I had to have the heater core replaced on my 1971 Ford Maverick. Part of the dashboard had to be removed and the evaporator coil removed, so the freon to be discharged. When the heater core had to be replaced in my 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass, the heater core and the evaporator were in a box under the hood. The heater coil was replaced without having to touch the air conditioning system. I certainly thought the HVAC system was designed better in my 1978 Cutlass than on my 1971 Maverick.
On the other hand, the drain plug for the oil was on the side of the oil pan on the Maverick and the oil filter could be reached from above. I could change the oil and filter without having to get under the car. I had to drive up on the ramps with the Cutlass to change the oil.
Going back to the 1950s and 1960s, clutch replacement or transmission repair on my 1954 Buick and 1965 Rambler with their torque tube driveshafts meant the rear axle had to be dropped to remove the transmission.
Chevrolets before 1955 also had torque tube driveshafts. One cab company in my town used the A body Pontiac with the 6 cylinder engine back then. The body was the same as the Chevrolet Stylemaster, but the Pontiac was easier to service. Of course, the all time design for an easier to service and repair vehicle was the Checker. The only vehicle that was really easier to maintain was the King Midget.
On my old cars it used to take me maybe an hour to replace a heater core including the trip to Napa. My riv took me an afternoon and I considered myself fortunate. If I ever have to do the Pontiac, I’ll disassemble the dash with the idea of calling the junk yard if things don’t go well.
@bing When the technician worked on the FM side of your Riviera radio, he may have jarred the AM section so that the cat whisker touched the crystal in a different place.
Maybe but I specifically questioned him on why the fm board affected am. I mean the guy definitely was well versed on delco systems. Either way it worked.
Now if I could get this dang text system that guesses what words I want and turns may into Mary etc.
interesting. FM wavelength are around 10 feet, so presumably they’d be most affected by a turbine blade about that same length. I thought turbine blades were a little longer than that tho. AM wavelengths are around 1500 feet, which is much longer than turbine blades, so it makes sense that turbine blades affect FM more than AM.
There’s a big array of wind turbines I drive past every once in a while, next time I take that route I’ll check the FM reception. This will have to wait until the Calif DMV reach an acceptable compromise on the Corolla’s registration, currently it is garaged for the indefinite future. My daily driver truck doesn’t have an FM radio.
The rear pump increased parasitic power losses in the transmission and served no purpose other than providing the ability to utilize push starts. Those became much less necessary due to the wider popularity of jumper cables.
Open up any Saturn Sky or Pontiac Solstice. Headlights, seatbelts, seats, beverage holder, roof, battery placement, tail lights, you name it. The esthetic design was made by shaking up the GM parts bin and then dumping it on the production line.
I’ve been reading Car Guys VS Bean counters by Bob Lutz as suggested by @texases and the focus often was on cutting costs rather than making an attractive well made product. The Sols tice and Sky had almost no usable trunk or storage space compared to a Mazda Miata but were fun to drive.
Are the turbines blocking the signal or creating some kind of interference perhaps?
I know going under the roof of a gas station where the pumps are or going through a bridge with steel around it seems to block AM.
Didn’t you have to be going about 30 MPH for a pull start with an automatic transmission to work anyway?
+1
When my '86 Taurus needed to have the heater core replaced, the local indy mechanics told me that they weren’t interested in the job, so I had no choice but to take it to the Ford dealer. When the service manager gave me an estimate of ~$700, I must have been visibly skeptical, so he joked that Ford had assembled the car around the heater core, thus necessitating a LOT of disassembly. Unfortunately his joke wasn’t very far from the truth.
When I went to pick my car up 3 days later, it was obvious that the dashboard had not been put back correctly because it was so close to the steering wheel that I could not adjust the steering wheel, and it took an additional day to properly reinstall the dashboard.
Anyway… I’m glad to see that you are back in the forum. When I didn’t see any posts from you for several days, I was concerned. It’s good to see you back!
@VDCdriver I have been reading the Cartalk board, but I don’t have much to contribute. I don’t work on my cars these days. When money and time were tight, I would estimate how long it would take me to do a repair. If the job didn’t seem too difficult and be performed with the simple tools I owned, I would tackle the repair. If a considerable amount of time was involved, or I didn’t have the tools, I would scrape up the cash and pay a shop to do the work. In my career as a college professor, promotions and raises were based on publishing research and bringing in grant funding. I also felt I owed it to my students to be the best I could be in my teaching, so I didn’t let my teaching slide to keep up my research. Therefore, I didn’t keep up with doing car repairs.
Manufacturers can take design shortcuts.because there are folks like me that don’t have the time to do their own work. People seem to want everything done for them. I was playing my French horn in a band rehearsal last night and was asked to play the alto saxophone solo on my horn, which I did. The French horn is in F, but the alto saxophone is in E-flat. The conductor said he would have the part transposed for me, but I said that I am easily able to think the music down a step as I play. Today’s students scan the music into a computer and a program does the transposition for them. I have played next to younger players who have no idea how to transpose. It’s similar to younger drivers who have no idea how to drive a manual transmission car. It’s so bad these days that toilets in many public restrooms have sensors that flush the toilets automatically when one walks away from the toilet. In my opinion, if a horn player can’t transpose music, he or she shouldn’t be playing the French horn. If one can’t shift gears, a person shouldn’t be driving a car, and if a person can’t flush a toilet, that person shouldn’t be going to the bathroom.
Unfortunately, I think it is a case of neglectful and inconsiderate people, rather than people who are actually unable to flush a toilet. Long before the days of toilets with sensors to perform an automatic flush, it wasn’t unusual to step into a stall and find a revolting and odoriferous mess from the preceding person.
Somehow, I doubt if the offenders were physically unable to flush the toilet, and instead I think that either they forgot to do so, or were just inconsiderate slobs. I welcome a bit of technology in order to prevent these incidents.
I like the auto flushing sensors in public facilities . I consider a health hazard prevention device.
I don’t see why you think that is a problem . They probably knew the Soltice was not going to be a long term production vehicle. So why not use as many parts from vendors who already make them and have prices set in place.
@VDCdriver and @VOLVO-V70
I went to a consolidated country school that had grades 1 through 12. I attended that school through 8th grade until I was transferred to a city school. At any rate, the stools had spring loaded seats so that when one sat on the toilet, the seat opened a valve that filled the tank. When one got off the stool, the seat popped up and the toilet flushed. The urinals were flushed from an overhead tank that would slowly fill up and then flush the urinals and repeat the cycle. The building was built in 1924 and at that time, many of the farm kids didn’t have experience with indoor plumbing. The city school I attended for high school was built in 1927 and we had to operate a flush handle on the restroom facilities.
@VDCdriver Aren’t you sorry you got me started again posting on this board?
My elementary school had the same type of “technology”, and it prevented inconsiderate kid-slobs from leaving their excrement for all to see, but most public toilets did not have that type of equipment, thus leading to some unpleasant experiences. The modern toilet sensors accomplish the same thing–luckily.
My elementary school also had that type of equipment for the urinals. Of course, back in those days, most people didn’t think about the amount of water that was wasted with those cycled flushes.
One of the complaints that reviewers make about Maseratis is that they feature some of the same dashboard knobs and other interior components as a Chrysler 300. While this type of cheaping-out would seem to be out of place with a car costing as much as a Maserati, it isn’t really unusual for car makers to “recycle” parts from their other models–or even from other manufacturers. Back in the late '40s, a few people noticed that the Tucker automobiles used Lincoln steering wheels.
Heh heh. Those that do not flush toilets have never had to clean them. I do understand now why I don’t play a horn.
+1
I know a guy who took a position (out of desperation, right after college graduation, until something better came along) as an Assistant Manager at a McDonald’s location. His first assignment was to clean the toilets 
, and he resigned about 5 minutes later. He landed one of his desired jobs–as an Actuary–about one month later.
Welcome to Toilet Talk.