Yes I did. The car owner did not want to pay that much for a starter swap so I told him to give me a few hours to think of an alternative and that was cutting a hole behind the pedals. He was fine with it and it still took me about 2 hours.
Car was fine and he was happy but the major problem still lingered; he was STILL the owner of what is quite likely the most atrocious car ever manufactured on planet Earth. Le Car did not have one redeeming feature and made other Renaults I’ve worked on look like top shelf liquor…
Depends on the city, or worse a development with an HOA. Had this discussion at work, one coworker lived in an HOA development that had very restrictive codes. I commented if I can’t have an old pickup up on cinderblocks as lawn art, I don’t want to live there.
Of course, where I live, property on a stagnant water retention pond is advertised by realtors as waterfront.
I am pretty sure the blend door for the HVAC is now bad on one of my trucks. I understand this can be a real pain to access but I haven’t had time to look into it much just yet. I had to apply a fix on another truck where I was able to access via the glovebox being removed. We will see.
Some things did improve over the years. For example, the torque tube drive (enclosed driveshaft) where the rear axle had to be dropped in order to remove the transmission disappeared in the 1955 Chevrolet and 1961 full sized Buicks. Ford moved the brake master cylinder from under the car to under the hood beginning with its 1952 models. My 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass had the heater core in a box under the hood which simplified replacing the heater core as opposed to removing part of the dashboard.
Perhaps with EVs, some maintenance and repair items may become easier.
In my township in New Jersey, it is illegal to have an inoperable, unregistered, or uninsured vehicle anywhere on the premises, whether visible or not .
Hang on a minute…so years ago when I had that 64 Olds in my garage in various stages of disrepair, you’re saying that’s illegal? The car was titled, but of course it was not registered nor insured because it did not run or drive.
Or when Bob was restoring that 56 Special in his garage for 3 years, and bought a 55 Century as a parts car that we took apart in the garage? Why is it anyone’s business what I have inside my garage?
Another bad design and this one can be blamed on VW. In this particular case (manual transmission) there is a hardened steel plate which retains a main shaft bearing. It is held in place by 5 countersunk head screws…and sunk deeply.
If you are familiar with the Triple Square fasteners then that is the type of screw involved. VW, and others, have used these forever and they are 6 MM.
For some inexplicable reason, VW chose to make those fasteners 5.5 MM and produce a special tool for that purpose only. It baffles me that would not just make them 6 MM like millions of others and be done with it.
Another bad design was on older Subarus (thankfully never saw many) was that they used inboard brakes on the front drive axles; meaning the brake drums were mounted to the transmission along with the shoes and a dozen or so levers and springs. Access was only through a hole roughly 7 or 8 inches in diameter. Those who have cursed domestics for their plethora of brake hardware would go nuts with these as most of it was done peering through openings, cursing, and wrestling every part of it. Imagine trying to install spring retainers or stretch springs with a tool when you have to do it blind.
Customers would complain about the 8.5 hours charged for a brake job but it was well worth it. Any complaints should be directed to the people who engineered this mess.
The Renault Le Car was amazing, everything was difficult.
I bought one with an engine oil pan leak. How bad could that be, right? Have to take the whole front suspension off to get to it.
The Exhaust was routed through the inner fender, good luck centering it when re-welding it back on.
On my newer cars, Had a Mazda CX-9 with the Ford Duratec V6 engine. Everyone knows the waterpump is inside the engine and driven by the chain. The extra credit goes to Mazda because the change the WP, you have to first take the engine and transmission out of the car, then change it. 12 hr labor.
Not that bad but a pet peeve of mine is the Nissan Rogue Sport we bought for my daughter, now a joint venture with Renault. When you want to change the engine oil, the whole plastic bottom cover has to come off. Around 20 pins and 16 bolts. I once had the dealer change the oil; given it takes synthetic and they charged me only $60 and they clearly had changed the oil and the filter, I felt I had gotten an amazing deal.
Ok, this is a bit of a quibble, but I don’t like the replacement wheel cylinders they sell these days for my 50 year old Ford truck. The original versions, as equipped new, an SAE wrench fit the bleed screw, but the new ones require a metric wrench. Metric wrench needed to service a 50 year old Ford? Just not right!!! … lol …
The truck is 50 years old. You are (I presume) over 50 years old. Just how many more wheel cylinders will the truck need before the truck or the owner reaches the end of its useful life?
Just ribbing you a little. But that’s a pet peeve of mine as well. When the replacement parts don’t use the same or correct size wrench as the original. One always bugged me. For years and years GM fuel filters required 16mm and 20mm wrenches. Then some aftermarket filters came with a 19mm hex instead of 20mm. Now I had to crawl under a car with 3 wrenches instead of 2.
I like property values too but it’s only important when you sell. I paid my second half taxes the other day and noticed they increased my property value $70,000. So that’s what tax next year will be based on. That’s the dirty little secret that they can brag about not increasing the rate because the actual tax is increasing. I guess it’s no secret just how refreshing it would be if they just admitted total income is going up a couple million.
My first brake job on my own was on my 68 dart. Danged if I didn’t twist off the bleed screws on several of the calipers. Nothing to do for me but replace them. Before pb blaster. Don’t tell me how good liquid wrench is. Back about 1973. Back when you bought the rebuild kit for about $2 and honed them out.
I used to rebuild my truck’s (and VW Rabbit’s) drum-brake wheel cylinders even into the mid-1980’s, then for some reason the rebuild kits weren’t available anymore. In that era if I twisted a bleed screw off one of the wheel cylinders (an uncommon event) I could often get it serviceable again by carefully drilling the damaged bleed screw out and replacing w/a new bleed screw. Bench wheel-cylinder rebuild job. Sort of miss the diy’er job rebuilding of wheel cyclinders.
Here’s an oddity (thankfully seen very few of them) and that is the old SAAB 96. It has drum brakes on the front.
The problem is all 4 brake shoes are different and it uses 4 front wheel cylinders; all different.
There’s a left upper shoe, left lower shoe, left lower wheel cylinder, left upper wheel cylinder, and so on for the other side.
One would think that somewhere along the design process someone would have raised their hand and said why not one wheel cylinder to fit both sides and make all 4 shoes the same…
Heh heh heh. Hope they at least numbered them. I have seen though when there is a suggestion box and awards for suggestions, some collect the $25 for a great suggestion. but it never gets adopted. No one says anything cause they got their money and picture on the bulletin board.
Back around 1965, the truck plant brought in a $50 an hour efficiency expert to study the work flow in the wood shop. And that was a lot of money back then similar to $500 an hour now. At any rate all the changes suggested and some made but after the guy left, Gordy, the wood shop foreman turned right around and put everything back the way it was.
Knowing Gordy and the limitations of experts, its hard to say who was right. I myself couldn’t see many ways for improvement except for longer production runs.
