Regulations about required knowledge and skill should come from the employers imo, during the hiring process. Folks choosing this career field should understand they will probably be working as the employee of a relatively small business. Some bad and some good. The bad part, they won’t have access to Fortune 100-type infrastructure. The good part, they’ll have more job independence, working more on their own, and can quite possibly create a path toward one day owning their own repair business if they like. The turnover I expect is caused in part b/c the type of skills needed now are different than what they used to be, much more tech skill needed now, and those folks who are good a turning a wrench but not so good at determining which sensors are not working correctly will be finding their job isn’t a pleasant experience and will tend to move on.
Ya all think that an engineering team has final design approval for production? They are only one spoke in the wheel. Plus unless hired and put on a path to the executive offices, they aren’t going to waste training time moving someone around from department to department. Especially when the kid will likely move on in a couple years.
You don’t say what kind of vehicle you are working on. I will say that certain makes seem to be more service friendly than others, but on the whole remember that cars are not built to be taken apart. The assembly process is designed to make it as efficient as possible.
Those of us in the profession often have tools, equipment, devices, and experience that allow us to perform certain repairs with far less trouble than the DIY crowd. Your description of the EVAP solenoid reminds me of the GM 4.2. Having done several of those, I have the correct picks, long handled needle nose, etc that it’s a simple job for me. I can still do a Taurus heater core in an hour and a half. And so on.
Believe it or not, on the overall I believe that things are getting better, despite the fact we sometimes need to remove the body off the frame to remove a head or drop an entire drivetrain to replace a rear main seal. I remember having to remove the brake master to replace a starter on a Chevette. And don’t get me started on Toyota Previas.
My dad was a motorcycle guy who would work on any bike. But wouldn’t touch cars. He always said everything is set up for ease (efficiency) of assembly. There will be some truth to that with some bikes too (which can also be nightmares), but far less so. And his specialty was actually competition dirt / motocross rather than road bikes, which are far simpler and do need to be worked on a lot.
What I’ve usually seen is that employers require a candidate to be able to prove that they’ve worked x numbers of years in the field . . .
But just because you’ve worked in the field . . . or ANY field, for that matter . . . doesn’t actually prove you’re competent
One of the big problems . . . as I see it . . . is that no associate’s degree, apprenticeship, etc. is required to be allowed to work in the field
Many other fields are far more regulated, from what I’ve seen
Last time I checked, nobody can officially work as an auto mechanic in Europe, unless they can prove they graduated from their government-approved apprenticeship
I’m not saying THAT is the solution for every country, but it seems to produce people with at least a shred of a chance of being competent
That’s another good point, how often will a particular service be required? We often complain about having to dismantle half of the top of the engine to replace spark plugs, but the fact remains that for the majority of car owners, the plugs might have to be replaced once in the lifetime of the car. People don’t keep cars for 250,000 miles.
Many of the repairs talked about here are for cars that are over 20 years old. You can’t seriously expect manufacturers to engineer cars for repairs 20+ years in the future.
It’s a Trailblazer indeed with the 4.2L as you surmised.
I’ve been saying that same thing on this board for a long time. But what I’m talking about here are choices. For example, you can design the line bracket with the mounting tang formed to mount on top of the cross member or just as easily on the side of it where it is much more accessible later on. Same part cost, same labor content. It’s just appears no one even considered it. Or perhaps they did and said, who cares? How often are steering lines replaced anyway? They also didn’t consider that huge rubber isolator they designed in would trap so much moisture and rot the lines out at record pace 
No worries, I simply sliced the metal bracket with a cutoff wheel. Slid the old line out, put the new one in, rubber bushing on and formed the bracket back around the replacement line and tywrapped it to the inside line. It’s only one example. We won’t bring up that the upper control arm bolts can’t clear the inner fenders without some creative massaging. and the list goes on…
No doubt. I have a number of friends with careers in vehicle repair. But wouldn’t it be nice to not have to buy so many specialized tools? That’s my point about having two different retention mechanisms- one of them much harder to disengage than the other.
By the way, I learned a lot of labor saving techniques from my friends who had done the same job a number of times and shared their secrets.
I also believe things are getting better. Especially since I used to do a lot of restoration work as well as owning and driving cars back when things weren’t so nice. Granted, you could almost sit in the engine bay while working on them but they also required more work. Not many people groused about the lack of standards or commonality because it wasn’t as much of a thing then. kind of like cigarette smoke- back in the day, not noticeable. Now, you can smell it from 50 yards away- kind of like two different style hose connectors on the same part
It’s been about 60 years so I don’t remember the specifics but my mo ped was foiling the plug on a regular basis, causing a no start. I’d have to push the thing home but then it was about an hour job removing everything to get at the spark plug. A quick cleaning of the plug and good to go again. I’m sure I was doing something but as a kid didn’t know better. At any rate that was my first exposure to Italian design. The model in the picture though were nice.
I recently did an O2 sensor on a '03 Prius. The O2 sensor was readily accessible … once you pull the entire wiper cowl/motor to allow access to the left side of the engine (rear if viewed from front of the car) - a bit tedious but not overly taxing. BUT…the O2 sensor connector was jammed into a nearly impossible space. I spent a good portion of a whole day thinking it was just plain impossible. But figured out a way to get it eventually (though not without some bodily pain).
Something like @TwinTurbo 's point - the connector did not have to be where it was at all. There was plenty of room for it to be mounted in a far more accessible location (and without changing assy efficiency considerations).
And something like @asemaster 's point - if I had a lot of experience with things like this (tools wouldn’t have mattered much), I may have been able to figure it out much more easily.
But in any case, an O2 sensor is a common maintenance/replacement item and there was no need to have the connector where it was, perhaps other than to try enforce the “take the vehicle to you dealer service department” rule. And I’m sure that the FSM would have given the “official” procedure as doing a lot of unnecessary teardown - just to unplug a sensor.
Anyway…I could tell other stories. That one was just recent.
Okay, ya’ll have convinced me. Next car will be a 1954 Belair with a stove bolt, blue flame, in-line six!
That’s exactly it. I can’t tell you how many Tahoe/Yukon/Suburban fuel pumps I have replaced in years past. The job requires fuel tank removal, and would be significantly easier/cheaper had there been an access panel in the floorboard. I had the opportunity to ask someone from GM about that. He replied that they had noted how many pumps failed under warranty and what it cost them in labor charges. Then they calculated what it would cost to add an access panel. It was still cheaper to simply pay to remove fuel tanks. Warranty costs is all that really matters to the OEMs.
Besides, your T’Blazer is at least 15 years old by now. I just sold my '06 because it was getting long in the tooth. I really don’t think repair costs on 20 year old cars is anywhere on the radar for the OEMs.
I know exactly the connector you’re talking about. One thing to consider. While it is installed in a hybrid, that 1.5 engine (and all the associated brackets, sensors, etc., may be installed in more than one vehicle. So the design may have originally been for a different platform. They are not going to alter anything they don’t absolutely have to to get that engine to work in another platform.
The LS 5.3 is quite service accessible in a Silverado, not so much when it’s transverse mounted in an Impala.
A disk grinder remedied that little problem on my Avalanche in about 10 minutes! Another 20 to pound out a cover.
When I was with GM we hired 2 ASE certified mechanics that had gone to college to get engineering degrees. They made great engineers.
The fuel filter on the late 90’s early 2000’s four cylinder Tacoma……Located under the intake manifold out of sight……two flare nuts and a bracket bolted to the block. All done by feel.
I had thought of posting about access panels, not only for fuel pumps but also for heater/evaporator cores. LOL. Here’s me doing the fuel pump in my '97 Ranger. I didn’t have anyone to help that day (and didn’t want to remove the ladder rack). But I was able to borrow a buddy’s tractor.
I get that in a general sense - esp for something like the 5.3. But I doubt it applies to that that little 1.5L in a Toyota econobox regardless. It would be the same mess either way.
However, in the case of both access panels and the rest, you are absolutely correct on all counts. Priority one is assembly efficiency. And the only thing that would temper it would be warranty repair labor/parts costs, where relevant. I’m 100% certain that things like fuel pump, heater/evaporator core, of O2 sensor replacements are 100% irrelevant to that.
In a perfect world expected frequency of repair would have something to do with component placement and accessibility, but I think much of where things end up is driven by the assembly process. Also the manufacturers aren’t concerned about making DIY easy. Encouraging you to go the to dealer for repairs works well for them. From the perspective of the manufacturer the dealer doesn’t pay their techs, the customer does,so the fact that a simple repair is time consuming doesn’t matter
True enough, but the manufacturer’s sales dept is also well aware if their product is found to be more expensive than competing brands to repair in the out-years, that common-knowledge may cut into their future new car sales. So I don’t think the issue is totally ignored, just a lower priority.
Some carmakers make that more of a priority than others. Engineers I know that worked for Honda say serviceability is high priority.
The clutch job on my Honda S2000, well, it was nice to install the cradle with 5 inch bolts so you could tilt the engine and trans down without a support tool to reach the top 2 bellhousing bolts.
But then to hide one bolt threaded into the bellhousing unseen below the starter installed from the front… oh, that was fun. You could not see it, or feel it. Fished around with a very long extension until the socket caught the bolt head hex. I left the extension and socket and bolt in place until I reinstalled the trans.
I’ve never replaced a clutch, but if I have to do that job someday, I’d just expect to be removing the starter as a routine part of the job. No?
No need to remove the starter on any clutch job I have ever done. There may be some where that is needed but I’ve never encountered one.