damn do i hate working on newer vehicles

a reply to: qjest

We used to say, "The job of an engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the repairman."

Personally, I like cars from the mid 80s to the early 90s. Relatively simple computer controlled fuel injection. Got a problem? Read the computer and check the factory service manual. I never liked carburetors, they seemed like more art than science. The most aggravating cars I've had to work on were a 75 Camaro (lift the engine to clean the oil pan) and an 85 Fiero (can't see half the spark plugs). Both were fun to drive, though. I think the easiest cars I worked on were a 69 Rambler and a 70 Beetle, that car was designed to be repaired. Say what you want about the Germans, but they are the best engineers in the world.

originally posted by: Wildmanimal
a reply to: CardiffGiant

It is not so bad.
The Truck is repairable.

1. If you have over 100k miles on it,
drain the tranny fluid, and refill with Mercon
until starts to overflow out of the filler plug.
You will need 5 quarts min. of fluid, and a
siphon pump. (20 Bux).
It would be cool to have a helper for 15 minutes
to help keep the hoses from rattlesnaking on you.

2. Replace the Upper and Lower Intake manifold gaskets.
While you are at it, and have easy access, replace the
valve cover gaskets.
3.There is a cheap black plastic valve that connects FOUR
hoses. these go to your heater core. It has a metal wire
elbow sticking out of it.
Replace it Now. Use new hose clamps instead of the factory
spring clamps.

4. While your at it, check/replace upper and lower radiator
hoses and clamps. The four smaller diameter heater core hoses
as well.

5. Check front and rear differential 90wt. gear oil.
(top off to drain plugs)
6. Change oil/air/filter/plugs/ PCV valve/ Ignition wires
if needed.
7. Add STP or Techron fuel injector cleaner and fill the tank
half way with High Octane.
8. Your Truck is now Bad Ass again and runs like a dream.

9. If you have Four Wheel Drive, Change the Fluid on the
Transfer Case.

10. Put the petal to the metal and get out of town for a
a while.

P.S. If you have any advise for me on my ticking valves/lifters
please let me know. As I believe they are "Non-Adjustable".


S&F

thanks for the advice but i have it covered. i know how to fix everything but my hand is just a little over useless all the time... im in constant pain and i have no strength or motion to the hand. it is also crazy sensative. if i bump my scars forget it...

i know i could get to the plug and drain it. i know i could fill it up but the point is where the hell is the dipstick? the dealership was correct when i talked to them. they have to hook it up to the computer and check the codes and they have to get the tranny up to normal operating temp to run through the gears then back to park. then they will know how low it is so they dont over fill it.
obviously i cant do all that here. i mean i can get it to temp and run it through gears but i have no way of knowing how much fluid is in there. i just have to put in a quart or so and see whats what before i do it again.
it just sucks and it shouldnt be that easy.
also, its kind of a bitch to get to the filler screw. it is way up on the tranny on the side but damn near the top. there are cross members in the way. it is just in a tight spot that does not make for an easy job.
again with the upper/lower intake. i know how to do it. ive done jobs like that all my life. problem is i cant do it. after i got hurt i sold 90% of my tools cause i needed cash till comp started paying out. so i dont have tools and my hand is a pile of dung man. there is no way i can use my left hand for that job so it is out of the question.
i want to but i cant. i already take lyrica, oxycontin, and roxicodone for the pain. i have to go for a consult for a spinal cord stimulator... my point is my hand is in bad shape and i am maintaining with the meds but if i get out there and use my hand to wrench on a job like that i would be in crazy pain.
upper/lower intake manifold gaskets takes several hours on this truck. that is several hours with 2 good hands and all the hand and air tools. i dont have any of that.
so, i am left with trying to patch this pinhole with some jb weld..
my only option

sorry for this one but your advice about filling with half hi octane is terrible advice. i appreciate your help and im not trying to dog you out. im sure you will say youve done this all your life and it works. well if that is the case then by all means keep doing it.
it is a horrible idea to fill up a high mileage car with high octane fuel if it does not call for it from the manufacturer.
if you have a high end or high performance car then youve probably been using hi test all along.
all the average cars though. my truck. my moms escape. my neighbors saturn. my inlaws cobalt. they dont take hi test and putting hi test in will do nothing to help. the hi octane will want to resist detonation so i dont see why you would do that...what happens when its resisting and the detonation does not happen at TDC?

no thanks on that.

originally posted by: caterpillage
a reply to: CardiffGiant

On the caliper piston, use your c clamp and a pair of channel locks to turn the piston. Some times the turning motion of the clamp will even be enough. When it's not the channel locks get the job done. Put some pressure on the clamp, turn the piston , tighten the clamp, repeat till it's all in.

i needed the tool. that thing was stationary. i had to use their socket like tool with a ratchet and a breaker bar to get it to turn

a reply to: Wildmanimal

the original owner might not have it that long but its still in use. kind of back to the whole circle of sales and service. that vehicle gets traded back in and a new on purchased in its place. then someone buys the trade in and its back on the road.
i would love to remove everything and thread a new stem but as ive said, you may have missed it, my hand is messed up. there is no way i can do that

obviously no stitches now but this is what i have going on

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
a reply to: qjest

We used to say, "The job of an engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the repairman."

Personally, I like cars from the mid 80s to the early 90s. Relatively simple computer controlled fuel injection. Got a problem? Read the computer and check the factory service manual. I never liked carburetors, they seemed like more art than science. The most aggravating cars I've had to work on were a 75 Camaro (lift the engine to clean the oil pan) and an 85 Fiero (can't see half the spark plugs). Both were fun to drive, though. I think the easiest cars I worked on were a 69 Rambler and a 70 Beetle, that car was designed to be repaired. Say what you want about the Germans, but they are the best engineers in the world.

those fiero's sucked. mid engine v6 crap.
i liked the 70's stuff i would wrench on with my dad. i remember both of us sitting on the inner fender wells with our feet resting on the lower control arm as we worked on it. dont have that kind of room now.

i think the worst thing i ever did was a head gasket on a ford aerostar minivan. i had to take the front clip off and pull the entire motor out, R&R the gasket and then install motor and clip. i think it took something like 17 hours.
it was a bummer for sure
thee german cars are sweet machines but they are expensive too. they use some different tactics for their stuff. my father in law had a mercedes a few years back. it was an early 00's i think. he needed a ball joint so he took it to the dealer and it was like $700. i didnt see it but i guess the ball join was pressed in to the lower control arm that was in once piece with the upper control arm so it all had to be replaced.
they are fine machines but if you cant do the work be prepared to pay some cash.

right now he has a 94 bmw that i have been wanting to buy for about 2 years. he drives it about 100 miles a year. its a v-12 and it has 40k original miles on it. its a bad boy.
super luxery. comfy and quiet but it has some serious balls and a lot of torque. i look under the hood though and it is intimidating. even having to change a belt or an alternator on that is gonna be a nightmare.
i want it though. very bad

originally posted by: CardiffGiant

right now he has a 94 bmw that i have been wanting to buy for about 2 years. he drives it about 100 miles a year. its a v-12 and it has 40k original miles on it. its a bad boy.

V-12 and 100 miles a year? That's a crying shame. I would be making monthly road trips to somewhere.

LOL for a ford. My Dad was so proud of his new shiny Ford Truck. Nice big 3500 something. Parked it on my brand new house with fresh driveway for the day. to congratulate me on my new home. Left with a black puddle of oil behind to mark his territory. 15 years later my Toyota has never dripped oil into his spot....

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom

originally posted by: CardiffGiant

right now he has a 94 bmw that i have been wanting to buy for about 2 years. he drives it about 100 miles a year. its a v-12 and it has 40k original miles on it. its a bad boy.

V-12 and 100 miles a year? That's a crying shame. I would be making monthly road trips to somewhere.

this car is sick man....its the perfect blend of luxury and power. factory alloy 20's... i think theyre 20's.
leather everything.

this guy gets killer deals. he is a bail bondsman so he has cash and he takes things on trade. people dump stuff cheap when they want to get out of jail.
he just picked up an impala. maybe a 66.... this damn thing is mint. the guy that had it did a frame off. everything is new. crate motor bored and stroked. the motor only has like 400 miles on it. he never drives that either.
i crawled under it and it is all mint. no rust anywhere. just beautiful.
it sits in his garage under a cover.
he took it on bond last year. he got it for like 4300 bucks.
he's got cash and his phone is ringing with people that are desperate for it.

the bmw is nice though.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

These days most of the engine tuning it done by an IT specialist who probably has little understanding of the machinary but can read the display on the laptop he has plugged in to the engine management system interface and I have heard exactly the same sentiment from an aquaintance who was a mechanic for 18 years over here.

There used to be a guy around here in the north west of England, we knew him as Vic, his family were truly nice people, christian Indian's who fled here after Idiamin persecuted them out of Uganda where they had business', he was legendary at the ford dealership were he worked and many people said vic was the best mechanic they had ever seen or at least in the north west of england, he would simply use the old trick of a glass of water on the engine block and tune the engine so the ripples looked right to him and it sounded just right, he could get vehicle repaired that other mechanics would have simply written off.

Sadly though even the petrol engine and the diesil are on there way out with the hybrids and electronic engines becoming more and more common place around the world, I don't think they will ever be as powerful as a good petrol engine though or at least not as satisfying, how do you rev an electronic engine.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

It looks like you are now only 4/5ths the Anarchist you use to be.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

The brakes are not just Hyandai or however you spell it. I did a brake job on my 82 280ZX same thing had to screw them in. If you can hold needle nose pliers just right they work, that is what I did.

I know what you mean about newer vehicles though. It was a PITA to change spark plugs on my 01 Trans Am. Now I have a Vette more room under the hood but also more computer. It sucks how they are doing this. They make vehicles where you can't fix them and they have no real quality. They want you to trade them in in 5 years or something. It's all about money to them.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

Great rant S + F.

I would imagine that most people can relate.

You are right about some cars having sealed systems, BMW, Benz, even some Corvettes, where the fluid levels are monitored electronically.

A lot of people will tell you that even "maintenance free" transmissions, should have their fluid changed every so often.

But the one nice thing about modern day cars are the car forums.

Theres an auto forum for almost every car. And on those forums there are a ton of enthusiasts and experts. I have yet to encounter a problem not covered on a car forum, complete with step-by-step instructions often times with pictures and videos.

a reply to: CardiffGiant

Now, I have never owned a car, and I am only just learning to drive, but I have fond memories of helping my grandfather work on his mark II Ford Escort when I was a nipper. The car was ancient even then, but in sterling good nick for its age. All the body panels were pristine, the chromed trims and bumpers were all intact and rust free, and the engine bay was spotless. And of course, it would have been, my grandfather being a former shop steward at Dagenham's Ford motor car plant back before I was even born.

Working on that thing was so simple, that there were bits and bobs which a determined, and inquisitive five year old could really grasp the doing of. Taking something off? Going to need a wrench. Something needs putting in? Make sure its clean, and repeat removal process in reverse. No specialty tools required, no computers, no complicated crap, just an engine block and an all mechanical approach to motoring.

But a friend of mine, well her father had one of those Mercedes A Class things, the miniature MPV? Well, let me tell you, that thing was a hunk of absolute crap. He needed to look at the engine, because the engine was not turning over, and he could find no reason for it. Now, when you open up the bonnet of a normal car, there is usually plenty of exposed engine, so you can normally see what you are doing pretty well, the only issue being, whether or not the manufacturer has organised the engine bay in such a fashion as to allow ease of access to oft replaced or adjusted items in the engine bay. Well this piece of crap had a bonnet approximately a foot and a half from the windscreen side, to the front most edge, meaning that right away, access was going to be a problem. Furthermore, upon opening the bonnet, it was clear that in fact, the entire damned engine was covered in a secondary plastic housing, which required specialty, dealership only screwdriver heads to remove, due to the shape of the top of the bolts which held it in place.

And what about those stupid Toyotas, with the bloody electronic brake system? I trust that about as far as I trust David sodding Cameron! Pushed the brake, got a runtime error followed by a blue screen of death! Hell no! My first car is going to have to be nearly as old as I am, or older to avoid this plague of stupidity I think!

a reply to: CardiffGiant

finally a rant that speaks for me too.

I feel your frustration . I had a similar transmission ordeal on a 2003 VW . Same sort of set up as you describe on your Ford .STUPID ....I gave up wrenching a long time ago .I think it was 1972 that the big shift happened in the auto industry where most of the standard parts wouldn't cross over . I had a incident on a Olds alternator (1985) I think where I though I would just go to the junk yard and grab one off another car ..Well apparently they had 5 different Alts. for that model that year .SUCKS .

Not only did they make the parts none convertible they started putting the cars together like a crazy puzzle that would require 4 hours work where it was once 15 minutes .A friend of mine said it was the same for the newer motorcycles .Standard service on a Harley used to be a hour but because of the cowling and all the mickey mouse ways they design them that hour went up to about 4 .

I think my next cars will be one of the old classics before they started mixing metrics with Imperial ...peace a reply to: CardiffGiant

I have a 1998 Saab 900 S that I picked up a couple years back for a great price on Craigslist. When I bought it one of the fog lights were burnt out. A couple of weeks went by and I said "I'm gonna fix that fog light" Bought a new set of lights, pulled up in the driveway, when to reach under the bumper to pull out the old bulb and dang wouldn't you know it there was a plastic skid plate covering the entire front half of the car. So now I check the owners manual to see how this works. First you have to remove this whole dang skid plate, to do this it requires removing the whole front air dam and part of the inside fender cover things. At this point I am now required to jack the freaking car up to get underneath it. I'm scratching my head thinking to myself this is stupid for just changing the dagon fog light bulbs. I get it jacked up and crawl under and to my surprise, everything is fastened with torque screws. Guess what I don't own, freaking torque bits. So now I have to go buy a shiny new set of torque bits.

Drop car, go to store, buy tools, go home, raise car back up. 4 FREAKING HOURS LATER...i had new fog light bulbs in. Between, old previous rusty already stripped out torque screws and not having a masters degree in space engineering to figure out how to get the dang air dam off (you would think being just clipped in that it would be simple, but your wrong....ooohhh sooooo wrong, most of the clips required being depressed on the inside and to get to them the plastic skid plate needed to be removed but to do that the air damn needed to be removed first. Yeah, let that paradox soak in for a while. WTF?) and getting into the actual fog light housing to get the wee tiny little screw holding a plate to cover the bulb access, I was so angry at this point. I have never dealt with that kind of ridiculousness to just change a freaking fog light bulb.

If and when one of these bulbs burns out, I will just set my car on fire and eat my loss. Totally not worth changing the bulbs again.

Saabs motto is "Born from Jets" I guess that also means you need a to be able to wrench on jets as well as Saabs.

a reply to: qjest

That answer for the messed up engine designs they now have is better than what I had figured. I thought there was a team that would meet daily and the Head would say. " Ok guys, how can we screw em' today!!" LOL!!! I could just see the gears turnin' in their heads as they thought up how to make even spiders figure out new ways of spinnin' webs!!! LOL!!! Syx.

love the replies.
if someone owns a pt cruiser please correct me but i think to get the battery out you have to jack it up and take of the passenger side front tire. not positive but i think.

i remember the days of going to the boneyard and digging around and grabbing parts. swapping parts.
working on this or that with my dad. some 70's car. go go the boneyard and search for whatever will work. something off a different car all together... just making # work.
cant do that today. there is very little making it work anymore.

i can think of all sorts of stuff.
i remember when you could take off ball joints and replace wheel bearings. these days for the most part they are pressed in. if you need a wheel bearing then you need to replace the entire spindle. if you need a lower ball joint then you are replacing the entire lower control arm.
even spark plugs. ive worked on cars where it has taken HOURS to change the plugs. ive had to jack cars up and get to spark plugs from the bottom. you know coming up through by where the y pipe is....
what kind of crap is that? you should be able to change your plugs in 5 minutes.

my old lincoln had 4 catalytic converters and 2 O2 sensors....kinda retarded

then things started to need specialty tools.
did you know ford has a 'special tool' to remove power steering pulleys? also for fuel injectors.
of course there are others. towards the end of my tenure as a mechanic the bottom drawer of my box was specialty stuff.
oh that tool is for 95-01 ford
that one is for 99-02 chevy

i went to matco and typed ford

www.matcotools.com...

insane

a reply to: CardiffGiant

Good Thread. I grew up in the 70's cleaning points with the scratch from a matchbook and only needing to know thatchya needed the right amount of gas and spark for an engine to run right. Now the friggin sensors cause some probs that are usually not so much a pain to figure out, but changin' some of them is a chore. Not wanting to get into detail yet as far as some of the mechanical jobs I have done on some newer vehic's I did from my garage at home over the years, Just wanted to say that some were leaving me 'fit to be tied'!!! LOL!!
Took a year and a half course back in 93' to bone up on the computer aspect of cars and trucks and right before graduation, fell into a metal shop welder/fabricator job that paid more than a rookie wrench and stayed with it for 9 years. Left that after 5 lower back disk blow-outs and 4 surgeries. Loved that shop. Alas the dream job shot down by nature....... I'll share some of the 'fun' I have had when more time allows. Later, Syx.

originally posted by: SyxPak
a reply to: CardiffGiant

Good Thread. I grew up in the 70's cleaning points with the scratch from a matchbook and only needing to know thatchya needed the right amount of gas and spark for an engine to run right.
, fell into a metal shop welder/fabricator job that paid more than a rookie wrench and stayed with it for 9 years. Left that after 5 lower back disk blow-outs and 4 surgeries. Loved that shop. Alas the dream job shot down by nature....... I'll share some of the 'fun' I have had when more time allows. Later, Syx.

i remember being about 6-7 years old and my dad telling me there were 2 things that would prevent a car from starting.
fuel and fire. if i said the same thing to my son or daughter i would be lying.

i quoted the lat part cause after years as a wrench i left and went to the foundry. i wish i would have started at the foundry earlier. hardest place in the world to work but i loved it. it was a perfect fit for me and i rose up fast.
at the end of my run there i had a small machine shop all to myself. i was turning parts on a brand new cnc and doing tinsile tests. it was awesome.