What is confusing about this is the number of recalibrations by Safelite and your dealership yet lane sense isn't working. How in the world could the recalibration have been successful? Basically what they are saying is the camera can detect the road lines while the DASM calibration routine is executing but not when driving normally. We are missing something. Is your truck lifted? Does the calibration routine report a successful calibration?
It doesn't take a genius to run the calibration, just a roadway with well-defined lane markings and a tool capable of initiating the calibration routine. Drive until the routine indicates a successful completion.
Safelite replaced the windshield in my wife's car, recalibrated the windshield-mounted electronics, and provided us with the recalibration data. Everything worked just as it did with the factory windshield.
I perceive the "that'll do" ideation in stating your n of 1 success in-re the windshield in your wife's car. And rightfully so. The aftermarket does serve a purpose in it's position in the overall economy of car ownership.
But, undeniably, the fact remains from not just MY perspective, aftermarket parts' quality and dependability has gurgled down the toilet drain over the past 10 years. As a professional who works daily with cars and participates with a network of professional technicians who are at their wits end, I spend an ever increasing amount of diagnostic energy chasing post repair problems which not only SHOULD not exist, but DIDN'T exist on nearly the scale as nowadays helping these guys who can't physically keep up with these problems AND make a decent living.
"Made in China" has become the bane of our lives in this industry. That isn't fair necessarily, but my question goes unanswered, although I already KNOW the answer. The question is "Why don't American companies produce the parts we once became accustomed to in quality and dependability?".
The answer is one word long: "Greed"!
A few years ago, I performed a front and rear restorative brake job on a cherry 1995 Chevy 1/2 ton extended cab 4WD pickup. I completed the job and test drove the truck, and all seemed well. I delivered the truck to my customer and went about my daily routines.
A week later, he called me and said the rear brakes would thump upon braking only after about 35 minutes of stop and go driving. So, he brought it back, and I inspected the whole job, and could not see why the right rear drum had overheated and the shoes were toasted. I went on and completely rebuilt the rear brakes again, taking back all the parts to the parts store I've traded with for nearly 30 years and got warranty replacement on those parts. I put it all together and scrutinized each step of the repair. I went to test drive it and the damned thing now went "thump-thump-thump" all of the time. Mind you, this problem didn't exist before the brake job I did.
After one more attempt at totally replacing everything again, and the problem persisting, I reached out to technical support at Lockheed brakes. That engineer asked me if I owned a straight edge. This question surprised me and made me curious as to THAT particular question right off the bat. Inasmuch as I was a machinist right out of high school, I DO own a 24 inch straight edge.
He said to put the straight edge across the side arc of the brake shoe and observe the gap along the edge of the brake lining along the longitude of the steel shoe and look for as little as 15 thousandths of an inch variation (in short was the brake lining put on the steel shoe crooked. I did, and the gap varied about 30 thousandths! He told me that he had been seeing this issue a lot lately.
GM no longer had eh shoes or drums for this vehicle. I went to the parts store, and got that set of parts warranty credited to my account.... But my buddy, the manager wanted to look at all 3 sets of brake shoes which were defective, ALL of them had the lining applied crooked.
I went to NAPA and got those same parts from them, and to this day, my customer hasn't had a lick of trouble with those brakes. I paid a lot more for those NAPA parts than those BrakeBest ones.
