I can see it, but I can't get a wrench on it...

Brian, onthe 36 ford I built years ago, which was my first rod. when I piped the frame, fuel lines, brake lines, and exhaust. I did it on the bare frame from the top. needless to say once the body was on it I found out down the road that some of those fittings, clamps and such were unserviceable from underneath the car...They were real easy from the top with out the body on it. Lesson learned....

 

My brother works at a local repair shop. They work on a lot of pickup trucks. Often, when I drop by, they've got a truck with the body high up on the hoist, and the chassis sittin' on the ground. They do this when doing major engine repair.

 

Ever worked on a 1974 chevy van? When I put headers, new spark plugs, and the time I changed the fuel pump, man I never threw more tools or cused so much working on a car. The moter is half way in the cab and has the stupidest most pointless 10inch long hood.

 

My stepdaughter and her husband have a Mazda MPV they managed to destroy the engine on,nice van, in order to get the engine out, you have to drop the entire engine,sub frame,suspension,everything from underneath. then raise the body off of it. It's now a yard ornament at someones house.

 

The 3 WORST jobs in the world(car-related):
Changing spark plugs on a GMC Syclone;have to access the plugs AFTER removing the front wheels.The driver's side center plug requires using the shortest 5/8ths inch plug socket(without a universal joint attached)and a wobble drive extension to clear the steering shaft.

Changing plugs on a Trans Am(94 vintage)by unbolting the motor mounts and raising the engine;among other things.

Changing rear brake pads on a 1964 Jaguar XKE.Remove the rear subframe to start.

BTW on that Malibu V6(which should be the same as a Pontiac GP V6):the rear plug removal is more easily accomplished by removing the intake manifold.My wife's had plugs and wires replaced(thankfully under warranty)on the rear.

 

Gotta BOX full of modified / homemade / "special tools", many left over from my 45 plus years as an A &P mechanic. And they still come in handy in the shop , sometimes even loan 'em out. people sat "WTF is that thing".

 

They do this crap from the factory all the time, and have for years. Special tools to remove sparkplugs from the cylinders underneath the firewall. If you really wanna see some dumb shit take a look under the hood of one of the new Ford Super Duty diesels. 7 radiators? What a clusterfuck. Heard a rumor thats why they dont make the ambulances this year.

My O/T '63 Scout has a firewall clearance problem also, you CAN NOT get the bolt out of the bell housing.

On my rod i had to replace the oil pan on my 454. First i had to jack up the motor to get the pan to clear the crossmember, as i lifted the front of the motor the dizzy hits the firewall. Then come to find out they used atleast 4 different oil pans on the 454. I tried 3 untill i got pissed and clearanced the pan with a torch and a ball pein hammer. My own fault.

 

I always tell them:
"when you need it, you'll know exactly what it's for"

 

I see them in the you-pull-it yards (Chevy made more or less the same van body from '71 to '96) and with the doghouse off they look like they're not bad to work on at all - although I can see where the fuel pump might be rough to get to. Unless you can go through the wheel opening and inner fender?


I had one of those FWD transverse motor cars, too. Just changing fan belts (it was old enough to have several) was an adventure. I forget now what the hell I had to tighten or loosen, some bolt down on the back of the block, but I still have an old craftsman ratchet that I ground the ends of the handle so I could fit a pipe on to get leverage enough to loosen that bolt - because a breaker bar was going to be useless, you couldn't turn it but maybe 1/6th of a turn, which would have meant taking the socket off the bolt every time in a place I barely had room to get to in the first place.


But heck before that I had a mid-80s GM wagon with air. The two plugs under the compressor got changed through the fenderwell. When it needed a heater core.. here's a real piece of GM engineering. To change a core you need to take the top off the heater box. The heater box fits with the top cover partly under the hood and mostly under the dash. So you can either spend like a week tearing out the dash to pull the heater box out... or do what I did - just cut the top of the box so the underhood part is a seperate piece, like GM should have designed the fucking thing, change the core, bolt it back up and put some duct tape across the seam.

I spend a lot of time cussing out GM engineers when I work on cars. I have one Suburban I did brake hoses on that I ended up going out and buying some big bolts to replace the nuts that held them to the frame, after I cut them off with a cutoff wheel in a grinder. They go through the frame rail up front, and after years of road salt forget about getting them apart.. and of course the new ones don't come with new retainers.

Changing plugs in one of those is a bitch, too, only because unless you're eight feet tall you have to climb right into the engine compartment to reach the back ones. (Okay, now try and set the timing).

The classic probably is putting barn doors on the same beater Suburban that had originally been a tailgate truck. Until it fell off in my hands because of rot. Of three layers of metal in the rear body post, only one had holes for the hinges. And to access the back of it to put bolts through, I cut two 2x3 inch holes in the body there. At least the lowers were behind the taillights.

 

Absolute worst job I ever have dealt with is replacing heater core in a 240 series Volvo. done several and I wasn't even doing Volvo work. Figure those cores had to be junk, One thing Volvo guys I knew always told me was If you're even thinking of buying one check the heater. First one I did started blindly and about halfway thru figured I was obviously doing something wrong so figured it was time to stop and punt. Went down to IPD (Incredible Volvo Gurus) for a bit of advise and they had printed out step by step procedure on replacing the core. Two pages of single spaced steps to guide one thru the madness, last step once the core was lying in place was reverse order of steps.
Seems every Volvo I looked over at the u-pull its had the core taken out and the whole heater destroyed by someone trying to remove same. When mine went out after knowing the hassle and their high failure rate I opted to have a local radiator shop build me a new one rather than a NOS or used part. Didn't want to deal with that mess on my car, didn't even like doing it when I was getting paid to do it. Incredible heater when it worked hell if you had to get into it. And it had nothing to do with special tooling.

 

A standard industry joke over here when the Mini first appeared in the 60';s went something like..

"Mini mechanic wanted, must be prepared to have right arm broken in 3 places and re-set to allow access to engine bay."

My daughter's 88 Hyundai Excel threw a water pump seal many years ago. had to undo the engine mounts and raise the engine just to get at the water pump bolts.

A friend has a glass 34 coupe with a late model OHC V8 engine in it. To replace the fan belt he has to remove the radiator, which means removing the grille, which it turn means removing the front guards.

Cheers, Glen.

 

I dug up this old thread I started a while back, as it was VERY relevant to what I've been doing today (on my admittedly off topic car, but this same aggravation applies to many hot rods too).

I bought an '06 Mercury Milan to replace my pickup as a daily driver. It was tapped very lightly in the front, looked like a deer vs. car thing. All above the bumper, hood buckled in the middle, both headlight lenses cracked, and grill busted to smithereens. Plastic core support likewise broken into a million pieces (good because it didn't pull the upper rails in) and the radiator and A/C condenser tweaked, not leaking, but bent enough that they wouldn't fit a new core support. No damage to either fender (well, not untill I opened the hood, which was jacked off to one side) and unwittingly rumpled the back of the pass side fender.

So, yesterday I spent about 2 hours pulling the front end off it, and today wanted to put the thing back together. Easy, you say, right? Well, it might have been IF I had a repair manual, and if I could bend my arm in about two extra places!

The radiator, A/C and fan go in the car as a unit, and you CANNOT put them in with the core support bolted to the frame. I had to pull the bumper, assemble the core support, rad/condenser/fan, and then put that in the car as a unit, then bolt the bumper on. After that, it was easy (well, aside from not being able to reach the lower trans cooler line, where it'd have been handy to have another elbow), but it'd be a nightmare if I hadn't have had the bumper cover and grill off it. Of course, I had the core support, healights, and bumper cover on before I realized this, and had to pull them back off.

If the cooling fan expires, radiator starts to leak, or rock punctures the A/C condenser (which also incorperates a cooler for the power steering fluid), the ENTIRE front of the car has to come off. What a hassle. I was intitally tempted to just step on the radiator/condenser and pry them back into some semblance of original shape, but the thought of pulling the front off the car to repair or replace the inevitable failure was inspiration enough to buy new stuff.

So, back out now to finish up and have a beer by the woodstove and admire my "new", cheapo little econobox sedan in it's non wrinkled state!

Brian

 

I work on E Jaguars every day - nuff said. The real fool thing on those is the driveline service - like changing a U joint? Remove either the engine/trans OR the rear suspension to get the shaft out.. Might consider all of the above since it probably needs a clutch and rear brake servie anyway - BIG bucks. 3.8L E-type starter change requires a hole saw and knowing where to cut said hole to get to the upper bolt. Those cars are an education in patience.

 

When I was in the Navy in 64 I bought a MGB roadster to get back and forth to the base. The clutch broke, no problem I have done this many times. The entire front of the car comes off and the engine and trans come out as one unit. First unibody I had seen. It fit like a glove. but what a bitch. Now when I change plugs and start to swear, I just remember the good old MGB.

 

Not a tool so to speak but I locked the keys in my truck one time. Power locks and I didn't wanna F it up. It has no carpet but the rubber floor covering [ work truck] So I took 3 coat hangers and went through the floor [ drain hole ] up through the rubber floor covering [ cut a small hole. I taped the 3 coat hangers together and had to bend them a few times to get it right and tapped the power lock release [ on the dash ] until it clicked it open. I still have the wires I made.

 

BRAIN...come on man. you can't blame the mfg. for stuffing a caddy mill in that coupe. you did exactly what any good mechanic would. been there myself, and congratulations on working it out. hell my H.A.M.B. brother, that's what hotroding is! yes?...POP.

 

My daily driver....you should try working on this one! (ignore all the dirt...it's hard to keep cars clean lately)



Had a coolant hose leaking just enough to pee on the back of the block and cause some steam, I can't even remember how I got a screwdriver down in there to re-tighten the clamp but I do remember I cut and bruised my hand in the process of pulling that hose off and putting it back on (more than usual ).

Small sacrifices for being able to shoehorn an engine in though, right?

 

If it was easy, all the girls would be doing it.

 

Had the washers stop working on my daily ford focus.
Found some instructions on line. First thing mentioned was to remove the front fender!

 

Remember, engineers design cars to be easily assembled. Not easily repaired.

I remember a series of softbounds that Peterson Publishing released in the 70's I still have the one on Fuel systems, but I've lost the one on Cams and valvetrain tech.

In the Cam book, they were swapping cams from a small mopar in the "new" Duster. They had the rad and condenser out, and the front of the mill stripped. Upon pulling the cam, they tipped it up and out, only to be stopped by the hood latch mechanism. They actually included a pic of that moment and chastised the factory for such a blunder, as it should have known to make way for cams swaps without removing the grill.

Wish i could take some current FSM's back in time to tell them to quit their bitchin'

 

Pontiac Fiero's were the same way un-do motor mounts for 2 out of the 6 plugs.

 

Another O/T car that is a ball to drive and something of a PITA to service is the BMW E30 3-series cars. I had to remove a starter once. The BMW Six is something like a Chrysler Slant Six in that it, too, is a slanted engine. The starter is right there...it should be easy to service, right...oh hell, no! All of the fasteners except ONE were super easy to get to. The bottom mounting bolt was nothing short of ridiculous! Took three hours, three beers, and a lot of cussing in English AND German to get the bitch off! Installation? See above.

 

x1000

 

Those were not Vegas, it was the V8 Monza that had that SNAFU built in.

 

((( Ever curse a desinger or factory engineer? ))) yup honda , toyota , kia , and every other front wheel drive car

 

Changing in-tank fuel pumps on OT cars can be a pain in the butt. However changing it without dropping the gas tank can save a lot of aggravation. Just rip open the rear floorboard with an air chisel and peel the floor back. Of course a little time spent on a trip to the pull-a-part to first map out exactly where to slice the floor can certainly come in handy.

 

When I married her 25 years ago my wife had an Olds Cutlass with the V6. The right rear (#6) spark plug was almost impossible to get on. When I changed the plugs for her #6 took almost an entire afternoon and the plug that I took out did not match the other five. Somewhere along the way a pro gave up.

 

Fuel filter on a O/T 1991 shitbox toyota celica....reliable little economical car...

Seem they buried the fuel filter in a lip of steel Way up under the firewall under the slave and master cyl.

5 hours and alot of cuts and disassembled 3/4 of the engine compartment.

They did however so good on the fuel pump, they used a access plate bolted to the floor under the rear seat to access the fuel pump...30 min.

 

I've been there. Wrench for a living. I think the worst I've seen was about a 1990 twin turbo 300Z. Not bad to change the plugs once you pulled the engine ( and its 500 connectors.)

Devin

 

What I've heard is front wheel drive cars were invented by an engineer who caught a mechanic sleeping with his wife!