Argh! No wonder I love working on old cars!!!!!

I changed the rear exhaust manifold on my wife's '99 voyager (cracked and leaking) What a biatch that was! somewhere north of 8 hours in that job, a lot of cuts and bruises and many cuss words in new combinations.

The problem is I am far to frugal to pay some schlepp to do it for me, and I can't afford it anyway.

 

OK, Ford Expedition 5.4 Liter, 50K miles on it. Computer throws code for misfire #6 cylinder. Engine is partly recessed into firewall and coil packs are buried under the fuel rails for the injectors. The coil pack is secured with a 7mm bolt that requires a 1/4 drive ratchet with double universal joint with just the right length extension to remove. Drop the socket two/three times. Auto parts store give me the wrong coil pack, but insists it's right. Return to auto parts store with old coil pack and start opening boxes to match. Find the right one. Three plus hours for what could have been a 10 minute job.

 

Toyota pickup 6 Cyl 4wd needs a starter. From the top, bottom, or wheelwell you can't even see the bolts holding the starter in place, can't fit hands in there to feel them either. HTF can I get a wrench or socket on them? Remove exhaust manifold? Remove front differential?

No responses necessary for OT vehicles.

 

This thread is starting to make me feel better. Glad to see I'm not alone. Too bad car makers don't come out with a "Real Car" for the regular Joe.

 

If everyone may remember, the Ford Maverick was supposed to be "the peoples car". Every bolt/nut was 1/2" or 9/16, and accessible. Why I remember that I don't know. My wife drives a Kia Sportage. She likes it, I hate it. Tried for 2 days to change out the starter motor. My hands are too big, there's NO room, it's down under a bunch of stuff, or there's stuff under it so you can't get to it from below. Had the battery in and out 6-7 times. Finally took it to the dealer to do. They wind up dropping the battery, then try and tell us it "had a leak" (well of course it did, you dropped it). They replaced the battery at N/C with a used battery, and then later with a new battery when the used battery went south (our battery I had in and out was still under warranty). Course when they finished the starter swap they also found several other things needing attention, like the 4WD vacuum hoses. It's turning into my cross to bear on this earth. Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

If they can't figure out which one of those it needs, it's time for a new mechanic.....This ain't rocket science and there is a procedure for checking all of those....


BTW Gas tanks in chevys aren't that hard to pull....but then again maybe I've done to many.......

 

.....Same problem with my girlfriend Kia(I call it the ****-kia)but what do you expect from a car that could sit in the BOX OF MY fORD 150.....

 

KIA stands for Killed In Accident.

 

I agree that the new stuff is sometimes really hard to work on. But you must also admit that it is far more reliable than what we had in the past. Plugs good for 100K, no carb or choke to need adjusting, no cap, rotor, points to adjust or replace every 20,000. Who replaces plug wires with less than 100,000K on them? Even belts and hoses seem to last longer. I know I do far less maintenance on my newer vehicles than i did in the past on what was then new cars. I have a 2002 DD that I have done nothing to other than normal maintenance stuff. Had a van before that that i had to replace a thermastat on...that was it in over ten years. I've never been left stranded by a "modern" car, can't say that about some of the older ones I owned when they were newer cars. We routinely see people drive 2000,000 with very minimal maintenance, like my wife who thinks that filling up the gas tank is maintenance. Forty years ago a 100,000 mile car was done, used up. I know they are hard to work on, sometimes even maintenance stuff is a pain, but you have to do a lot less of it...makes for more time to work on the older more important stuff!

 

2002 Nissan V6 Altima. Computer reads that there is a missfire on one of the 6 coil packs. Pull front three to find two spark plug tubes full of oil, but coil packs working.

Drain coolant, remove cowl panel, pull intake and find back 3 spark plug tubes also full of oil. Must be just a gasket. NO. You have to buy new valve covers ($300) from the dealer to fix that. Great! So while I'm in there, I replace the back 3 coil packs just to make sure I never have to go in for surgery like this again. All day, no fun, just to get to a few spark plugs.

OH, and tonight I'm putting back together my father's Honda CR-V because it needed a new starter.... and apparently it also needed to have half the engine on the floor of the garage to get there.

This is why I like Model As.

 

And that was easier how? I did the exact same job for a friend's daughter, and it took me a whopping 20 minutes...no lift, no fancy tools, and not day one of professional training. It would have been less had I not been lazy, and actually used a jack.

No offense to anyone talking about cutting holes to replace parts, but I'd hate to see your hot rods if you work on them the same way. Cutting holes in the bed to replace a fuel pump? I removed a late Chevy truck bed (to paint it, not for pump replacement)...a long bed at that... by myself, using an engine hoist to pick up the other end. Something like 8 bolts for the bed, a couple for the filler neck, and some wires...thats it. Took me maybe 30 minutes, half of which was spent jockeying the bed trying to keep from dropping it.If I was going to buy a vehicle, and saw a hole cut over the pump (F-body guys do this too, drives me nuts), I'd p***...what else did the owner F up, not wanting to do it right?

Late models can be frustrating to work on, but the point is if you buy a decent car to begin with (no FWD ****), you don't have to work on it. I put over 200k on a Crown Vic daily...drove the hell out of it...and in the years I had it it only got oil changes, tuneups (easy), a set of front brake pads and an o2 sensor (a week before I sold it!). Best car I have ever owned.

 

ok, so i helped a buddy out replacing a clutch on his 2002 Mazda ricer. Im such a nice guy.

5 HOURS LATER WE HAVE THE MOTOR OUT.

Who the **** has to pull the motor to replace the ******* clutch?

I also did spark plugs on a 2001 ford. 4 hours worth of work

 

4.5 hours, a boat load of cut hands for a fuel filter onna 1991 Toyota celica....buried up under the firewall and under the slave and master cyl....

Same car, 5 hours for a starter....screwy part is it only took me 6 hours to change the clutch as the whole front end crossmember drops out with 6 bolts....

 

MG Midget. Remove engine to change clutch. The ****** sits on top of frame rails that are too narrow to slip the ****** through. That being said, 90 minutes later the engine/****** is out.

 

Wow Bulldawg, I wish you were local to me I would have you pull the bed to change the fuel pump! I think it would be different if I just did a hack and screw job on it, but I didn't. In fact it looks quite trick when the bed liner isn't over it. I think I remember it to be an 8x8 square which now has an inside hinge with a lock. No offense taken to your comments though.

 

I think that old cars are more maintenance intensive than new cars and not necessarily less reliable. By the time the 70s came around I think most vehicles can hold their own in the maintenance and reliability department. Electronic ignition, self adjusting brakes, easily removed rear brake drums, hydraulic lifters, good oiling systems, and hardened valve seats make for a very trouble free vehicle. The majority of problems with 70s and 80s smogmobiles comes from all the emissions equipment. I just strip it all off and rig a carb off of some 60s vehicle and viola I have a car/truck that is every bit as reliable as a 90s era appliancemobile or even more so plus I can actually fix it myself. The parts also run half to a quarter the amount and I have a whole slew of sensors I don't have to worry about.

My last DD before my 65 Ford was a 77 Ford F100. Even with 265k on it I hardly had to do anything to it. I figured out I spent about 600-700 bucks total on repairs and the cost of the truck

I'd say the 60s is when vehicles started getting really reliable. Once the 80s came around it was only a matter of time before the average bear didn't have the skills or patience to work on a car.

 

I'm glad you didn't take offense, it wasn't meant to be offensive. I have seen a few clean jobs on various vehicles, but the thing most have in common is that they took longer than it would take to just drop the tank, or in cases of trucks, remove the bed. If in-tank pumps were so unreliable, I guess I could see it...sure would be easier to replace on the side of the road next time...but I can't say that I have ever replaced the elec pump on the same car twice. They tend to work very well, for a long time, as long as you don't run the gas low all the time. That contibuted to burning up the pump. In fact, when doing OT EFI swaps, I nearly always use an in-tank pump...quieter, and more reliable, generally.

 

I know several reasons why it`s in the tank and keeping the shadtree mechanic from saving big bucks is one of them. The big three have been killing the independant shops for a long time.

 

i'll never afford a "new" car, so being able to keep the junk i HAVE running is key to being mobile at all.

 

all those story's are nothing , well i have a 1993 corvette with an lt1 and one day o decided to clean the throttle body and while un pluging my TB coolant lines , the coolant drips right behind the water pump , and you now what behind the water pump?.... well its the darn distributor. so it got wet ( thats what she said) and i left it a day to dry out and no luck so i proceded to use presurized air and no luck , long story short ,one weekand $350 later my car was fixed something so simple on older cars are a pain in the ***, i want to meet the smarty pants who decided it was a GREAT idea to put a distributor rith behind a water pump without seals and one that fails with moisture. what *****!

 

i guess your lucky! my truck- 98 chevy, wifes truck- 2001 chevy had both 7 and 8 years= 4 fuel pumps.. i have learned not to use aftermarket pumps on these trucks, but if they fail again all i have to do is slide the liner out, open the door and drop another in, rather than **** around with all the salted rusted new england bolts. not to mention they dont usually go bad when they are parked in the garage, so i reckon ill save myself a hundred or so dollar tow while im at it!!

 

Building on Elrod's pictures, hard to touch one of these without a handful of extra strength tylenol:

 

There in lies the difference between working on a fuel pump in the snow belt where gl***guy lives versus Georgia where Bulldawg lives. From someone who has lived with the evils of road salt all my life I can say taking off 6 rusted and rounded off bed mounting bolts is way harder than cutting a hole in the bed. Dropping the tank isn't any better because usually you can about guarantee that the straps are going to be junk and the bolts holding the straps will insta-strip as soon as you get a wrench near it.

I knew a couple guys who had a fuel pump go out on their 88 Chevy pick-up in mid January. It was a balmy 5 below zero for a high (got into the mid 15s below zero at night). This truck was quite rusty and the two dudes were too poor to get it towed and worked on in a nice heated shop. So instead of fighting bolts and probably busting every single one if they were lucky (not so lucky is when the bolt turns in the bed rounding out the square hole it sets in BTDT) they took the easy way out and cut a hole in the bed.

I have found if something is going to fail it will be in the middle of winter during the coldest freaking night of the year. Two winters ago it got down to almost 40 below zero at my place (record low). Way easier to replace a water pump, ignition coil, ect on a 70s and earlier vehicle versus a 90s-2000s appliancemobile especially when your fingers go numb in a matter of seconds.

 

'85 Buick Century with a 3.0 V6. 3 hours work to change a turn signal flasher, had to pull the engine to change a water pump.

 

97 sebring first car i ever had to take part of the intake off to replace the water pump or replace the back 3 plugs.

and just who is the dumb *** at gm that put the oil fill in the back of the valve cover under the powder break booster?

 

As an old mechanic friend (old as in long-time and old as in old-- he lived to be 95 and was turning wrenches into his early 90's) said, "Engineers ought to stick to running trains and let mechanics design automobiles."

 

Cutting holes in sheet metal to replace parts is nothing new.

Back in the 60's an old mechanic at the service station I worked at showed me the trick for replacing a freeze out plug in the rear of the cylinder head on a '56 Oldsmobile. A hole cut in the proper place on the firewall and a long br*** punch made the job much easier than removing the head.

 

"That will be $900.00!" Seems everything cost at least $900.00 to fix at a dealership. Kinda like a minimum charge. My wife's Yukon ABS module went out. Dealer wanted $900.00 to fix. I got online and found a shop to repair the unit with a 5year warranty at a cost of $150.00. Took 10 minutes to take it off and put it back on. 3 connectors and 4 screws and you can drive it while waiting on the unit to come back(one week).

 

This is sneeky!!!! I just did a ****** filter on my old mans newer ford explorer sport trac. The fill tube/dipstick is about 2inches long... meaning you have to check or fill the ****** fluid from under the car. So when you pop the hood the ****** dipstick is nowhere to be found. another thing, try changing out the plugs on the fords 5.4! they break and most of the time require removing the head.