Look, as a person involved with manufacturing, I’m not about to claim that some automotive engineer was trying to make my life difficult. There are so many factors in the development of products that occasionally the ease of serviceability falls down the list, and it isn’t their fault.
That isn’t going to stop me from complaining about the car brands as a whole, however. I’ve seen many design decisions that seem to defy any logic, especially when there are other cars that do the same things much better.
One complaint I have about my ancient Lexus is actually a much broader issue with modern cars: those dumb-ass engine covers. As expected, I rarely ever open the hood of my Toyota-made product, but when I do, I really, really need to access stuff. I do not want to remove half a dozen fiddly fasteners to get to the damn battery when the battery finally dies in the school pickup line. These covers are pointless, strictly for looks, and in this case, it’s on a car that absolutely no owner opens the hood of to look at anything anyway.
I hate these things, and the excuse that some say about how they “reduce noise and protect components” is total crap as well. How do I know? Well, if you had bought the same-year, nearly identical Toyota Land Cruiser version of my Lexus LX570, you can see that it has virtually none of the offending covers. Wow, the battery is right there!
I don’t think the “noise level” is any less in the “luxury” Lexus version; it’s just plastic garbage to let it “compete” with other high-end SUVs. You want to cut noise? Put padding on the bottom of the hood as they did for half a century.
A different but equally maddening part of the 2007 E61 BMW 530Xi wagon that I owned (and is now in the custody of Mercedes Streeter) had to do with the head-up display. I bought it used with this rare option, and I was able see it easily, but the primary driver (my 5-foot-2 wife) could not. As I recall, on most GM products with this feature, you simply adjusted the height with a dashboard switch; it took seconds. On the BMW? To adjust it, you need to remove the center screen, loosen a bolt, and then turn a different bolt to set the height.
That’s bad enough, but the bolts were WAY down in the dash, to the point that you needed pretty much every socket extension in my set. I probably lost a socket as well; Mercedes Streeter received at least half a dozen free, hidden 10-millimeter sockets when she got my car.
What about your nightmare design-induced wrenching experiences? Try to keep your swearing to a minimum, but I fully understand how you feel.
Top graphic image: Lexus
I think it was on my Citroën CX, one driveshaft went through the oil pan. From factory [facepalm emoji]
And on my GS a joint between two plates on the bottom of the car (why even have that in the first palce?) was made so the crack between the two was pointing forward, to catch all kinds of dirt and moisture, so it rusted even faster!
Citroën just didn’t care at all about such matters. It was like a walk in the park working on a Mercedes or VW compared to them. But the Citroëns were very beautilful and drove absolutely great and I loved all of them!
When changing the oil on my wife’s 2016 Pilot, the oil filter is above a frame rail that always gets covered in old oil. There is no easy way around this. Also, anything to do with Subaru spark plugs or heads, as you have to drop the entire engine just to have enough room to work!
Our 2006 Pilot did this, too.
It’s a rust-proofing feature, not a design discrepancy.
My entire ’85 Subaru GL. All of it… especially the clutch. What a colossal pain in the ass that car was to work on. Who the fuck puts a spare tire on TOP of the engine?
It was seemingly designed by all the engineers who came home and found their wives sleeping with mechanics.
Former Automotive Design Engineer here, mostly Powertrain but also body and chassis parts.
Thing 1: if the nightmare job is a nightmare because the assembly was designed to save money either directly or as part of a manufacturing cost reduction, how about a little thank you to us for making your car affordable in the first place? We can make cars super easy to service, in fact I have on my desk right now a cylinder liner that could be changed in under 5 minutes, but than engine was wildly expensive.
Thing 1a: sometimes the tiny immeasurable change from an aero cover or a blob of HVH stuff is the difference between hitting an emissions target, or failing and having to add in a load of cost. Just because it doesn’t make a difference you notice doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fitted to a million cars.
Thing 2: we fight for serviceability, not least because the pay is crap and we drive old shitboxes. But all of engineering is a compromise, and sometimes the starter motor just has to be under the intake manifold on the rear of the engine. Sorry. Genuinely sorry. I read the comments first to make sure none of the most shameful bastard jobs were mine.
Thing 3: some automotive design engineers are shit. I know a guy who designed a cover over a bearing that could only be disassembled from inside the cover. Great if you were a bearing planning to escape, but impossible to service without a gas axe.
oh easy: replacing the 12V battery on my i3. Getting a soda out of a vending machine through the front without paying for it is arguably easier. Also when the 12V explodes, the entire car becomes a 1.5 tone paperweight.
did the ac evaporator in my 2014 prius. this march its probably the largest project ive ever taken on. the difficulty wasn’t really what i was mad about it was just the fact that EVERYTHING in the interior had to be removed, andi mean everything the entire upper, lower dash, seats, console , seats, crash bar, its absolutely crazy. as if the entire car was built around this evaporator. The sheer hubris of toyota ” surely this will never go bad”. i think the reason they fail is like a design flaw, the fresh air vent is actually rather large and wide open like you could fit a tennis ball in there if you tried hard enough. eventual leaves and organic matter find their way in, get sucked in by the fan and then the leaves stick to the evaporator and the leaves / moss on the evaporator never let it dry out and it eventually rusts/rots. and i know what your thinking “but won’t the cabin filter catch it first?” and you WOULD BE RIGHT, except every time you go to get your oil changed the lube tech takes out your filter to see if they can sell you a new one, doesn’t install back the right way and it ends up getting installed 90 degrees wrong or upside down and now you have a crease in it and tat lets air/debris just bypass the filter completely. to be fair the cabin filter is a bit of a pain because it LOOKS like it’s square but one side is just barely longer so it is a very square-looking rectangle. I do my own oil changes from now on.
I got some ultra fine metal screen mesh material to glue over the opening of the fresh air duct kind of like a metal sock. it might restrict airflow a bit but i use recirculate 99.99 percent of the time. it says it’s stainless so hopefully it won’t rust only one way to find out.
in conclusion , bastard fresh air duct, bastard cabin air filter, bastard lube techs, bastard evaporator that was almost designed to never actually come out. I was not having a great time. i can SEE why Toyota book time is 21 hours for this job honestly
Without a doubt, heater core replacement. It’s bad enough the heater box is the first thing they bolt onto the painted shell, but they made it more exciting by adding another nut underneath the evaporator housing (on the engine side of the firewall) holding the heater box in, and not bothering to mention it in the service manual.
You are really knocking it out of the park with these Autopian Asks. Nice work The Bishop.
The battery location behind the driver’s side wheel well in the OG Dodge Stratus was pure shit. Seriously out of all things to make inaccessible… The battery? What a bunch of dicks.
My gawd, I’m just finding out what’s involved in replacing a headlight bulb in a 2019 Chevy Bolt. And I’m told by a co-worker that his Cadillac is no better. Why do I have to disassemble the front end of my car to change a lightbulb?!?!?!?
I had a 2012 Malibu and needed YouTube to prevent a dealer trip for a headlight replacement. Total PITA.
Everything I make or repair is partially held together by cursing. I even curse myself out for my solutions when I need to service or repair them later, but in the spirit of the question:
Almost anything I’ve done on VW products from something simple like a tail light in a New Beetle to an alternator that required the whole front of the car to be taken apart. They single handedly showed me that German engineering superiority is a myth. Any transverse V when they need work on the rear bank.
For my own cars, Ford had this stupid coolant hose clamp design. I don’t remember the particulars, but it was unnecessarily difficult and since I was replacing them for a leak, not superior to regular clamps.
I was mildly annoyed that changing the rear shocks in my 128i required removing every bit of the inner trunk trim to get at the upper shock bolts. Roughly a million of those stupid “press the center” plastic plug/clip things, plus a bunch of screws. Really BMW, you couldn’t have a put in a couple of little hatches like you do for changing rear light bulbs? The bulbs have now lasted longer than the rear shocks.
And of course I had one plastic plug/clip leftover that damned if I can figure out where it goes. In the glovebox for the day I finally spot that elusive hole.
Historically? Just about everything I had to do under the hood of my ’87 Porsche 924S. Which is what happens when you take an engine bay designed for a little 2.0L Audi motor and cram in a physically MUCH larger Porsche 2.5L.
Recently did spark plugs in the turbo CX5. Under the beauty cover, there is a series of brackets that hold varying solenoids mounted over the back half of the cam cover. This neatly blocked the access to removing three out of the four coil packs. Then after removing all the bolts holding those down, there was barely enough hose to move it out of the way.
I’m used to things like intake manifolds over the engine on subcompact cars due to engine bay space restrictions, but these solenoid brackets were a choice.
It’s either that or the time I was doing a brake change on my old E30 and found the caliper brackets needed a 7mm allen key. Who has one of those?!
Pretty sure I have a couple, hopefully I never have to use them.
Basically anything with trailblazers. Not a huge fan of the horizontal Toyota v6 valve covers and plug in the back. Ford with the 5.4 coils aren’t fun and they like to eat coils. Removing the front of a car is just normal now just like removing a cab off a truck. Both seem wrong.
Changing the serpentine belt on any modern car – how friggin difficult is it to leave enough room to change one out??! Then the rear brakes on my G37x – getting the caliper bracket off is a course in frustration, for some reason only one side had enough room for even the skinniest pneumatic impact driven I could get from Harbor Freight, and then I had to crank up the pressure to above 100 psi. Luckily the other side loosened up with a flare nut wrench and a beefy hammer.
Changing the timing belt on my Subaru Tribeca. I managed it without removing the shroud or radiator at the cost of removing chunks of my forearms on said shroud. I won’t go into the attachment bolts for the tensioner. A job that should have taken an hour or two ended up taking a day and a half of sustained struggle and cursing.
Another one is changing the CVT fluid in my Honda Accord. Removing the fluid. Easy, getting the correct amount back in, not so easy.
All of these tasks required removing dozens of plastic panels covering both motors and transmissions and the use of every extension and swivel joint in my toolbox. No 10 mm sockets were sacrificed.
I know I’m complaining for a job that does need to be done max 2-3 times in a cars lifetime but my coffee went straight onto my keyboard as I started to read the manual how to replace the front shocks on my 2004 DaimlerChrysler Mercedes Viano (metris for you) the work starts: “remove windshield wipers”
The story continues “remove plastic bits” and then “with a suitable deep open socket wrench and semi-thick-semi-long allen key with a socket and extensions as leverage, remove the single nut that keeps the whole front strut in place”… 2008 onwards they made this part a more traditional three-bolt-strut but the work still starts with the wipers…
None, because designers don’t make decisions, they are cogs. All decisions are made by management and usually marketing types and engineering, rarely does a designer get to make a decision that will affect service or repair. Literally the ONLY person on the side of the owner is the designer, engineering will try to find the easiest way to achieve something (for them) and marketing/business will try to find the cheapest way to do something (for them)
There are lots of examples, but the most recent example was me pulling the wheel on my 2020 Transit Connect. Pulling a wheel is simple, right? Well not when Ford used 2-piece lug nuts, they are a real nut with a fancy chrome/aluminum cover on top. They look like regular lug nuts, but the covers swell and regular sockets won’t fit them. They either need a half-size socket like 19.5mm, or you painstakingly chip off the cover part with a punch and a hammer or similarly convincing tools. Took me well over an hour to get 5 lugs off. And I get to tackle the other 3 wheels sometime. I of course replaced them with conventional lugs, which aren’t cheap any more.
yep. Ford Escape – same thing. beat a 12 point 13/16″ socket on, remove, place in vice, use punch to beat lug nut out, repeat 20x.
DPF Removal on any Diesel-Powered BMW.
Oil Cooler in any OM642 Mercedes
Any Starter I’ve ever done on an OTR Tractor
Wow it seems like diesels always give me the most trouble cuz I can’t think of a single gas-engine maintenance or repair job that gave me a proper headache
Changing the fluid in my Flex’s PTU. Ford, in all its infinite wisdom, declared the fluid in the Flex (and related Explorer and Taurus) to be non-serviceable and good “for life.” Good one, Ford. Considering the PTU holds less than a quart of fluid and sits right next to the exhaust, the fluid gets hot and burns away over time, eventually resulting in PTU failure. Obviously I want to avoid replacing the PTU, so I’ve been changing the fluid every 30k or so miles. Since it’s non-serviceable, there’s no drain plug, just the filler plug at the top, necessitating using a suction hose, and a small diameter one at that, and the area around the fill plug is not exactly roomy. The whole process takes a few hours, and I’ve yet to complete it successfully without bruising, cutting, or burning some part of my arms or hands.
Replacing the rear shocks on my Ram. For some reason they designed it so you can’t get a wrench on the nut, so you either need a massive crows foot (which nobody carries in store) or you bend a wrench to fit around the corner. I guess I got a cool bent wrench with a blued bend in it out of the deal. Bonus aggravation points for the fact that I discovered my fender liners hadn’t been installed properly from the factory and one of the screws just went into the body instead of the clip it was supposed to.
The oil pressure sensor on my Corvette is pretty egregious too. The official procedure involves pulling the intake manifold off. It’s just barely possible to do it without, but you need a special thin-wall socket because they mounted the damn thing so close to something else that you can’t get a normal socket in there. Also, once your hands are in there you can’t see anything (although I snaked a boroscope around so I had some idea what I was doing), so you’re mostly wrenching by braille. Here again I guess I got some new tools out of it, so that’s a silver lining. 😉
The special assortment of tools that I used for that one thing that one time grows each year. But it does feel good to collect
The big plus to those tools is that there’s almost no chance you will need them again.
I call that an insurance policy.
Replacing the starter in a 2009 Honda Civic. I’ve replaced a starter at least once before, but that was on a 1969 VW Bus. Just getting at the darn thing on the Civic was a giant PITA, removing the front right tire and I’ve blocked out what all else. And then the auto parts store had sold me the wrong starter, so had to swap that. And then the @&(% thing didn’t want to go back into place! Many twisted up wires in the way. Then I ran out of time to be parked on the street so had it towed to a little local shop to finish the job for $300. Should have just paid them to do the job in the first place, would have cost me about same in total.
Changed the starter in my wife’s ‘08 Honda Fit. It took about five hours. For a starter.
Chrysler decided to combine the transmission range and temperature sensors in the old 4 speed Ultradrive transmissions and that part just so happens to be buried quite deep inside the transmission, requiring the shift selector and valve body to come out among other things. If the temp sensor portion of this part goes bad, the transmission will try to guess its temperature based on the engine coolant temperature, which is naturally hotter than the transmission fluid could ever get in normal operation, so it always goes into an “overheating” limp mode where the torque converter locks up super early, doesn’t unlock unless you go WOT, and makes the transmission a bit herky jerky below a certain speed. You can also feel and hear a funny noise if your rear diff bushings are shot. I also happen to have no means to DIY a replacement and no one in my country seems to know about this setup or want to do the job (I imagine it wouldn’t be an issue in the states). This is probably one of those things that only makes sense to Chrysler.
If you can find what voltage/resistance the sensor expects to be “good” you can cut the wire and solder in a resistor.
Might have some unintended consequences though.
Well, I already found someone who can fix it, but they just want to have an extra replacement part on hand (I think for the selector mechanism?) just in case the current one breaks due to visible corrosion on it