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Think Your Car Door Sounds Nice and Solid When It Slams? It’s Faked https://www.thedrive.com/news/35871/think-your-car-door-sounds-nice-and-solid-when-it-slams-its-faked?utm_campaign=trueanthem_AI&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_term=thedrive&fbclid=IwAR2PNsXRJGlkd4-5-6YsLo8gkBXq6CkWFDaUJv100Epha-3ZI1XxT9buqLQ Those doors were carefully engineered to sound much sturdier than they really are. BYSTEF SCHRADER | PUBLISHED AUG 19, 2020 7:08 PM The sound of your car's door slamming is a lie. A trick. A clever ruse. And it's all thanks to the engineers who designed your car. Your car doors are carefully designed to sound sturdier than they really are, reports Mel. You can thank psychoacoustics for this practice, which is the study of the mind's perception of different sounds. Here's an example: Ever experience the satisfying thud of closing a 1980s BMW door? There's a heft to those doors that makes them feel solid. Substantial. You're safe here. This car is well-made. Yet we all know that even high-end cars have lost a lot of that extra heft, largely thanks to advances in automotive safety, as AutoBead co-founder James Ford explained to Mel: Engineering the sound of a car door closing can be traced back to changes in the car manufacturing industry 10 years ago. Increased safety measures meant that car manufacturers had to add extra bars to the side doors to meet safety regulations, which subsequently impacted the sound that doors made while closing So, while your car may be safer now, automakers know that you associate that meaty clunk with quality. Less expensive cars have emulated this, too. The author of the Mel story talks about how satisfying the sound of his 2012 Nissan Sentra's door slamming is, and a Sentra is about as far from a luxury car as you can get without buying something like a Mitsubishi Mirage or a Kandi Coco. “One of the first things a prospective car buyer encounters is the sound of the driver’s door closing — often inside the showroom. This sound gives a subconscious sense of value,” music professor Jonathan Berger explained to Mel. Berger, who works in the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, has even tested out this theory by making students in his psychoacoustics class rank different car doors from most to least expensive based solely on the sound of their doors. Respondents claimed that the low, soft thuds with an after-sound of some sort (the example Berger gave with a "ker-chunk") came off as the fanciest. A Purdue University survey from 2016 cited by Mel came to a similar conclusion: tinny-sounding door slams came off as cheap and flimsy. Car companies know that perception matters when it comes to selling their cars, too. Ford themselves admitted that "engineering the right sound of a car door closing was their first opportunity to make buyers feel the car’s quality, craftsmanship and safety and to justify a premium price tag," as quoted by Mel. Lexus even made a whole video about their quest for the perfect close. Mercedes' own manager of sound quality and design Tobias Beitz also told Bloomberg that "the optimal acoustic design of the door structure, latches and seals" was what signified the quality buyers wanted—not weight. Even Opel—purveyor of fine reasonably-priced European cars—spends a good amount of time analyzing the sounds that different parts (including doors) make before a car goes into production, as shown in the Deutsche Welle video above. This is why each brand staffs sound engineers like Beitz to make sure the car door has the right combination of foam, mats and other soft components to make you think you're feeling an eighties 3 Series door, even when you've got a modern Sentra. Even the locking mechanism is specifically tinkered with to make the right click. So, we hate to break it to you—your doors are one big lie.

Hi guys, My car door indicator is always intermittently on during driving and the problem seems to be getting worse. It is mostly on now. All the doors are fully close but yet the car door open indicator keeps getting on from time to time. I can ignore it, but when it is on, I cannot use my remote car key to auto lock the door. The remote sense some doors are still "open" so I could not lock the car by using the remote. I have to manually lock the car. Any workshop that can repair such issues?

In this post, I would like to highlight a potential dent-inflicting situation in multi-storey car parks. The thing is that you may not notice the source of the problem until the damage is done. It is very common to find water piping running along the pillars of multi-storey car parks. They serve to drain away rain water as well as water from car wash. Sometimes, these pipings can become detached from the pillars and additional reinforcement is required in the form of bolts and nuts. In the situation that I encountered, the bolt and nut system was installed somewhere below the beltline of a normal sedan. Hence, a driver opening the door from inside would not be able to notice it. Fortunately, I did not open the door too widely and missed the bolt narrowly. A bolt has a pointed end. This would greatly increase the chance of a dent and the paintwork might chip off too. If you