“Design for serviceability” was the name of the class Chrysler encouraged its engineers to take. A long-haired union technician who has clearly dealt with far, far too much bullshit with engineers like us kindly, but firmly, described how to design cars so they can be easily repaired. This is important not just to customers, who want their vehicles fixed quickly and cheaply, but to Chrysler’s own technicians, who are tired of going through hell just to change a damn spark plug. With this concept in mind, and with me having recently described having gone through wrenching hell to unsuccessfully replace subframe bolts, I’d like to know: What’s the most painfully annoying repair job you’ve attempted?
Last night was just awful. Trying to remove the rear lower control bolts from my HHR has been awful, as I described yesterday. Here’s a diagram describing the problem:
Today my right elbow is absolutely killing me from all the vibrations of that sawzall, which — despite wielding the most expensive saw blade one can buy a Home Depot — was unable to slice through the subframe bolt quickly. It was able to slice off the two aluminum control arms quite nicely:
This exposed the aforementioned subframe bolt:
Unfortunately, this sent aluminum all over my face.
Since the sawzall couldn’t handle that big subframe bolt, I did what any desperate man does: I broke out the Death Wheel — a six-inch cutoff wheel that was able to reach past the control arm brackets in the subframe, and cut the bushing sleeve and the bolt seized inside it. Here’s the big-ass cutoff wheel and the angle grinder that literally stopped working after about seven or eight minutes of cutting:
The sawzall was able to handle the tiny amount of cutting still needed to get through the bolt and sleeve, leaving me with this:
The sleeve is still stuck to the bolt, and though I tried using a dremel to slice the sleeve off (see the diagonal cut in the sleeve above), it started raining last night, and I was uninterested in being electrocuted using power tools in a downpour. So I gave up, and had to cancel my trip to New York. I still have no answer to removing these bolts, but will likely end up buying a pancake-style air compressor and air chisel; hopefully that will solve my issue. I’m tired of screwing around with cutting tools that don’t really fit into the limited space I have.
Anyway, my trip to New York to see Andrew Collins, my friend Bobby’s mom, and Matt Hardigree is officially postponed due to this awful bit of serviceability. [Ed note: Nah, gonna make him come anyway! You’re not getting out of this trip that easily – MH] But this isn’t the only example of an automaker’s poor engineering for serviceability (and to be clear, I consider GM the company with the greatest automotive engineering capability of any company ever, for reasons that I don’t have time to explain. Also, I’ll note that the design here is not specific to GM: Subarus have similar subframe bolt issues. Also worth mentioning is that calling this an engineering flaw is a bit of a stretch, given that it’s only a problem for older cars with over 100,000 miles on them; yes, an engineer should have known that corrosion would cause issues here, but it wasn’t her/his priority when developing the car, and that’s fair enough).
The union tech teaching “Design for Serviceability” at Chrysler mentioned that third-generation (?) Dodge Rams didn’t have crush cans at the front of their frames, meaning a small fender bender would cause catastrophic damage to the frame. Can you imagine that? You bump into a car at a few miles per hour, and your frame is all messed up, requiring a fairly involved (and expensive) repair? I’ve been receiving messages overnight from people who followed my plight on Instagram last night, many consoling me for my struggles, and even more talking about how they had to remove an engine mount to replace an alternator (for example) or how they basically had to bathe in gasoline because their fuel pump removal procedure is such a pain in the arse (and because the pump went out twice within a short span).
Now I’d like to hear from you: What was the worst wrenching experience you ever had to deal with that was a result of poor engineering design for serviceability? Write it up in the comments, and send us diagrams/photos/videos at tips@autopian.com describing the shitshow in detail. We’ll write a follow-up post so the rest of our readers can enjoy learning about your perils.
Using an air hammer with a little pancake air compressor will drive you to madness. My 15 gallon compressor struggles to keep up with that kind of sustained usage. With the amount of wrenching you do, I’d suggest spoiling yourself with a higher capacity compressor. It’ll easily be worth the extra money.
True. If only I weren’t moving soon…
Oh, that would complicate buying a larger compressor now wouldn’t it?
You should be able to rent one if you want to knock out some projects before the move. Or you can buy a used one and then sell it before you move. Think of it as a Craigslist rental.
Clutch job on a Mk1 Ford Focus. Had to do this twice (not in a row, thank God). Not only do you have to navigate a labyrinthine complex of wires and hoses that make the Parisian catacombs look simple by comparison just to get to the upper bolts, you have to loosen (But DO NOT REMOVE) the subframe, which seemingly exists only to support the steering rack and to act as a cage to prevent removal of the transmission. Of course that means you have to undo the steering column joint, too. You have to remove all engine mounts and suspend the engine from a hoist, scoot it over, and try to remove the trans. To top it off, there are reinforcing fins on that transmission to the point of absurdity (and this is an aircraft stress engineer talking!) It has to rotate, twist, and move in one AND ONLY ONE sequence of about forty different positions to get it out.
Putting it back in is just as much fun. The last time I managed to pinch one of the aforementioned hoses and its associated plastic fitting, which started leaking, so I had to get a replacement from the junkyard. And that’s the SECOND time I did it. The first time took way longer. I had a professional mechanic tell me he couldn’t believe I did it in my driveway, but I had the disintegrated clutch disk to prove it.
The Germans don’t even like you doing the most basic of things. This is a relatively minor one, but also an indication of how the rest of the car is going to be like to work on- Our Mk IV Jetta required you to remove the battery to replace the driver side headlight and/or turn signal bulb. Pass side was pretty easy, but unless you had child sized hands, the driver side was a pain in the ass. Add to it a fiddly plastic battery “case” (I use that term loosely because it was flimsy as hell) to try to remove without breaking it into brittle shards.
Ours also had the common fault with the electric locks. Most Mk IV VW owners will be familiar with it. The doors each have a little control module that runs the locks, a little ECU if you will. Many of them had bad soldering on the circuit boards and eventually they get weird. Doors lock on their own about 20 seconds after you unlock them. The alarm is armed. If you’re in the car when this happens, you need to unlock with the key fob again or you’ll likely set off that alarm doing anything else. You learn to NEVER leave the key in the car. Also you shut the doors quickly after parking because if any are open when the phantom lock go off, the alarm will blare at you immediately.
Anyway, I looked into what it takes to replace these little demon components and once getting through the expected removal of door trim you are then directed to remove the window glass. That is where I stopped and decided we could learn to live with the phantom door locks. That and the fact that you may end up having to replace ALL of those lock control modules eventually. People, rightfully, give shit to British and Italian cars for having suspect electrical, but the Germans are just as capable.
Eh, to replace the headlight bulbs in my ’03 Infiniti G35, you had to jack the car up on the side you want to change, crank the wheel to lock in the direction of the side you are changing, remove at least the front half of the wheel well cover and then have long enough arms to reach from the wheel well to the back of the headlight where the bulbs are.
That is likely a similar procedure for my Evo. I don’t look forward to it…
Alternator on an ‘89 Toyota pickup. Say what you want about legendary reliability and the almighty 22re (both of which I’ll heartily agree with), but the location of said part is stupid. I recall having to remove the radiator, coolant hoses, power steering pump and hoses, AND loosening up the engine mount just to get the f’ing battery to charge correctly. I love my old Yota, but dang. What could have been an hour or less job took me most of a day.
2004 Toyota Sienna, my wife’s van. Control arm bushings were almost dust, so I bought a new pair.
Getting them out is the problem. In order to access the two “front hinge” bolts, you have to remove several motor mounts. Not just disconnect them and jack the motor, no- you have to REMOVE them. Since the nuts are accessed through holes in the bottom of the subframe, you’ll need Aero Kroil (forget PBR, might as well use WD-40) and an impact gun (air or electric will do). If you use arm power, expect to be noodle-armed in about 10 minutes.
Total time to do both front control arms on the Sienna = about 10 hours. Total time to do the exact same job on my ’04 LeSabre = less than 3 hours.
PBR is traditionally for afterward, although these days, in this weather, I’m more partial to an Old Brown Dog or a Left Hand Milk Stout.
Timing Belt on a DOHC 3.4 Eurotech engine in a Gutless Supreme convertible, 90 something flavor. absolute night mare requiring some movement of the motor in the bay, but it did allow access to the alternator which was sandwiched between the exhaust and the fire wall and not able to be removed or even accessed really from the top or bottom of the car.
Early XJs have the fuel pump basically mounted on the side of the gas tank. Excellent that you don’t have to drop the tank, but as everyone knows, fuel pumps only go out with a full tank. That, and the forward leaf spring bolts are the same as the HHR, captured nut in the frame, bushings that like to gall onto the bolt.
True. Those front leaf spring bolts are hell!
Spark plugs on a Subaru
Honorable mention should also go to valve cover gaskets on Subaru’s boxer motors. All I can say is that I don’t think I want their 6-cylinders because the 4s are aggravating enough.
ooh, yeah, same with something simple like the headlight bulbs. But yeah the subie special size socket with no room to get the extension into the plug tubes is especially heinous.
I honestly found those to be pretty easy on mine. Had to remove a few things then use a specific combo of sockets and extensions.
The injectors on the other hand were a bit of a nightmare due to the crash protection bar mounted around the fuel rails, with very inaccessible bolts making it basically impossible to remove.
I had a pretty fun trying to get the fuel lines from the tank disconnected from the rest of the lines (which I was replacing) on my brother’s ’01 Century. Somehow the plastic quick disconnect clip had rusted to the metal (It didn’t…but it did), and given the lack of room to see – it took me hours to get the damn thing apart. But that vehicle typically fought me tooth and nail doing anything to it.
His ’01 Mustang GT also tends to fight me. Ford felt it intelligent to put the front bolts for the rear lower control arms inside the subframe rails…and then mount the mufflers directly next to that access hole. You have to drop the rear half of the exhaust in order to access them.
Water pump in a Ford Tempo. If you’ve ever done it you know what I’m saying and if you haven’t you really don’t want to know. It’s been 15 years and I have a stomach ache right now just thinking about it.
I love my ’72 Delta 88, I really do. But whoever decided to run the fuel lines inside the C channel passenger, and then basically block the open side of the C with the floor pan can fuck right off. Good luck finding a socket that long enough to reach the bolts, but not so long you hit the floor while loosening said bolt. At the rear, not only are you blocked by the trunk floor, but also the lower control arm. I have so many different kinds of 1/2″ wrenches now. Oh, and if you need new bolts for any reason, those are a special thread pitch only used by GM as far as I could tell. It is possible to find them, thankfully, but you have to know what you’re looking for to find them.
On a minor note, the water pump could have easier too. There is no physical way to remove the mechanical fan and one piece fan shroud without simultaneously removing the other. Just reach around the shroud and between the blades to undo the fan clutch, clanking your ratchet off the fan constantly. With that out of the way, it’s just a few bolts on the water pump– and one stud, that also holds the power steering pump. The power steering pump, of course, has a second stud that requires moving the alternator bracket. Once all that’s out of the way, it’s pretty straight forward, aside from clanking the fan back in.
2nd generation Yamaha FJR1300 with the computer-controlled clutch. Because you have no clutch lever to squeeze you have no way to bleed the hydraulic actuator for the clutch. The engineers put in a bolt you can turn to drive the actuator by hand, BUT you cannot get to that bolt without completely removing the entire rear wheel and swingarm.
I had to do this ONCE and I got the dealership to quote me some silly low rate – like an hour. I pulled the trigger on it immediately. Two days later I got a call from them saying that I’d pulled a fast one on them because that’s a 6 hour job in the book, but they did a whoopsie and quoted me from the /regular clutch/ version of that bike. They honored the original estimate just because it was so ABSDURDLY far off from reality and it was their fault for not double-checking the model number.
I had to have rear brakes done on a CJ5 with tapered rear axle shafts. To get into the drums, the axle shaft has to be removed with a slide hammer. I used a coupon at a Monroe brake for a flat $50 brake job. Marked the page in the haynes manual for them. Apparently it took over 4 hours to get the axle shafts out. I am sure they changed the coupon policy after that ordeal.
The oil pressure sensor on a C5 Corvette is pretty obnoxious. Book method is to remove the intake manifold, I was _just_ able to do it without removing anything major (just disconnected a couple of hoses during the process), but it is a tight squeeze and you can’t see what you’re doing because your tool/hand is always in the way.
1999 Audi A4 (B5 chassis) 1.8t Quattro with the automatic. The kids’ beater had a transmission go out and I decide to swap in a used transmission. In this car (and many other VAG products I’m sure) the engine and transmission package is held in place by a subframe attached to the chassis with 4 bolts. With the manual, you can unbolt the tranny and drop it down through supports. You can’t do that with the automatic. Instead, you have to remove the 2 rear bolts and loosed the front 2 and slide the transmission backwards and out. ( Or alternately drop the whole subframe with engine and transmission.) That’s bad enough because those quattro transmissions are heavy. But it gets worse.
The front suspension is also bolted to the subframe, so now your alignment is messed up. But it gets worse.
Now your car needs an alignment. There are no alignment adjustments on the lower suspension. Instead the proper procedure is to literally loosen the subframe and move it around to set caster and camber. So off to have the car aligned. But it gets worse.
Your typical alignment shop doesn’t have the knowledge or tools to do this correctly. So no $100 alignment for you. It’s off to an Audi specialist for your $250 alignment.
I hate Audis.
Similar to your HHR problem. Mk4 VWs have a front control arm bolts, that go to a WELDED NUT INSIDE THE SUBFRAME. Once the bolt rusts onto the WELDED nut, and you try to remove it, most of the time the welds snap. Then you have to get a drill and a giant hole saw and start swiss cheesing the subframe until you have enough room to get a wrench up in there. So dumb.
Not possible to just behead the bolt and push it through, I suppose?
Two that frustrated me to no end.
2010 DTS headlight replacement. 1. Remove front bumper/grill. 2. Remove front tire. 3. Remove inner wheel well……Stopped and paid someone $100 to do it.
1990’s Cutlass: Needed to replace the starter. Had to either remove the engine or drop the front suspension to remove it. Ended up with a hack until I sold the car for $150.
Volvo P80 chassis, there is a rear suspension component called a delta link, big aluminium block with bushings and the bolts go right through the aluminium. I have done five of them and 4 of them required a sawzall, big hammer and lots of mock Swedish swear words ugrldy burgldy snerrky frkky snit !!! the fifth one I dropped the subframe and discovered some sort of teflon tape around the bolts and they came out like butter. We don’t use a lot of salt but the two metals really react to each other
There is a huge difference for design for servicibilty for a well equipped garage and a lift vs. a driveway.
A garage would have had the HHR on a lift. Seeing the bolt seized in place, the oxy torch would have come out (always in arm’s reach in the salt belt) and 3 minutes later that arm would be out.
The manufacturers will design for garage service (when they do).
I bet some Mapp gas and a candle would have removed that bolt without snapping it too. Older I get, the more quickly I resort to heat + wax. Penetrants just don’t do a good enough job imho.
So true. If I had a hoist, the job would be done already.
Mostly because I could get more room to really hammer on those bolts from below.
With the amount of time that you spend wrenching on old shitboxes, maybe you should treat yourself to a lift. I’d say you’ve paid your dues, yeah? Hell, it’d be a business expense.
David, this is not the only GM product with this style of setup. Not even remotely.
The HHR setup is not significantly different from the J-body and W-body. Same mounting style, same orientation, same hell.
These men are absolutely fucking lying to you.
We had lifts, torches, hydraulic rams, FUCKING PLASMA CUTTERS, and these style control arms are STILL a shitshow involving air hammers, Sawzalls, and on more than one occasion pulling out the whole damn subframe. So yeah. You’re already ahead of the game.
GM didn’t care. They knew it’d outlast warranty and that was all they cared about.
I had a 2008 Volvo C30 manual that lost reverse on cold starts. The culprit was a plastic clutch fitting that connected the hard lines to the internal (!!!) clutch slave cylinder. This bleeder tube cracked and let air into the lines overnight. It was a transmission-out job. The second worst part of this job was refilling the tranny fluid. The fill bolt is inaccessible. Ironically, the worst parts of this car all had FoMoCo stamped on them.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the cabin air filter replacement. Requires laying upside down under the dash, removing the accelerator pedal, and nearly ruining a new filter to get installed. I will never forgive the engineer who designed this.
I did my v50 twice and I think the filter was too damaged to work
I refuse to replace my V50 Cabin filter ever again. Good on you for doing it twice!
Fortunately on my S60, the cabin filter is accessed on the passenger side and merely requires removing the fuse box. Even then the filter has to be mangled to get it into the slot. Somehow I sprained my thumb, damaging ligaments or cartilage that makes a grindy noise still today a year or so later.
Why the fuck is a consumable part that is supposed to be replaced every few years so difficult to do?!?
Second annoyance on the Volvo, no dipstick! Instead, there is an electronic sensor that you have to put the car into the right one of five or so ignition modes in order to read the oil level. I love the car in general, but Volvo’s determination to make it unserviceable by owners means this is my first and last Volvo.
Sounds like the solution is to just remove the cabin air filter and just leave it that way.
And it probably has to be reverse bled too
Wait, you do all this wrenching and you don’t have access to an air compressor? Get something bigger than a pancake and get a die grinder. they are tiny and will destroy all in their path.
or a torch, if heating the bolt first does nothing melt the head off.
I’ve found the hot dog style, ~4cfm or so, are barely sufficient for an air hammer. So he’d probably need something bigger than that for a die grinder.
Probably Dodge Dakota clutch. Engine isn’t super far back but some of the bell housing bolts were incredibly difficult, and it juuuuust barely doesn’t fit between the cats on the way out.
For your submission: imagine a world in which you have to replace the PCV valve on a longitudinally-mounted 3.6 Chrysler Pentastar.
Actually, on second thought, don’t.
I did actually submit something, though. Dealing with the PCV valve was probably low-key the worst part of replacing all the lifters and rockers in the valvetrain.
I should also mention the oil pan(s) on a 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara 4×4. The V6 has a two part oil pan – an upper galley pan and a lower sump. (That’s not completely unheard of, I know.) The lower sump has a gasket, but the upper galley is sealed with RTV only. (Again, not unheard of.) You have to remove the pickup tube for the oil pump to remove the galley pan. So when you’re reinstalling the galley, trying to get the RTV just right so it doesn’t leak, you have to reach between the galley and the block to reinstall the pickup tube. Good luck not messing up the RTV. All that while making sure that the o-ring that seals an oil passageway that passes through the galley and is sandwiched between the block and the galley doesn’t fall out.
Oh, did I mention you have to pull the front axle and the power steering rack before you can even get the lower sump and galley pans out in the first place? All this makes fixing an oil pan leak on a GV an all-day ordeal. Don’t even get me started on the timing chain cover!
Replacing cylinder heads on a 2002 F150 with a 5.4 Triton. The engine is basically shrink wrapped in there with barely any space between the heads and the firewall and minimal access to the exhaust manifolds. Had they mounted the engine two inches further forward it would have been less of an ordeal. Also had I looked at the blown out #3 plug and realized the head was repairable in place I could have saved myself $500 and two weekends. ( the previous owner used a crappy “repair kit” instead of the correct solid inserts so I could have spent $500 on an insert kit and done it in half the time).
Stuff like this makes me want an air cooled Beetle because it’s old motorcycle level of complexity and I’ve been spoiled by working on my old BMW Airhead
Back in the days when people used to install aftermarket radios, I had a Chevy that required a near complete tear down to get the radio out. Panel after panel overlapped so to remove this one you must first remove that one over and over starting with the rear bumper. That’s a slight exaggeration but not by much. If designed differently, the whole job could have been done with the removal of a single panel. I guess it was designed to thwart thieves because those AC Delco tape decks were solid gold, I guess.
Oh, right, I forgot about the panel overlap while complaining about my Oldsmobile. The lower dashboard has three pieces. Work starts with removing the driver’s side panel, which holds the parking brake release. That’s maybe 20% of the total dashboard width. Next, remove the panel covering the steering column. That contains a crotch vent, and is again maybe 20% of the entire width. The single remaining piece, containing the glove box and two ash trays (because 1972) must therefore be at least 60% the width of the dashboard, probably three and a half feet long.
I used to do this for a living in the late 90’s/early 00’s. Any time a GM product would roll into the bay, we’d all draw straws to determine who “got” to work on it. I don’t know what kind of plastics were used on early 90’s GM interiors, but it was the absolute cheapest, most brittle garbage I’ve ever seen. It was almost impossible to disassemble the interior without breaking something. I still see Beretta and Grand Am interiors in my nightmares.