All the time in my Ford Dealer Tech days... ...Tauruses (Tauri?) were a**** some of Ford's BETTER cars of that time, actually...scary, eh?! Tempos, Probes and anything with a garbage 4.0 V6 in it were the ones I hated most!
Try changing the belts in a 2.6 liter Mercedes 190. You start by REMOVING the radiator, condenser, and some other components from the front of the engine. OUCH!
If it weren't for modern cars I would be working some where else. Brand new german cars are usually nice to work on. I like a wide variety of cars, but I love to lift hoods with the the old 3 point star on 'em. New cars can be a pain, I may never own one.
I knew what ya meant...worked on a buddy's old 69 Benzer...seemed like that car was DESIGNED to be a joy to service...I had no complaints!!
MB's are made to be serviced, especially the older ones. They do do some very stupid things, as all companys. I am not ashamed to work on them, this just isn't the place for them. Some **** wold probably get pissed at me working on anything but cool old iron. At least I can feed myself by turning wrenches. I'm at work right now waiting for my next customer, I hate slow days.
My mom has a '96 SHO - it's comfortable, well-equipped, fast and decently fun to drive for a four-door jellybean but I shudder to think of ever working on it!
Yup....call me "old fashioned" but I really feel changing a radiator should NOT involve removing the bumper "cover". In fact cars should even HAVE bumper "covers" Give me back the days of big sc arey ****-off looking CHROME bumpers that the other driver would be afraid of. Sorry to keep ranting....but its a slow work day here as well.
I have a '97 Dodge pickup with a ***mins Diesel in it. A true marvel of packaging. The ***mins is a straight 6, and when looking at the valve covers, your first thought is "damn, I'd hate to have to work on cylinder #6 (in the back)". Just after that, you realize that you're looking at #5, and that #6 is even further back. It must share space with the radio. Yeah, it isn't traditional, but it tows a lot of broken traditional cars for my budies and me. And it's been hotroded.
My '95 VR6 Jetta is in the shop now - I'm paying an embar***ing price to have the heater core replaced. I have the Haynes manual and expected to do this in the driveway... how hard could it be?... "Step 1: Completely discharge the A/C system..." Um...no thanks.
New for this year Milton Bradly brings you the "Change your own spark plug kit". Family fun has never been so easy as you try and determin if you must remove the engine of your 04 civic to change the fan belt or guess which bolt needs a special, hard to find and over priced tool for your 98 suburban. The laughter and hillaridy cullminates as you crush your knuckles trying to get that heater core out of your 01 mustang. Every familly fun kit comes with a bio hazard bag to catch all that blood as you cut yourself trying to change a radiator hose...."Dad can I please use the cherry picker to remove the engine to change the oil".."Sure son but be sure and remove the hood first" outa site. With every "Change your own spark plug kit" you get a cherry picker, one 5/16 wrench, one 9mm wrench, two band-aids, and instuction manual. Buy it today for jest 199.99.
To replace the intake manifold gasket on my Altima, they had to pull out the axles and drop the damn motor and trans out of the damn car!!
try a simple battery replace on some of the newer cars...takes over an hour to get to the battery.... some newer mopars require the car to be jacked up and a tire removed (battery located in wheelwell) have fun doing that in a parking lot or side of the road. gotta love all the electronics that can fail...$5 part but you are going nowhere without it. give me a cl***ic that can be rigged using minal supplies to get it home at least. loose a fuel pump on a efi car and you are gogn no where....on a carbed car fill a plastic beverage bottle and run a line like an IV setup and tape/tie up. rusty tank no problem...run a line off a boat tank to get buy while you reseal and clean yours... nick
Thanks for letting me know what it would be like to own a newer vehicle. My newest street driven one is a '60, my newest racer is a '65. Carbs and Points and lots of working space on all of them ...
My mechanic has a latemodel T-bird Supercoupe. You have to remove the lower rad hose to change the fan belt. And my car,you have to remove the water pump to change the distributor cap.
most of the newer imports with four cylinders have the motor mount going through the timing belt, so you have to pull motor mounts to change the timing belt and water pump.as well as pull the valve cover and plastic covers. all with one inch of clearence because the motor is sideways. and thats every 60 thousand miles. good times!
A friend of mine had a newer(probably 2000) Chrysler car you had to remove the front bumper to change a headlight. With a new style VW bug you're supposed to take the fender off to change the battery. **** new cars
I work at an old style 3 bay shop, no mini store or any of that bs. One of the things we gripe about on a daily basis is the way these new cars are designed. It's olmost like there designed on a table, with hopes of everything fitting once ***embled. Here's one, a Northstar cady motor needs a starter. Where is it? Under the intake between the banks of cyliders. I'm not *****ing, it's a profession i chose. But it makes me really appreciate my old stuff..maybe even more than it would if i didn't wrench on new ****..... Rat.
my big problem with newer cars is all the sensors for the computers. camshaft position, crank position, etc i know the car has to have them so the computer can calculate the timing and air fuel ratio, but it always seems stupid to me that the sensors always go bad rather than the actual part going bad. i've got alot of friend with newer cars and they always want me to help out with something because i'm into cars but crist on some of those new econo****boxes it can take a whole day to do a tune up. i hate to say it but i send most of them to friends shops. best one i've heard is when my neigbors new f250 deisel 4x4 had an oil pan leak they had to drop the complete front suspension and motor mounts of off it to put on a new gasket, he got lucky and it was still under warrenty. they days of the backyard mechanic are fading as most people nowadays can;t even find their dipstick. oh well i'll just keep the old ****
[ QUOTE ] most of the newer imports with four cylinders have the motor mount going through the timing belt, so you have to pull motor mounts to change the timing belt and water pump.as well as pull the valve cover and plastic covers. all with one inch of clearence because the motor is sideways. and thats every 60 thousand miles. good times! [/ QUOTE ] AND....if you DON'T change that timing belt........and it FAILS.........It WILL bend ALL the ****ing valves in the engine........countem........24 on SOME of the four cylinder cars........Can.... and DOES add up to some SERIOUS ****ing MONEY.Just did a 1995 Mitsubishi.4 valve motor.NO TURBO.Valve job,timing belt,water pump, timing belt TENSIONER,IDLER pulley,GASKETS...and a water pump........1500 bucks.....
I'm not gonna own a late-model car until I have so much money that I can afford to buy one new, or I find a nice reliable used one that's an EXTREMELY good deal. I could have gotten a pretty decent late-model used car for what I paid for my '55, but if I had, I would've been paying ****LOADS of money for any kind of repair that I wouldn't have been able to do myself, which is of course MOST repairs, and for those things that I would be able to do myself I'd have to devote an insane amount of time. My dad has only driven cheap used Subaru wagons for the last 10 years, and they're quite reliable, but when something does break he's generally screwed. He got rid of the last one (which he bought for only $1000 and drove 100,000 miles) because the carb needed a rebuild and the only kit he could find cost $200 and had to be ordered from some place in Japan, and even if he'd managed to rebuild the carb there were so many hoses under the hood he would've never gotten it back together. The latest one is a '92, with EFI and everything. It needed a new clutch when he bought it, and he did the work himself...in a weekend. The car's FWD but with a longitudinally mounted engine and it still took him 8 hours to replace the clutch. The clutch itself also cost $250. For my truck, a new clutch costs $75 and I could probably do it by myself in an hour. Hell, I replaced the alternator on my mom's Nissan last month and it took me an hour and a half to take it out and an hour and a half to put it back in. Ridiculous!
[ QUOTE ] they days of the backyard mechanic are fading as most people nowadays can;t even find their dipstick. oh well i'll just keep the old **** [/ QUOTE ] And when you're about to throw up your hands in disgust, all the world is right again when you find out that the "modern" hot rodders have adapted all that new technology. Take a look at home brewed EFI http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html FWIW I raced against some awesome high tech and home built machinery back in '86-'88. Stuff with EFI (haltech) and all the rest of the stuff that's considered "ricer" these days like turbos, intercoolers, synthetic oils, electronic igniton control, etc...and it was all coming out of small time garages. It's not that I hate technology, I don't, but those were race cars. It's still a PITA when normal maintaince requires major labor charges.
My boss just did a tune up on a V12 BMW 850... the book calls for 3 hours. And that's just for spark plugs. Every car does seem to have something that's "a good design" and every car has their horrible designs. Before, cars used to have many more good designs than bad ones. It's completely opposite now. Way too many sensors, which I honestly think makes people actually know less about their cars. For instance, the "low tire pressure" light in some new cars. Back in the day, if you didn't check your tires, you blew one, scared the **** out of yourself, and always checked them after that. Derrick
The Jalopy Journal
