I recently had to replace the shoes on the back brakes of a 2005 Toyota Sienna, and man, if Toyota could have made it any more of a pain in the ass, I don’t know how. Drum brakes are fairly simple things, and yet, somehow automotive engineers seem, on occasion, bent on making them unnecessarily complicated. At least that’s a job that I’ll rarely have to do, and having done it once the next time should only take about 10 hours.
Modern cars offer a plethora of questionable design and engineering decisions that really screw with those of us with enough gumption to do basic maintenance tasks. Case in point, the last generation Chevy Malibu – a common man’s car mind you – requires the removal of the front bumper facia just to change out a headlight bulb. That’s not just poor design, that’s just plain mean.
Today I’d like to hear your stories of simple repair and maintenance tasks that have been unexpectedly time consuming and complicated. If the job required ‘special tools’ then it’s even better.
Image: ChevyMalibuForum
Hooniverse Asks- What's the Most Ridiculously-Difficult Simple-Repair You Have Ever had to Attempt?
About
-
The Heater-core in my 1986 mustang.
-
I’ve never heard of an easy heater core job. In what vehicle is that expected to be easy?
Edit: I could not have gotten a better list if I had directly asked “What vehicles have easy-to-access heater cores?” It’s true what they say: There’s no better way to get information on the internet than to make a blatantly false statement.-
Changing the heater core in a Fiero is a piece of cake.
-
“Changing the heater core in a Fiero is a piece of cake.”
Worthy of a t-shirt design.
-
-
Relatively easy on 90’s GM B-bodies: remove ~13 screws in passenger footwell to remove access panel, two bolts to remove a dash brace (granted one of these bolts is a pain to access), undo springlock hose clamps in engine bay to unhook hoses, remove heater core.
-
My 74 Ford truck. It was located in a plenum in the engine compartment. Remove the hoses, pull some bolts holding a panel in place and BAM! Done in 15 minutes.
And five of those were spent drinking a beer and giggling about how easy it’d been. -
TIL that there are plenty of easy heater core jobs out there.
-
An easy job on ’80s and ’90s (up through ’96) F-150s. I changed the one on mine years ago, then figured out it was probably the hose connections at the aluminum heater core. Switched to the “red” heater hoses and the leaks finally went away.
-
A 1972 Buick .
-
Series I and Series II Land Rovers, the heater is sitting in plain sight on the firewall under the dash. Of course this assumes your Land Rover actually has a heater since it was optional on early stuff and frequently deleted on export models in desert and tropical markets.
-
My dad used to use a shadetree/redneck mechanic. He charged the same to replace a heater core as he did to swap engines.
-
Classic Minis until the later Rover ones as they were just bolted under the dashboard (being an option originally). Regardless, I hope to never have to change one (in any car for that matter).
-
-
-
Practically speaking, battery replacement isn’t something that needs to be undertaken with much frequency, so tucking the battery into a place where it takes a half hour to replace it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s just that, relative to how simple the task has historically been on every other car, having to remove the wheel on your Chrysler to replace the battery seems unnecessarily onerous.
http://ww2.justanswer.com/uploads/brownjeff/2011-01-03_135358_1.gif-
Changed one for a lady down the street in her 2005ish Pontiac. I was shocked how much of the car had to be disassembled to get it out.
-
GM seems to be guilty of poor battery placement too. On C4 Corvettes, part of the fender had to be removed. Surprisingly on 2011 Silverado, I had to remove about three underhood braces, the battery on the truck wasn’t bad, we just needed a battery for the boat at the lake really bad.
-
tried to change the battery on mrs spottys C4 citroen,gave up after an hour or so and had it towed to the cheese eating surrender monkey shop. turns out you can only use the approved battery anyway so even if i had got it out i wouldn’t have been able to get the appropriate one except from the aforementioned shop…..
and don’t get me started on changing headlight bulbs on that nightmare of a vehicle, suffice to say all you need is a motorcycle mirror, extendable magnetic pick-up tool, 9 inch long fingers with at least 4 joints in their length and the patience of a saint……….i have the first two (now)
i ended up replacing the bulb with an LED one so i’ll never have to do it again (done both sides twice now, never again)
-
-
Starter motor in a 1st gen Toyota Tercel. Longitudinal motor, with the starter at the back of the engine, facing the firewall. If I didn’t have the hands of a third-grader, it would have required removal of the exhaust.
-
I recall hearing that whatever generation of Toyota Landcruiser that had a V8 (late-90’s maybe?) put the starter motor in the engine Vee under the intake manifold.
-
I don’t think that was unique to that iteration of the UZ engine. IIRC the Lexus 4.0L version had this same interesting design choice.
Changing the starter on the Lexus version was even a penalty at LeMons at one point.-
Sweet Mother of Moses
http://www.lextreme.com/forums/showthread.php?s=3be86d02e20391fd1838f36d49b8c568&t=11862
-
-
-
Did you find many applications for the rest of the third-grader, or just the hands?
-
-
1. Rear spark plugs on GM 3.1L MPFI engine. Car on stands, transmission in N. Remove front motor mounts, then JACK THE ENGINE BLOCK OVER to reach the plugs. Again, remember to put car on stands with transmission in N so that you don’t rip the splines off the halfshafts or shred the parking pawl.
2. Alternator on 2006 Saab 9-5. I was able to get it out the top, but the official method is to drop the exhaust to change the alternator. -
My biggest frustration was a maintenance item that turned into a repair.
I went to change the oil in my ’05 Odyssey. No big deal, right? But I couldn’t get the drain plug loose. Because of the location and limited lift ability of my cheap-o Craftsman jack, I couldn’t get a breaker bar on it, but why should I have had to? I tugged on it so hard I was dragging my back across the asphalt of my driveway.
Worried I was going to strip the bolt or damage the oil pan ($$$), I stopped working and called the shop that had last done the oil change. It was a shop we trusted, it had been winter (I have no garage), and they’d been running one of those specials that made the cost vs. doing it myself a wash anyway.
I explained what was happening, and they asked me to bring it in and they’d take care of it and change the oil using the oil and filter I’d already purchased, so I did, as they’d never let me down before. They successfully removed the plug, replaced it with a new one (not just a new crush washer), and charged me nothing.
When they were done, they explained that mine wasn’t the first car to have this issue. Evidently, they’d briefly had a tech on oil change duty that was bad news. When more than one afflicted car came in for the subsequent oil change and the tech (a different guy) couldn’t remove the drain plug without an impact wrench, they looked at their records and noticed the pattern. They questioned the original tech and learned he’d been tightening drain plugs with a 2′ breaker wrench and a healthy dose of elbow grease. I think he was let go.-
I had always heard that it was not only possible but comparatively easy to strip the threads in your oil pan by over tightening the drain plug. Guess that guy never heard that.
-
It’s very lucky I didn’t need a new oil pan. Lucky for the shop, that is, as they’d be stuck footing the bill.
I say that full in the knowledge that I’ve had a leaking oil pan on this beastie for at least 4 years. But it hasn’t gotten any worse, and there’s so much to remove to get to the pan that I really, REALLY just want to limp it along until we sell this vehicle in 10 or so years. The leak is slow enough that we only get small spots on the driveway and it never has any effect on the dipstick level.
Drives my wife nutso, though, as she’s only ever owned newer, lower-mileage cars before this van (which we hope is the only one we ever own), and she can’t imagine just shrugging at something as serious as an oil drip!-
“I say that full in the knowledge that I’ve had a leaking oil pan on this beastie for at least 4 years.”
Where I live, that car wouldn’t have passed tech inspection twice – a bit wet around the seam could pass, but forseeably dripping onto public roads – no.-
Where I live, we have no inspection beyond making sure the VIN on the dash matches the one on the title.
::deep breath::
FREEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
-
-
-
-
I would guess there are (were) some stress fractures in a few oil pans from that particular tech’s handiwork.
-
-
Replacing spark plugs on an ’05 Legacy GT. Pancake engine and “frame rails” combine to make replacing the rear plugs an hours long process, particularly on the driver’s side.
-
Gearwrench stubbies are a Subaru owner’s friends.
-
-
Full disclosure – I owned a ’94 Z28.
GM designed 4th Gen F-bodies, especially the 93-97 LT1 powered versions to make themselves obsolete via maintenance headache. Even though the basic formula fit what every budget conscious performance enthusiast (how’s that for a euphemism for “redneck”) should drool over at current prices, they are uniformly unloved. Half the engine is under the cowl, so changing the rearmost spark plugs involves either a zen-master level control over swivels and extensions or a special cut down socket, a ratchet wrench and bloody knuckles. The distributor is shitty and mounted between the equally shitty water pump and the timing chain. Those are fairly obvious, but are the types of things that turn in to a brand killer when you take a major factor in the unique appeal of a model (cheap platform for performance, even if only aspirational) and flush it for the sake of polarizing styling. Oh, and you pretty much have to pull the motor from the bottom. It can be done from the top, but only out of stubbornness.
My favorite enthusiast adaptations were (1) the guy that rigged up a stacked timber cradle contraption in his garage to hold the chassis up high enough to remove the entire K-member/engine/transmission/front suspension and (2) whoever figured out exactly where to cut a hole in the back hatch area to create a port hole through which you could replace the fuel pump that would otherwise require removal of the rear axle to drop the tank.
Past a certain point, if you put any value at all on time and effort, modifying and maintaining nearly any other vehicle with a V8 and RWD this side of an Econoline van ends up looking like a better proposition.-
I always wondered about how much of a pain in the ass maintaining one of those V10-equipped Econolines would have been. Hell, even the OHC V8s are known for being pains just because they’re so damned huge (and pull an “I’ll never let go!” on their spark plugs).
-
A friend ours drove one for the over 200k, then replaced it with one with a 5.4. They always let a shop work on theirs. Spark plugs in Tritons are a pain – depending on the year, they either launch out of the heads (not enough threads in the head), or break apart coming out (3-valve heads). Visit the technician sites and watch the techs cuss the E-Vans with Power Stroke diesels.
-
From what I understand, it’s an Achilles’s heel in an otherwise solid engine platform that can go well over 500k with the right maintenance.
-
-
-
Hooray for Optispark!
-
I owned a 1994 Z28 Convertible too. I attempted to change the Opti-spark ONCE. Never did change the plugs. I ended up trading it in for a 1987 Bmw 325 and cash.
-
-
Removing a water pump pulley. They bolts where in so tight, I had to buy a special extractor to get them out of my very expensive water pump. To get the drill and extractor in I had to remove the fans, rad, etc. Let’s not forget I had to drive to the one side of the city (I live in the GTA) to get the tool. Then I needed to replace the bolt, which I had to special order and buy a box of 100 to get 4… this involved 2 trips to the other end of the city… oh, for the love of cars. It took almost a week to sort out 4 simple bolts.
-
Pottying the dog.
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4010/4197755652_d73b91e1ac_z.jpg-
Hey, I’m all for more pictures of cats on these here ol’ Webbernets — lords know we don’t have enough yet — but I’m gonna need some context here on how it relates to yonder question been asked.
-
-
-
An old co-worker had a Chrysler minivan with a V6. In 150?K he had never replaced the rear three spark plugs, because he claimed they were just too hard to get to. I have no idea if they’re really that bad, or whether he was just too lazy and stupid. (He WAS kind of lazy and stupid.)
-
I’ve got the same. It’s a bit of a trick involving sticking your arm through a tiny opening and twisting around so you look like you’re wrestling an invisible man while laying on top of an engine, and you have to be one of those people whose fingers work like eyes.
-
A big pain on ’04-’10 Siennas. Pull the wipers and linkage, and the cowl panel, remove the upper intake…
-
-
I suppose it depends on the year. On our 2005, I think I removed the cowling. We’ve since upgraded to an ’06 that just clicked past 35K miles. Perhaps the almighty will bless me with a replacement before I have to do that job again.
-
-
Replacing the cats on my ’06 Explorer. In many cars you can just unbolt the cats and replace them. In my car, you have to remove a chassis crossmember to replace the cats. Well, the way Ford designed the way the bolts go into the chassis, they inevitably rust and become nearly impossible to get out. I tried a wrench with an extension on the handle, an impact wrench, penetrating oil, and a propane torch. I couldn’t get them out. The worst part of it was that I cut the old cats out thinking I might be able to get the new ones in without removing the crossmember because the old cats were a solid Y-pipe and the new ones were a two-piece Y-pipe. No luck. So I had to get it towed to a shop. Luckily the tow was free thanks to State Farm, but the repair took longer than it should because apparently I damaged one of the studs holding one side of the cats to the manifold. At least it was a good learning experience. I learned that Ford needs to work on their bolt placement/design.
-
And another – the spark plug change on 2006-2008 (?) Explorers with the 4.6. They get seized in the head and sometimes they’ll break and then you have to buy a special tool to remove them. Now, luckily for me I changed them without breaking any, but it was a tedious process. I had to spray penetrating oil in each plug well (is there a better name for this?), then turn the spark plug about a quarter of a turn. Then let it sit for 30 minutes to allow the oil to penetrate the plugs and break down the carbon buildup. And then slowly loosen each. You really have to wonder how a car company can exist for over a hundred years and still get simple things so wrong. Even after all this I still like my Explorer.
-
I have successfully avoided certain engine/car configurations for this reason.
Transverse V6 or V8 in a sedan? NOPE. It’s okay in my minivan, though. Plugs were pretty easy.
OHC V8 in a truck designed for nothing larger than an OHV V6? NOPE. My buddy and I had enough trouble doing the plugs on his B4000 with the OHV V6 as it was!
Hell, I’d buy the new Mustang Ecoboost just for the ease of maintenance (also because I love wee turbo mills).-
Anything with a I-6 in a place where a big-block V-8 could fit is an absolute dream to work on. In some cases, if you’re skinny enough, you can stand on the ground in between the frame rail and the engine block.
-
You’re making me miss my old Chevelle with the 250 Six.
http://12bolt.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/P1040650.154102252_std.JPG -
I’ll add any GM full size truck with an LS-derived V8. I can literally stand in my Suburban’s engine bay to work on stuff.
-
Try a full size GM truck with the 4.3L V-6 and an electric fan. I’m 6’1″ and 300lbs. I’m pretty sure I could fit between the engine and the radiator.
-
-
-
I second the little-engine-in-big-engine-bay idea. Had a 2.3 Ranger and now have the 2.3 Escape and there’s plenty of room to maneuver in there. I never had to do it, but I understand the back side spark plugs on the 3.0 V6 are a real pain. I’ll let you all know how the ones the four cylinder go if it’s terrrrible – oil change and spark plug swap planned for sometime this weekend.
-
A buddy I play with in the church band has a 2.5L V6 Cougar. He has ~100k on it and was getting a misfire. I asked if he’d ever swapped the plugs. Nope. So I suggested that. He asked if I could help, as he was reasonably mechanically inclined but had never done the job before. I agreed, but we could never find a time when our schedules lined up, so another bandmate helped him. I heard the back three plugs were a nightmare to access in that tight engine bay, so I guess I lucked out.
-
3.0 V6 Ranger plugs weren’t too bad. I did it once on our ’93, although it helped that I already had an extra deep 5/8″ spark plug socket from working on a VW 16V.
-
Was referring to the V6 Escape – sorry didn’t make that very clear. Transverse mounted V engine seems to be a recipe for problems.
-
-
-
-
I DREAD doing the plugs in my Mustang. I’m planning on getting the Lisle tool just in case.
-
Yeah, that’s definitely not a bad idea. Just keep it in the package unless you need it so you can return it and get your money back if no plugs break.
-
Alternator in my friend’s Mini. I have replaced alternators in B-bodies, a Mercury Sable, and a few other cars. Never had to take the bumper off before. (Not my video, but you can see what is involved.)
-
The car on jackstands in the preview is enough to scare me straight. I think BMW put the fuse panel inside the oil pan on those things.
-
That would be classic if it were only true. The tagline might be “oil bathed to prevent moisture damage and corrosion!”
-
The funny part is that it sounds plausible.
-
When you start to see electric gremlins… change the oil!
-
-
-
-
Although that’s definitely a tedious job, it doesn’t seem to be too hard at least. And that video is great. It’d just be nice if car makers wouldn’t do silly things like this, especially on a Mini where you can count on having problems.
-
Maybe hard is the wrong way to say it, but when most alternator changes require a wrench, an hour and a 6-pack for before during and after. It stinks when one requires a friend and a case.
-
I mean, it’s definitely not easy for sure, but I guess what I was trying to say is that it’s mostly straight forward. How long did it take you lads?
-
We did brakes and an oil change as well. Can’t remember though. Probably six hours, but I can’t say with certainty, or that we were working efficiently.
-
That’s lengthy for sure. At least you didn’t spend a week off and on trying to replace catalytic converters unsuccessfully. haha
-
-
-
This isn’t a repair really.
Let’s say your friend is driving a 1999 Chrysler Intrepid (because Canada) on a cold and windy evening (because Canada) and hits a patch of slick road and throws it in the ditch (because, again, Canada). How do you take that car out of the ditch? Because we sure as hell couldn’t find anything, it’s like it was specifically designed to be impossible to pull. The manual, which should point out nice handy pieces of metal to attach a tow rope onto, suggested rocking back and forth, which is not quite so helpful when the snow is above your wheels. The people who stopped to help also couldn’t find anything. And it was cold and miserable so it was basically a pile of people swearing at Chrysler and freezing.
Eventually we were rescued by someone who had to do this with an Intrepid before and knew where there was a hard point to actually attach to (deep within the front suspension from what I could tell, though I was inside the car warming up after my fruitless attempts to find a hard point.) He said there’s also basically nothing on the back of the car. So we had beers and swore at Chrysler.
-
You left off “because Canada” on your last sentence, which is the most Canadian of all!
When I first got the Miata it took me over a month to change one oxygen sensor. There was just enough room to make it look easy, but not enough room to get a deep socket over it. I soaked it in PB Blaster, tried different wrenches. Nothing would get that thing loose. Finally I rented a tool that was offset to the side and it took all of a minute to remove.
-
Crow’s foot wrenches. Only useful when they’re the only thing that works.
-
I would have invested in these years ago, but I only ever seem to find them in expensive sets. And like you say, “only useful when they’re the only thing that works.” You never need a set of these, just one here and there. It seems like you could probably go your whole life only needing two or three of them.
-
I think I paid $40 for my set, and only needed the 9/16. I might’ve used it three times in the last 20 years. But in each case, nothing else would’ve done it, so it’s been nice having them around, so long as I can remember where I put them.
-
-
The sad tale of my metric crows’ feet – bought the set only to acquire the 13mm, the one I needed to do something on my Alfa. Replace master cylinder, IIRC. 5 minutes into the job, it fell behind the workbench into a half inch gap between floor and wall. Two garage reconfigurations later, it has never been found.
-
Replacing the radio in my ’93 Escort (really, pretty any late 80s-mid 90s FoMoCo product) – buy these specific radio removal hooks from Canadian Tire (like three bucks for the needed pack of four), insert into holes at the left and right side of the radio, pull it out. 30 seconds and you’ve got the full swap done.
Replacing the radio on my ’97 Cavalier – disconnect the battery, remove the airbag fuses, unscrew and take the upper dash cover off. Then, remove the lower dash facia off, unscrew and remove the radio. Reverse steps. Takes like 15 minutes once you’re used to it.
-
My first vehicle, a 1988 Ram 50, came to me with a radio prep kit. The wires were there, but there was nothing in the speaker holes and a blank on the dash and in the antenna location.
My dad had purchased it new like this and, in the 10 years between purchase and when he passed it on to me, had never put in a radio. Luckily, Xmas was right after my birthday, so that’s what I asked for that year, and they reluctantly agreed, even going so far as to supplement the wimpy 4″ dash speakers with a small sub behind the seat. In that little cab, it could reach defeaning volumes without distortion, so I managed to have the family’s oldest car with the nicest stereo. Story of many teenager rides, I suspect.-
If I remember correctly, my Escort came with two radios – one would short out at random, the other distorted the hell out of any cassette you’d try and play in it (which, in the era of those cassette adapters for discmans, was a problem).
On the Cavalier, I thought it’d be a great idea to find the factory cd player and swap it in place of the stock AM/FM/Cassette. Turns out it’s not quite wired for that to work, and I just gave up and bought an FM adapter.-
Yep those theft loc radios where not that easy. I tried to change the cassette player in an alero for a cd player from a same year impala. Turns out it has to be reprogrammed at the dealer to work which is more than $160. So i bought a aftermarket cd player and a wiring kit for $100.
-
-
For many teenagers, loudness is a higher priority than sound quality
-
A friend of mine had a ’91 Dynasty, and decided it make complete sense to put two 11″ subs in the back of it. You could hear it coming from miles away and the pounding of the bass quickly removed all of the glued-on interior trim.
-
-
-
As it’s a Cavalier, many people believe you only need one tool to complete any job. It’s just a matter of choosing between the sledge hammer or the acetylene torch.
-
I’ve got a package of those hooks – I was going to pull the one in my F-150, because the light behind every button went out (they must have been tied together), but I never got around to it, and traded the truck in.
-
For the ford. Cut two pieces of coat hanger and bend each into a U, use just as you would the original tool.
Replacing a coolant temp sensor. On my ’05 A8 W12 the $50 VW sensor is tucked in between the engine and firewall. The Audi dealer quoted $4000 to do the work as step one is “remove engine”. The same car with the V8 would have been a $400 repair. I did it myself without removing the engine but it involved a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Lots and lots of tears. Oh, and almost four months of frustration.
-
Someone should create a database of shop manual instructions to cross reference what percentage of procedures include “remove engine” or “separate subframe from chassis” as a quantitative reminder of what you’re getting yourself into. I doubt Audi designed anything on any A8 with regard to the home mechanic.
-
The home mechanic was definitely not who this car was designed for. When I was at the dealership, a woman came in because her TPS showed her tires were slightly low. That’s the normal level of owner involvement, I think!
-
I would be willing to bet, based on some of the things my mechanic has told me and some of the things I’ve had to fix myself, that ease of repair is not a priority on any VW/Audi of the past twenty years or so.
-
From the manufacturer perspective, it’s fine: assemble the complete engine and shove it into the engine bay. When your fingers still have room to do relevant wrenching, the engine bay is too big for the engine.
-
-
-
Changing spark plugs in a dual spark 4 cylinder Ranger. In order to get the #3 and #4 plugs on the drivers side you really need to remove the intake manifold, or have magical dislocating wrists. Of course, being a Ford product of that era the task is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of blind bolts/nuts/studs, and many, many brittle wiring connectors that need to be moved before you can get to the objective.
When I went in to change them years later it was very clear to me that the shop that did the work before had only changed the #1 plug on the drivers side. Heaven forbid if they had been tasked with changing the coil pack on the same side.
-
My current car needs parts of the intake manifold pulled to replace spark plug wires. The leads for the back cylinders are clipped to the fuel rail, tucked under the intake plenums.
-
Plugs and wires should be readily accessible!
As should all normal wear items, looking at you VW oil filters!-
They were kind enough to leave indents in the plenums for the special spark plug wrench, though, so plugs can be changed in situ. Unless you’ve got collapsed motor mounts and the plug tool now hits the shock tower…
-
-
Kawasaki Ninja 500: Air filter.
Loosen fairings, remove gas tank, remove bridge gas tank was bolted to, take top off air box, change filter.
Seriously? Everyone else has a little door in the side right where you’d want it.
-
Yeah, but. . . FREE NINJA!
-
Ninjas never use the door.
Thermostat on Land Rover Freelander
Robert, just wait until you have to replace the lower control arms on the SIenna – you have to jack up the engine and pull a couple of the motor mounts, to get to the front pivot points. I was just reading about it the other day, on ToyotaNation. I’m sure I’ll get to do those before too long on my wife’s ’08.
-
LCAs are next on the front end of my 150k Odyssey. I’ve already done the axles, ball joints, tie rod ends, sway bar end links, struts, and strut mounts. I could take apart the front suspension of that silly thing blindfolded.
Not the worst, but I cringe every time I have to change the oil in our 2006 Honda Pilot. Honda’s engineers kindly put the oil filer way down in the bowels of the transverse V6, and then conveniently angled it towards the front, so that the radiator gets in the way of any attempts to refill the engine. I did a couple changes by daisy chaining 3(!) funnels together, and then finally went out and bought a super-long neck tractor funnel from our local Agri-Supply.
That car is also the only one I’ve ever come across that requires tools to change an air filter. Why, Honda, why?
Removing the valve cover on an AMC Spirit with a 258. The cover tucks under a lip at the back, so it’s nearly impossible to get over the valve springs but under the lip. The official procedure is to jack up the front end, and loosen (loosen, not remove all the way!) the nuts holding the engine crossmember in, so that the engine drops a half inch to an inch, giving you just enough clearance to get the cover off. I’ve had mine off a time or two or twenty (also tends to leak a lot until you get it just right…), so I’ve mastered the rotate-tilt-pull hard while rotating and tilting maneuver and can get it off without dropping the engine.
Meh. Sausage fingers, no mechanical inclination whatsoever, and impatient ambition combined make everything above the “change-lightbulbs-and-change-the-oil-level” a nightmare. I remember trying to fix a new rear hatch to my 1971 145. The Haynes manual said: “Now take out the lock”. No word on how to do that. It baffled me for an hour, called a friend, he pulled out a disk with his fingernail, and the bloody lock fell out. Watershed moment for me, that’s when I, sort of, gave up.
Haven’t actually done it myself, but I still remember the “…wait, what?” moment the first time that I noticed that one of the accessory belts on my family’s 2003 Odyssey (water pump, I think) runs around the motor mount. Removing an old one is easy enough — just cut it off. Installing a new one, however, requires disconnecting that motor mount and jacking the engine up high enough to create a belt-thickness’ worth of gap.
I haven’t yet had to do plugs on my WRX, but I’m not looking forward to it. Oh well, at least just about everything else on a flat engine layout is easy to get to.
I procrastinated the U-joint replacement in my ’96 Thunderbird for something like a year. It wasn’t a bad job overall, but the fuel tank had to be lowered from its usual location so that the shaft could be dropped out far enough to slide out from under the differential housing. I only put about 1000 miles on the car in that timeframe though.
So I helped somebody change a headlamp bulb in their ’14 Mercedes SLK, Big mistake.
They’d obviously cheaped out and gone with halogens and not xenons, but fortunately the owners manual had step-by-step instructions, clearly originally written in German and translated into English via simplified Mandarin and hexidecimal.
There’s an access panel in the wheelarch. On 19″ wheels there’s about 2″ clearance even on full lock, and even that is with your back turned, for extra reach. So you’re forced to go in blind. Once you’ve got that mud-spattered hatch slid open (a position it doesn’t return from without a herculean effort) you then have to reach forward another nine inches to find the bulb, surrounded by myriad sharp metal outcrops jutting out to relieve you of digit flesh.
When you do find the bulb you have no clue how much force to use, whether to twist or pull:- the handbook simply says “remove”. I hate to think how many people have butchered their headlamps performing this operation.
So really, to replace the headlamp bulb on an R172 SLK, you need to remove the front wheel first. Madness.
-
09 and newer rams suffer from the same sort of hatch and 10″ of sharpness to pull a tab that releases the headlight housing. Definatly a PIA.
I know a clutch isn’t exactly easy, but in a 2000 audi s4 it’s insane. The local foreign auto shop (small town) laughed, they wouldn’t touch it. Luckily my uncle has a lift, still took about 40 hours. I did it from below, most people recommend pulling the engine and tranny to do it. I sold the car after that. On the other hand any car work i look at now I think, eh not that bad
Oh and a heater core in a mini is pretty easy. A real one, probably a bitch in a BMW mini.
Apologies if this has already been written, but replacing the alternator on a Honda B-series requires either pulling the axle or the intake manifold.
The pig (08g5) requires the same method of replacing a light bulb. That is unless you take a heavy handed aproach at getting the headlight out and just pull it past the bumper. IIRC the tail lights are a pain in the azz too.
The worst was an 07 santa fe altinator. Ten minutes to remove the thing and an hour to get it out of the engine bay.
Timing belt on a 2001 Civic EX Sedan. ABS distribution block right where it didn’t need to be to get everything else out of the way. I’ve changed belts in all manner of Hondas but this one was the toughest.
Replacing the alternator on an 80’s/early 90’s vintage Saab 900. For those of you who don’t know, the engine in a classic Saab is mounted reverse longitudinally, with the front of the engine (where the accessory drive is) facing the firewall. Looking at it, it seems quite simple, it’s just a v-belt pulley and a couple of bolts. But the problem is the lower bolt is like 6″ long, while there’s only about 5″ of space between the alternator and the firewall. So that bolt can’t be removed without undoing the motor mounts and jacking the front of the engine up. Or, as I figured out, you can just cut that bolt with a hacksaw and install a new one from the opposite direction, (Though this isn’t all that easy either, since you have to unbolt the oil filter assembly in order to give you enough room for the alternator to come out.)
Replacing heater hoses on my dad’s 1970 Lincoln Mark III required cutting a 3X4″ hole in the steel inner fender (remember those?) to get to the hose clamps at the heater core. Then you had to make a patch or the hole would fill up with ice, mud, etc.
Passenger side headlight bulb replacement on a 06 SAAB 9-5. Mass air sensor and hoses have to come out, and it’s still a PIA after that.
Changed the spark plugs on a 2003 Volvo V70. Easy work that, as it’s 5 separate coil packs. Just pull the pack, unscrew the plug, replace, done.
Until you drop a bolt.
Which you can’t get to.
So you try to knock it out of the way.
And you knock the lead off the starter.
Hilarity ensues.
Driver’s side headlight bulb on a Mk4 Golf or Jetta. It is actually possible to do without removing the battery, I’ve done it, but it’s a pain in the ass.
Plug wires on a 90 Ranger 2.9 V6 with air conditioning. The “with air conditioning” bit is important, as one of the AC lines goes right over the distributor, and closer to the distributor than the height of a plug wire’s distributor end. I want to shoot the asshat that was responsible for that.
Brake booster and master cylinder on an 88 Civic. Not that that’s exactly an easy job at the best of times (can you say “fold up like a pretzel in the driver’s footwell”?), but in a car designed to be RHD in a LHD market, it took disconnecting a fair amount of stuff from the intake manifold to juuuuuuuust get enough clearance to get the booster out. Damn you, Honda, and your engines on the wrong side. I shudder to think how bad something like a RHD VW must be, because VW puts its engines much closer to the firewall.
Alternator belt on an 85 Jetta diesel with AC. The belt system was horribly convoluted on those cars (because things had to route under the injection pump), and required tensioning in the proper order (one belt ran the water pump and AC compressor, the other ran from the AC compressor to the alternator), while manually counteracting forces to keep the pulleys aligned. And, it turned out that mine had the wrong pulley shims installed on the alternator, so it wasn’t ever going to line up without shim replacement.
Alternator/water pump belt on a 92 Miata. This wasn’t because it was a bad design at all, on the contrary, for a V-belt design it was relatively simple. However, the tensioning bolt for that belt was rusted on my car, and snapped off as soon as I tried to loosen it past a certain point. Had to call my dad to get a suitable replacement bolt to me, pulled the tensioning bracket out of the car, soaked it in PB Blaster, and used vise grips to pull the remains of the bolt out. By the time I got the thing out, the tensioning bracket was burning hot.
Leave a Reply