuff you need to tear the entire guts out and start again. And then the bulkhead equipped vehicles will fall to bits within a few years as well.
I've been hosing out my Defenders and wading them above the door seals for years and there's no significant rust yet. They have rubber floor mats instead of upholstery. But they are maintained professionally.
You won’t find it until your foot goes through something or something falls off. I had a 1990 defender 90 which was 8 years old and the bulkhead was invisibly rotten in various places. That got very expensive very quickly. A friend has a more modern 110 that’s only 6 years old and has the same problem.
This is not an issue in some areas and dry climates as a rule but in the UK it sucks owning one.
I don’t own one now. I drive a little French go cart then I use my legs for off road. They last longer, don’t go rusty and run on dried fruit and sandwiches.
> This tends to rust very quickly when bonded to aluminium parts
Isn’t it the other way around? Aluminium has a lower reduction potential than iron, so the aluminium should be the first to go. Even lower than zinc, which uses the same mechanism in sacrificial anodes and galvanisation.
I once had the idea of attaching “sacrificing cathodes” made of iron to aluminium beverage cans to make them go away faster when discarded in the environment, but that just causes more problems than it solves, so it’s better stick with container deposit schemes.
That's a super interesting thought, the sacrificial anode thing to break down cans faster. If only there was a mechanism like that we could harness to accelerate the breakdown on plastics.
If memory serves - I have never put it to the test - my HZJ78 Land Cruiser owner's manual says wading depth is 700mm (doors closed), 875mm (doors open) - presumably the added depth with doors open is down to the reduced buoyancy.
Part of me really wants to try it out once, though.
A lot of Landrovers used in off roady places around the world are ex-army models. Maybe they were more water tolerantly trimmed. E.g. at one point you could buy Landrover Rover Wolf fairly cheap I think
Not really. The wolfs suck. 24v electrics and stripped bare of everything even remotely nice. And yes they go rusty too. They mostly tend to survive in desert climates longer as they are surrounded by desiccants and clever engineers who can weld things that fell off back on again.
> Stripped bare is a feature. Less shit that can go wrong.
I don't understand this attitude. Stripped bare also means you have less shit that can go right. Don't just do a cost analysis, do a cost/benefit analysis.
Better cab ergonomics leads to less driver fatigue, which leads to less accidents and therefore less downtime. Sometimes it actually pays off to have a higher maintenance workload, especially since most of it is planned downtime, or features that don't have fixed urgently. And sometimes this idea of radical simplicity only shifts maintenance workload from one component to another. One example that gets a lot of pushback in US trucking is steering trailer axles. They are indeed more "shit that can go wrong", but not having them and constantly dragging your tires means you're going to have to spend more time changing and re-treading your tires. Look at the whole system, not just one feature in isolation.
> Don't just do a cost analysis, do a cost/benefit analysis.
This is exactly why I have reached the conclusion that I have. The extras are not a considerable enough benefit in situations that I find myself in. Doing industrial work doesn't lead to the benefit of the extras.
It may be that those of us see this don't overvalue optional extras that have significantly less practical value than the marketing suggests.
Industrial work is precisely where the extras start to really matter.
In a truck used purely for recreation the stakes are pretty low. Being mildly uncomfortable to and from your fishing trip isn't realistically going to cost you anything financially, and your unpleasant memories of the drive will soon fade in favor of the pleasant memories of the fishing. And even if you are hauling colossal boat on a big multi-axle trailer, the tires are probably going to go bad from age long before you need to replace them due to wear.
But if you're maintaining a big fleet of work vehicles, the stakes are suddenly a lot higher, because everything you do is going to affect your bottom line. Poor cab ergonomics will affect people's entire workdays and workweeks, and will cost you in higher employee turnover, and higher delay, rework and accident rates. And fuel, tires and other wear items are also going to be huge items on your operating budget, so it would be foolish not to try to see what extras you can find to mitigate them.
This. I don't get the tendency to want an ultra-capable off-road vehicle and then kit it out like a luxury roadster with a bunch of "tech" that is going to break in the first water crossing.
Worked on a farm one time where one of the work trucks was literally a Ford F350 King Ranch edition. Super powerful vehicle, but the wood trim and leather seats were no help when you had just been on your hands and knees in mud and diesel fuel...
Creature comforts are great for family/touring cars, but they are a liability in extreme terrain.
Having worked in "extreme terrain" conditions for much of my adult life, and now work my own farm, I completely disagree. You don't want to be spending significant portions of your day in a "stripped bare" platform. Maybe thats ok for a couple of hours rock crawling twice a month (not that I would call that extreme terrain!), but not for any actual utility.
In no particular order, but equipment I recognise I use frequently. Probably missing a bunch of other stuff.
- Cab heating (keep warm when cold)
- engine block heater (start vehicle below -25C)
- windscreen wipers (clear snow/dust from windows)
- demister/deicer (quickly clear fog/ice from windows)
- air suspension seats (stop spine popping out of butt)
- Cab air-conditioning (keep cool when hot)
- cab air filtration (reduce chance of nasty lung conditions / death)
- power-steering (be able to turn without arms falling off)
- wet-braking (nice to have breaks when you need them)
- a handbrake that works (safely keep vehicle running while unmanned)
- multiple lockable diffs (you WILL get stuck in mud without these)
- multiple range gearing (go super slow without stalling and also go fast enough on highway)
- quick-reverse (switch from forwards to backwards quickly)
- reversing/positioning cameras (so you dont hit stuff you dont want to hit, and do hit stuff you want to hit)
- bluetooth entertainment system (podcasts, audiobooks)
- soundproofing (soooo loud otherwise)
- winch (get unstuck without waiting for help)
- CTIS (save about 20 mins a day solely adjusting tyre pressure from field/road)
Im sure you can do without a bunch of that, but you will just be miserable for much of the year (or you dont actually spend much time operating).
I guess you could add safety equipment to that as well. Rollcage, multi-point harness, etc.
Theres also the obvious stuff that you just need to do the job - tow hitches, 3-pt mounts, PTOs, etc.
None of these have I ever needed in my previous life as a country boy.
Most of my tooling was petroleum, and I had no back problems. I will be the first to admit that maneuvers in tight spaces was definitely a learn by fire trial.
I have a 2004 Discovery 3 which was specced in the highest possible trim at the time, I've been driving it off road for nearly 2 decades now and it's still absolutely fine. The only feature on it which is actually broken is the driver seat heating. Everything else, including the armrest fridge, works fine. 210k miles, no major repairs with the engine(4.4L V8 petrol). I had to get the chassis rustproofed few years back and the air suspension compressor replaced twice, but that's about it when it comes to "big" repairs.
My point is - I'd absolutely buy another highly specced, full of tech vehicle for offroading. Disco 3s were meant to be "catastrophic" in terms of electrical problems but I didn't really have many issues with mine. The only catastrophic thing about it is the insane fuel consumption(my long term average is 15L/100km, which actually at the current fuel prices is financially ruinous)
About 2005 or so a co-worker bought a new Toyota FJ Cruiser, kept it for a week and then showed up with a Honda Element. When I asked him why he said, "The FJ is just too fussy. I go hiking and fishing with the dogs and, with this Element, I can just hose it out."
I have spent quality time with a couple different FJ Cruisers and it is a vehicle of which I am not very fond. The seating and interior, especially the headroom, is not comfortable for me and has poor outward visibility. More than those things, though, is that its driving feels coarse and unrefined on the street. It may be great offroad but it is not a rig I'd buy for my mostly street use.
Wranglers have fabric and plastic trim, and they specifically advertise that the floor can be hosed out. The difference is that it has drains (and floor != seat).
The drains I remember well. I spent a couple hours trying to get a friend's Wrangler extricated from a mudhole deep enough to where the floorboards were submerged in water that was just above freezing. Wasn't fun keeping a foot on the gas pedal to keep pressure on the now-underwater exhaust.
After we finally got him winched out of the hole, all the water immediately drained out.
> WASHABLE INTERIOR Not only is the carpet weather resistant, but it can be removed to reveal drain plugs that, when opened, allow the floor to be easily hosed out. Standard.
The carpet is specifically mold-resistant and even removable. I guess if you're in a humid climate, you need to make sure it dries fully as soon as possible; not as much of a concern in the Southwest.
It was very widely reported that the car interior was designed to be washed with a hose. That would have been a big selling point for me except that it only had four seats, and it looked like a shed.
It's not a bad thing necessarily, a rolling shed would be great for hauling things around and the Element especially has an amazing cargo opening when the doors open up. I should qualify that I'm used to driving compact to midsized sedans and wagons, so most CUVs look like sheds to me, but the Element especially so.
Don't get me started on the Cybertruck though, it really does look like a pole barn.
Honestly, with the terrible manufacturing quality these days, plus the fact that everything has unexpected electronics crammed everywhere, I wouldn't "hose out" any product and expect it to work again, unless the only purpose of the product was to hold water.
i have never owned or even ridden in a honda element, but the fact that you can hose it out is distinctly lodged in my memory. if it's not true i assume it wasn't claimed in an actual ad, but it was definitely a widely circulated fact at some point.
in general i'd assuming hosing out a car is an awful idea, but if for some reason i had a dirty honda element, i'd probably hose it out.
Because most work vehicles (which the element more or less is) can be hosed out if you know where the stupid little rubber grommets you have to pull are.
I clean my van with a 5gal bucket of water and a mop.
Designed for wading usually means it keeps water out. It doesn’t always mean water proof. If the windshield is removable I would think the inside would be more water proof than a vehicle that can wade, like a Wranger (water resistant inside) vs my Grand Cherokee (multiple seals to keep water out).
Back in the early 2000s car dealers were trying to sell it on the fact you could hose it out. No rational car person would actually considered it since under the rubber-maid flooring was normal padding. If the padding wasn't there the car would be just too loud.
because you wouldn't hose it out with everything in it, only after you removed the seats and such. personally I never would, as it doesn't take that much extra elbow grease to just use a pail and wash cloth/dry cloth.
