Cost of quality is always a hard thing to quantify. There's not much added value, but the loss of value from a nationwide recall far outweighs pretty much anything you could pay. The ideal is to get to the point where your process is so consistent that your tests will never get close to your control limits, and you…

That's what a quality system is for (six sigma and similar). You're looking for a >0.0000001% chance of failure, and you don't have to worry about it. 1% would be catastrophically high for something like an airbag.

Those poor Ascender owners.

Formal licensing is only required in the US for engineers if you're signing off on safety critical installations or testifying as an expert. It's a horribly involved process to get certification, so generally a company will have a Professional Engineer (PE) on site to sign off on documents as needed. Otherwise they…

Most OBDII systems have "ON" which indicates you're "Yellow" indication, and "FLASHING" which indicates an oh $hit type condition.

Came to post this. It also doubled as an excellent table for late night Wendy's meals in college, in between all-nighter car fabrication sessions.

• The whole factory runs on methane, and much of that methane is extracted as gas produced from a nearby landfill. That also means that, hypothetically and with enough logistics, the factory could run on farts.

Buckets of money should do the trick. Seriously though, NASCAR teams farm out some of their work, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one of their engine shops and cut a huge check for a spec motor.

They were doing the ADV beak as far back as the R1100GS of the early '90s. Saying that BMW is copying the Ducati Multistrada is getting it entirely backwards.

That's the thing though, in the worst case scenario where the airbag technology doesn't work you're still wearing an abrasion-resistant, armored jacket. The Airbag technology supplements that by immobilizing your upper extremities, greatly reducing the chance of screwing up your shoulder or clavicle (two very common…

BMW did it first.

Being set on fire wasn't even the main reason they were used. Flamethrowers were originally designed to fill enclosed bunkers with flame, consuming all of the oxygen. If you were caught inside when one of these was used you basically drowned in fire.

The order, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, demanded that Takata turn over records regarding the production, testing and subsequent concerns raised internally and by automakers over the airbags, as well as communications between the company and automakers about defect concerns.

I'll give you that. It's a different sort of character, but it's definitely there. Subaru has two distinct camps though, the motorsports-heavy models (WRX, STi, BRZ), and the decidedly un-sporty everything else. They do a good job with both though, and all are united by their leaking headgaskets.

They might disagree, but they would be wrong. Mazda is the only carmaker, that I've seen anyway, that infuses character into all of the cars they sell, from top to bottom.

Donk much?

$500-1000 will, in my experience, get you a project. and maybe an awesome and interesting bike. What it won't get you is something you'd want to learn to ride on. My first bike was $400 and while I learned a lot about fixing bikes, I learned the "How to Ride" portion a lot more slowly than I would have otherwise due…

It would have to hit orbital velocity under power. Gravity only acts on a vector directly towards the body providing it (earth), being in orbit just means that you're going fast enough sideways to continuously miss the thing you're falling towards.

How did I miss this?

Maybe if I move closer to work my quality will get better.