Don’t forget about the early V8 Thunderbirds where the engine had to be lowered to change the rear plugs.
Doc’s right. The military has very specific requirements for vehicle repair, as they need to be able to keep the vehicles running in the field. A mission failure due to out of service vehicles in the military could mean the loss of a battle and possibly a war. There’s far, far too much at stake for the military to allow vehicle manufacturers to sacrifice reparability for manufacturability. The military accepts the added cost.
TSM, considering the price they’ve paid for stuff in the past, I think it’s safe to say they consider price as no object. Especially since it’s our money they are spending!
True. But on the other hand, we sold a design under a DOD contract in a company I worked for many years ago that included repair equipment, including a wrench which was just a cut-off commercially available wrench. The entire design, including the tools, had to pass Salt spray, heat/vibration, sand & dust, impact, and a slew of other tests. And the wrench design (all the tool designs) had to be redone as a source control drawing controlled by DOD-STD-480 requirements. The government ordered replacement wrenches later, and we were required to demonstrate that the wrenches complied with all the requirements. So we had to charge them accordingly. These things are expensive. We had to charge them hundreds of dollars for store-available wrenches with one end cut off, and we still didn’t make any money on them.
On the other hand, if I were in battle and needed to use that wrench, it damned well better be right. And not have been deteriorated beyond use by the jungle, or by that last river crossing. That’s what the extra cost is for.
Years ago the media made a big stink about toilet seats that cost $600. Come to find out, they were for a C130. And they were custom designed specifically for the aircraft and had to pass stringent environmental testing. And the design had to be, of course, fully in compliance with DOD-STD-480, which means very tight design controls. Anybody who’s tried to implement a design change to a DOD-480 package will appreciate the problem.
the same mountainbike: MILSPEC requirements can be nearly impossible to meet. Anything for aircraft is 100 times worse. The $600 toilet seats were quite a few years back. I’m sure a new toilet paper dispenser to go with them today would exceed $600.
I have a couple of old friends who are Engineers. They have normal social skills, a sense of humor, and you can ask them a question requiring a yes or no answer without enduring a 15 minute incomprehensible explanation. Did I mention they drive trains? Wink, Wink!
Well, I do try to keep my explanations comprehensible… my kids might disagree. {
And, yet, my son went to a high-end private high school and got straight A’s in math and physics. Perhaps he had already heard some of what they were teaching.
The military came up with a solution for overly expensive tools. They gave sergeants a credit card and told them to buy whatever fits their needs. I worked on a project in the early 1990s when this was a new practice. And before you make snide remarks, SGT Bilko doesn’t rise to the rank of sergeant. Responsible soldiers do, and they do their job well for the most part. If you hire good people and give them the authority to get the job done, it will be accomplished well and economically.
Snide remarks never entered my mind. And I wholeheartedly agree with your philosophy that if you hire good people and give them the authority and support to get the job done, it will be accomplished well and economically. I’ve spent many years being managed and many managing others, many engineers, and it’s amazing what most people are truly capable of. Work becomes a lot more fun and rewarding for everyone involved too.
I remember the efforts by the military to reduce costs by finding ways around wasteful spending. A great deal of the things people came up with were surprisingly good ideas that worked. It does require oversight, however, to prevent someone from accidently shorting out a circuit with a store-bought wrench where the design-compliant one would have prevented such a short. Or from using a steel wrench where no sparks can be tolerated. Everything should really be verified before going out in the field.
Mountainbike, you were the last one on my mind when I though about snide remarks concerning the military.
BTW, when you guys, experienced mechanics on Honda’s, removed the valve cover, did you happen to notice that the camshaft sits in a pool of oil? Honda does this so that the cam lobes are never dry. That may not account for the whole .7 qt, but it does account for a good share of it.
There is a story in the “Tales From the Model Garage” in the July 1963 issue where a customer at a filling station where Gus Wilson happened to stop while on a service call is very angry with the attendant. The customer had the oil changed on his Chevrolet with the 283 V8 engine and after the oil was changed, the low oil pressure light wouldn’t go out when the engine was started. The oil had been draining for 25 minutes while the attendant manned the gas pumps. Gus had the attendant put the floor jack under the car and raise the front end 6". Gus then got in and started the engine. In a few seconds the oil pressure built up and the oil light turned off. Gus explained that prolonged draining on that engine caused all the oil to drain out of the oil pump and the pump would lose its prime. Tilting the engine back surrounded the pump with oil so it would regain its prime. I am not sure if this is a situation unique to the Chevrolet 283 engine or even if the story is based on fact. However, when I used to change oil in my own cars, I never did let the oil drain out for a prolonged period of time. As soon as,the oil came out in just drops, I replaced the plug and poured in the new oil.
I once had a friend with a 1990s Chrysler van he had borrowed from the family when his car was in the shop for a long period of time. He kinda mentioned the van was a clunker and that his dad was really bad about oil changing. Well he got the van and it would sometimes starve out and lose oil pretty. I figure the oil filter had pretty much plugged or something and we all decided to change the oil. The old oil was foul and took forever to drain. The drain plug was halfway up the side of the pan so we figured a couple quarts were likely trapped. We devised a small siphon hose to try and get the rest of this out. We let this sit overnight and it did drain out about 2 more quarts or tar and sludge that was once oil.
Anyway, that was a bad design in my mind if almost half the oil is still in the pan when you change it. Typical Chrysler but not that it mattered much for the guy who owned it and never changed the oil.
The van ran for a few months but adding oil was always required and you could see the van coming a few blocks away as there was always a blue cloud following close behind. These vans were known for oil burning but I am sure the neglect only helped make this one an exceptional example.
The drain plug was halfway up the side of the pan so we figured a couple quarts were likely trapped. We devised a small siphon hose to try and get the rest of this out. We let this sit overnight and it did drain out about 2 more quarts or tar and sludge that was once oil.
I think you pulled the plug out that faces the front of the car, a plug that’s used in the pan if the car is not equipped with an oil level sensor. The drain plug faces the rear of the car, and is at the bottom.
@cwatkin, if the van was as badly tended to as you say, anything in the rumor-mill is insignificant. Any engine would be garbage after being treated like that. I’ve heard bad things about the timing chains on my 2000 Explorer 4.0L SOHC, but, with 257,000 well-treated miles, I haven’t experienced any of them.
Maybe it’s too complicated for quicky oil change chains but having more then one drain plug as my tractor does to accomodate different areas where the oil settles seems reasonable. But then you give these jokers twice the chance to screw things up.
One of the Benz models . . . I forget exactly which one . . . had a saddle type oil pan with 2 drain plugs. This was apparently necessary because of the pan location, in relationship to the cradle. Benz uses copper washers for the drain plug seals, and I always replaced them.
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One of the reasons is that I saw many guys reuse them, and those washers would sometimes not provide an adequate seal when being reused
Anyways, the factory service procedure ALSO required you to replace the oil drain plugs every single time you did and oil change. But only on this very specific car
In any case, those drain plugs looked 100% identical to the ones used on all the other Benzes. I actually replaced the drain plugs, in addition to the copper washers, every time I worked on one of those particular cars. Even though I doubt the car would have come back on the hook, with the oil drain plugs fallen out, I didn’t want any fingers pointing my way
All of the other Benzes, I replaced the copper washer, but reused the drain plug. Unless some hack had already rounded off the corners
Some earlier Ford V-8s (5.0s and so on) also use a 2 drain plug oil pan that straddles the cradle.
It’s a bit of an aggravation if the pan needs to be dropped as the engine has to come way, way up to get that front sump to clear while maneuvering around the oil pickup tube.
Dag,are all those orange colored tractors like that?
It will tickle me when I dont have to change oil with any frequency again and little old ladies can actually afford a reliable used car,that wont bankrupt them,The ICE is a pain(if not properly maintained)
You might be right on that van. I do seem to recall the plug being at the front so we might have just picked the first one we saw and missed the correct one. This was quite a few years ago but remember him wanting to get the oil and filter changed ASAP when it was losing pressure. We all noted just how HEAVY the old oil filter was compared to the new one. I mean the filter felt like it was filled with lead. None of us had ever felt one like that before and likely since. I guess it was completely packed full of wear metals and who knows what else.
I agree that the engine was doomed. Sure, this engine wasn’t know for being the best but NO ENGINE would have put up with the neglect that this one had. I also remember him having to change the oil out with a thicker grade (15W40 or 20W50) just to get the thing back home without it burning through all the oil on the highway within like 30 minutes. He still had to stop and add oil pretty frequently. This was one of those engines that had been so neglected that a clean change of oil began to dissolve the sludge that was holding the thing together and caused problems. I have seen this many times in small engines.
I think his family traded it off a few months after that with his encouragement/harassment. He was a car guy and pretty upset at how they let this van go.