[Shiny]

Originally Posted by dataway

I'm sure price had everything to do with it. ...
...
Easy to lose sight sometimes how long ago these cars were built.

You once again raise good questions (like bait for me ) and I think you've answered them. Technology has definitely created options and improved efficiency but hasn't changed the basic need to switch and feed power through wires.

With a warranty, there are always both product and repair/replacement costs. My guess is the cost of a relay had to be balanced against the risk for a failure under warranty without it. I have to assume they were highly confident the ignition switch wouldn't fail under warranty or as you found out, they would have made different design decisions! They also had confidence the switch wouldn't fail a year after the warranty expired. Pissed off customers don't come back. So it's not always just the warranty life.. it's more typically the "design life".

Unfortunately for all of us, they did not design the ignition circuit to last 50 years! What's truly amazing and impressive to me is that many still do!



Just to add my predictable old-fart dinosaur ramblings...

FYI - electrical "interconnects" are statistically the biggest cause for failure in any electrical system. Component failures are rare and tend to reflect a bad design, bad understanding of the use, or quality issues when they happen.

Mechanical switch contacts feeding inductive loads are tough to make durable... I bet that ignition switch design was the result of many years of improvement before 1968.

I once worked on a product that needed a lot of field service. Design decisions were heavily focused on that. It's the first time I heard the term "FRU" (Field Replaceable Unit).