... There seems to be lots of AD members that are involved in the automotive industry in some way or another ... Use this thread to post your horror stories and your likes and dislikes involving twisting wrenches and idiot customers ...
I don't have a job or anything in automotive industry but I am sort of interested in mechanical engineering. What do you guys think about that?
... I think that more females shouls be encouraged to get into mechanical type occupations ... .. Personally, I think that the engineers at Daimler/Chrysler should be forced to change the oil filter on my Viper ... What a PITA ... Have you had to do one yet, Nephilim? ...
I haven't messed with a Viper yet but I'd like to bludgeon the useless idiot that decided where the oil filter goes on a '91 Chevy Lumina V6. Toyota seems to have a special engineer whose sole job is to make sure that almost all their cars have hard to reach oil filters and Ford has some really stupid setups too. Chevy's Vortec line are some of the easiest around
... I seem to have a habit of choosing cars with inaccessable oil filters ... I had an '87 Nissan Maxima that used to drive oil changers nuts and a MR-2 that used to start on fire ...
.. I guess to spice up this thread, I need to start some automotive trivia .. . Why did Ford call it's original GT car the GT40? .
What about the genius that put the battery in the front quarter panel, where you have to take off the tire just to get to the access panel. I think the sunfire was one of them. Here in florida you only get 2-3 years out of a battery, not fun changing one in the dark in the walmart parking lot. I managed and Autozone for a few years, I saw everything under the sun. Motor mounts outta 2x4's, duct taped brake lines, cars catching fire from crummy wiring, you name it. One of my favorites was an older couple changing a flat on an SUV. Hubby's underneath the car "don't know why for a spare change" barking orders at his wife. She goes to pull the full size spare off the back of the suv, hanging from the rear gate. I guess she figured a full size spare would be light, cause the thing slips outta her hands, bounces off the pavement, and up into her chest. Which in turn sends her flying about 5 feet backward landing straight on her a$$. It's humorous cause the only thing hurt was her pride, that and I bet her hubby's ear for the next few days. After we saw that we went out and did it for them, even though we technically aren't supposed to for liability reasons. Wasn't the gt40 called that because it was 40 inches high? My gramps worked for ford for 30+ years. He had so many cool stories of hot rodding model a's and t's. Like putting a petcock inline with the fuel and running some crazy stuff like ether or something, he said the manifold would glow almost purple from getting so hot. My latest horror story is after putting a new motor in my chevelle, which my buddies came to help. My ASE certified friend puts the stinkin flywheel on backwards. We get done I give it about 3 cranks and sheer the teeth of the brand new high torque starter and bend about 5 teeth on the new flywheel, not to mention turning it into a taco. I get all that replaced, fire it up and go to adjust the valves, #4 exhaust isn't opening for som reason. I get a new rocker and a new pushrod hopeing that might fix it "bad stock or wrong p/n in the box". No such luck, I pull the cam out and the lobe is completly chewed up, not to mention the lifter is darn near welded in the galley. I try and get the lifter out and it decides to take a plunge into the oil pan, so now I gotta take the pan off again. Not fun, plus the 100+degree weather and 90% humidity is not fun for working in. That and code enforcement knows me by name around here, it's actually against the law to work on your car in the driveway. That's enough whining from me, I just needed to vent. I'm sure yall can agree, for all the cussing, kicking, throwing, breaking you do when something goes wrong there's no sweeter feeling then when you turn the key and everything works.
... Whew! At least this thread is accomplishing something ... And yes, the GT40 was a total of 40" tall ... The new GT is a lot higher .. I'm not sure why they only vall ot the GT, they should call it the GT43 ... .. Years and years ago, I worked for TuneupMasters and boy oh boy did we attract some crap. Andy Granatelli was advestising that the company would even rebuild a carburetor if necessary as part of the tuneup ... One day we had some guy and his son push a car onto our lot saying "it just stopped running" .. Turned out that he had disassembled his carb and not being able to reassemble it, stuffed all the parts inside it and bolted it back on the intake, sticking us with it ... We really didn't care since we were paid by the hour and the kits didn't come out of our pockets ... Plus it gave us something to laugh about and to do ...
I read an interesting article about rotary engines today, the original concept engine needed a complete engine strip down to replace the spark plugs! Beat that if you can. Pulsar, 18" Bahcos in one hand, 24" Snap-On strong bar in the other & a 3lb copper/rawhide hammer close to hand! And Oxy-Acetylene in the corner for the really stubborn ones! The Deltic engine had the best config, 3 cranks, one in each corner in a triangular format, on the end of each crank are 2 con rods. The result is opposed piston 3 crank engine. It was in effect a modular situation as you could have as many or as few banks as you wished. They went for 6 banks, that made 18 cylinders. It had to be 2 stroke as there were no valves, only ports opened & closed by the position of the pistons. Ergo you needed to scavenge the burnt gases which need superchargers. They sound absolutely stunning. Especially as their use required 2 Deltic engines. 36 2 stroke cylinders going at full tilt is a sound to truly enjoy! You get that "punchy" sound too, a bit like the Impreza engine.
Had a Wankel rotary on an Arctic Cat snomobile back in 73. Ran like a jewel for about 100 hours, then got harder and harder to start until I gave up, and replaced it with an 18 hp Kawasaki. Have a good friend that built a homebuilt airplane, 2 place, and he powered it with an rx by Mazda, and to the best of my knowledge, it's still running. Had a lot of steam, as well as a perfect touque curve for an airplane.
you have questions, i have answers......... been doin this for over 17 years now, ase master certified, diesel certified........ ok, well, i do what i can, i work for an independent, got tired of the dealerships, now i get to work on everything. anyway, neph talks about hard filters.... how bout them ones on a caddy 4.5, where the filter is just beside the exhaust manifold, and upsidedown at that? or fords bright idea to place filters above their starters; taurus/sable, ranger (with 4cyl), or my personal favorite, which i happen to own, is a 4 litre explorer when you pull the drain plug, it smacks the lower control arm, and then pours all over you, not that i speak from experience or anything. most of my guys at the shop are rookies and learn the hard way... here's another good one, the lexus IS300, nice location on that one, better have your pancho ready for the oil bath you are about to get. how bout an oil pan on a caddy north star.......... pull the freakin motor for that puppy, or even cylinder heads on a northstar, stupid caddy engineers, all their head bolts are backing out, loosing coolant and oil, you ever price a caddy north star engine..... if you took it to a shop, would run you just shy of $10k, installed. wanna play......... gotta pay !! thats my motto.
That ain't no lie. We have a couple of accounts that use Rangers. I think every engineer needs to spend at least two years in the field so they can experience first hand how their retarded ideas work. I could take them under the vehicle, point to what they engineered then, while they're peering up under the vehicle, I'd whack 'em in the back of the head with a 36" pry bar then tell them thanks for nothing. The GM 2.8 liter V6 is another gusher. Folks bring them in for an oil "change" but it's more like an oil "refill" since there's hardly ever enough in there to qualify as an oil change.
@neph engineers make the big bucks, of course they dont work on em, they just design them, thats why they have feild reps who come out and show the problems to the engineers via pictures and e-mails. what about the air filters of caravans and those stupid 3.8 gm cars, like grand prix and bonneville's. glad i dont change much oil, i get the luxury of more in depth problems, driveability, a/c, electrical all that good dirty stuff. had a 97 surburban 5.7 other day for a/c inop, went thru 3 compressors before i found a good one, and what sucks, they were all ac delco compressors, what was even worse, it had dual a/c and each time i had to tear back into it to flush that bast**d out... talk about a PITA there. what about them good ole POS's, kia....... stupid oil filter is just about the cat and pipe, burn your damn arm just about every time on em? or honda accord and civic, oil falls right on the flex pipe, owner drives off with a smoking car, even after you spray it down with solvent or brake cleaner........ man i can go on and on !! this is is great thread......... thanks cat freak, even though i knocked it
... This thread is turning out to be more interesting than I first thought it would be ... .. You know, the old '88 Toyota MR-2 that I had actually started on fire 3 or 4 times during oil changes because of where the oil filter and the exhause were located ... Have you had the pleasure of doing one of these babies yet Neph? ..
front wheel brake job on a ferrari f1 mclarren = $35,000 oil change = $10,000......... i saw that on discovery channel ok cat freak......... waht about plugs on an LT1 f-body, lets say 2000 and older.......PITA or even just trying to break loose lines on most 93-97 chevy trucks, the a/c line, evaporator to accumulator, that has never ever been off, even after you soak it overnight, drill holes in the line to help ooze in the liquid wrench, and even heat it up, damn thing still never breaks loose, then you bust out the saws all, cut that puppy off outta desperation, wind up getting too close on the evap side, now the o-ring wont seal, now you need to call customer up, tell em they now need to buy a $600 evaporator job.......... these are things you learn in the field... what i mean by this is.... i speak from personal experience, if you own one of these said vehicles and you come in for a/c work, i warn customer up front of potential problems, give them worst case scenario up front, that way i can cover my butt up front too.... just an fyi
... When I was doing tuneup back in the early 80's the toughest plugs were the Chevy Monza V8 and the toughest pverall chore was a water pump on a Fiat X-19 - That was an all day job .. I believe book time was 8-9 hours ... Also, to access the distributer on the X-19, you had to remove an access plate behind the passenger's seat (if you were lucky enough to work on a newer one) and you had to remove the distributer to replace the points (unless you had eyes in your fingers ... This was one of the reasons that I decided to only do smog inspections/repairs for the remainder of my mechanical career ... Ahhh, smog inspections and fighting the ARB in Southern California ... Ahhh, boy am I glad I no longer work!!...
cars aint like they used to be, now everything is controlled by computer and computers control computers. you damn near have to be an engineer and electrician, doctor, specialist, and even a surgeon, and thats just the beginning. i go to school on a regular basis for up to date training, and this tuesday and wednesday, i have the duramax training..... but i have an 03 taurus with intermittent stall, but i cannot duplicate it at this time, all i can do is wait, what makes it worse, its my freakin day off, i just stopped in to get my check and they gave me a ticket.... bummer
stupid kia sephia, 1.8 DOHC... came in the shop for no start, i checked it out, had blown head gasket. owner says screw it, here's the title, keep the car. so we check it, do some price shopping, owner wants to fix car to sell, for next to dirt cheap price. so he invest's a 40 dollar head gasket to it and wants me to bolt it back up. so i did, but it had no compression, pulled the head back off, the gasket never sealed, didnt even leave an indention in the gasket now if you dont know, aluminum heads with a cast iron block have what they call, torque to yeild bolts. meaning that they 'stretch' and are only good for one use. well, i had to reuse the bolts, cuz owner was too cheap to buy new ones for me, hell, they only cost like 6 bucks a bolt, and there are 10. anyway, while i had the head off, you could actually see the warpage in that sucker, i mean it was bad. it was soon sent off to a cheap (and i mean [bold]cheap[/bold] machine shop, they even said it was no good, but they would see if it was fixable. well, with my knowledge and experience, i knew it was a gonner. anyway, to make a long story short, the head was milled too much and when i got it back, well, they took off too much material. they wanted me to try it anyway, so i did, but told them it still would not work. well, once again, i was right. compression was a tad better, like 45-50psi, but not enough to start, even the timing marks were off, (proving they took off too much material) now the pos sits in my stall, waiting for an engine. thats my frill for the week, till i get another one in here for ya to read !
Years ago, I had a neighbor in San Diego that had a Chevy Vega. It overheated and blew a head gasket. It warped the heck out of the head, but the guy took the head, watered down the concrete in his garage, and rubbed the head on it for several hours. Every so often he'd wash the aluminum off of the floor and kept rubbing the damn head. Finally he got it flat enough to meet his 'exacting' (ha ha) specifications. He'd taken so much metal off that he used 2 or 3 head gaskets glued together with copper Permatex. Whwn he got it back together, he filled the crankcase up with STP, The stupid car actually started and some dummy actually bought the car. I still laugh my rear end off when I think about it.
now thats weird........ ever heard of the radiator with a hole in it, and by placing a raw egg in the radiator, will sooner or later actually plug it up? i have personally have never done it, but seen it on myth busters. i also had one in the shop today, 03 saturn vue, loss of power steering @ 50mph.... this this is electronically controlled, no power steering pump, no fluid, all motor driven. well, it needed a control module, dealer item of course, big $$$$ for this puppy. owner had extended warranty, so i sent him to em !!
