2 months at an import repair garage

Bah, you guys obviously haven't worked on a FWD N* powered Cadillac, that's pain. Most procedures start with:

Step 1) See "INSERT OTHER COMPONENT ASSEMBLY" Removal...

Step 2) See "INSERT ANOTHER COMPONENT ASSEMBLY" Removal...

Step 3) See "JUST TO PISS YOU OFF, INSERT ONE MORE COMPONENT ASSEMBLY" Removal...

Step 4) Now that you've partially dissasembled the car to change the spark plug, make sure you follow this very precise repair procedure or else you'll blow up your transmission and all 4 tires will deflate...

mazda is the same way but it works both ways, like they will tell you to take out this that and the other thing to get to X. Then you get down to it and its like i dont need to do all this stuff and you just move it around or what not and you save time (or make it depending on how you look at it ). But then sometimes its worth it to just disassemble everything in your path, it usually ends up being faster then dickin around trying to go around stuff or be clever.

Ok... Just added one to the list... Late model Volvos with the VVT.

I had to replace the oil separator (which requires draining coolant, removing the intake manifold, and still having double jointed elbows) replace the timing belt... with NO timing marks at all. zero. I had to scratch timing marks on the sprockets, but since the VVT lets the sprockets move independently of the cams, who knows what happens. I had to do the cam seals, which were a royal pain, but I also had to do the rear main seal.... ready for this?.... 13.5 hours just for the rear main seal. That's not how long it took me... that's how long Alldata lists the labor estimate.

So anyway... start it up, runs fine. I'm waiting for the thermostat to open up so I can top off the coolant and the idle starts surging, then cycling. No CEL. So one of the more savvy techs (in fact the only other tech) suggests that since I disconnected the computer, maybe it needs to relearn. Volvo garage confirms that it takes 3 driving cycles to relearn. So I spent half of my friggin day driving around in a Volvo waiting for it to relearn. It still had no CEL, but it wasn't quite right. Imagine explaining to a customer who just dropped nearly $3000 on repairs that he can expect some "minor idle surging" until the computer relearns.

Grrr.

Junkyard_Dog wrote: Thats kinda my point. If you can't hack it then try another line of work. Whiny mechanics just really piss me off. Its SUPPOSED to be hard! If it was easy everyone would do it themselves and I'd be out of a job!

I think you may have missed the point of a good mechanic then. Being a good mechanic is not about suffering through hours of pointless excess labor on ignorantly designed cars for routine repairs. A good mechanic can take a broken car, find the problem, and the solution, as well as pick up on symptoms of future failures. No matter how easy a car is to work on, it won't make knowing what to replace any easier. So making cars well designed that are easier and quicker to work on, would not put you out of the job, unless all you do is turn a wrench.

ddavidv wrote: I can't say for mechanical repairs, but VW/Audi products are on the top of my hate list for auto body repairs. These cars literally explode into 2 million bits of unidentifiable plastic when they get hit in the front. Coupled with motor mounts that shear from the block and engines that go back and hit the firewall, trans cases that fracture, intercoolers mounted with designed-to-break mounting tabs...they are just awful. I junk every one I can because they are always a nightmare. And I used to own/drive VAG products...

Dwight, I will post up some pics later of a 400 mile 2009 2.0TDi Jetta that caught a manhole cover on a road that was just "shaved for repaving" at about 30mph...

Customer bought the car friday and it was totalled by monday.

blaze86vic wrote: Being a good mechanic is not about suffering through hours of pointless excess labor on ignorantly designed cars for routine repairs. A good mechanic can take a broken car, find the problem, and the solution, as well as pick up on symptoms of future failures.

I have to disagree there. a mechanic won't do that. A technician will. While those words may seem interchangeable there is a huge difference between the two. Again if the diagnosis was easy then everyone would be doing it.

blaze86vic wrote: No matter how easy a car is to work on, it won't make knowing what to replace any easier. So making cars well designed that are easier and quicker to work on, would not put you out of the job, unless all you do is turn a wrench.

Actually backyard "mechanics" and lesser shops that have no clue what they're doing get me a lot of work! I'd hate for that to go away thanks to thoughtful design and easy foolproof diagnostics. Luckily even the best designed and built vehicles have failures. Even luckier for me the British are not the ones building those vehicles!

I'll just leave this here:

BTW: the banjo bolts for the oil cooler lines on an FD are 23mm!

See.... with the diagram being that detailed and pretty colors, that doesn't look too bad to me.

I might want to paint all the lines to match the diagram, but that's beside the point.

93celicaGT2 wrote: See.... with the diagram being that detailed and pretty colors, that doesn't look too bad to me. I might want to paint all the lines to match the diagram, but that's beside the point.

Yea the colored version was done by a club member which makes it infinitely easier to use than the B/W shop manual version. But still, any one of those lines cracks, becomes disconnected or any of those solenoids malfunctions and stuff stops working properly :P And they're all buried under the intake manifold and many are connected to the underside of the thing which makes reinstallation a pain.

My point is not so much with the diagnosis, its with the method of repair. Not only are old cars easy to fix without having to drain coolant to change a spark plug, but you used your artistically trained ear to diagnose. With the advent of OBD, it started telling you what was wrong with all that new technology.

An example... a customer was driving down the street in his Hyundai when is check engine light came on. He saw our shop a block ahead and stopped. It had 9 codes including EGR, variable intake malfunction, knock sensors, limp mode, and that the limp mode was even malfunctioning along with several others. He left it with us on a Friday morning. His wife was 9+ months pregnant and he desperately needed the car, but I couldn't tell him to drive it in limp mode... let alone that limp mode was malfunctioning. I spent hours diagnosing all of these issues with varying levels of failure. Its not only a matter of testing things, its the fact that you have to find all of these components, then find all of their controlling mechanisms, and devise logical ways of testing each one. After leaving the car over the weekend, you know what the problem was? A blown fuse. His aftermarket stereo blew a fuse that controlled a few things like the tach and speedo. The tach helps determine when the EGR opens which caused the EGR fail. The EGR fail caused the knock sensors to reach their limit of ignition retard and cause detonation. The failed tach also caused the variable intake to fail. All of the above put it in limp mode. Once in limp mode, the computer uses the RPM to help plot a basic map allowing the engine to run on minimal input, but since it had no tach it said that the limp mode was failing.

The first problem I see is that the computer derives information from a secondary source: The tach signal should go to the computer, then through a fuse to the tach. That way, if the fuse blows you lose the dash display, but the car still operates. This car has the tach signal drive the tach and the computer reads from that. The single blown fuse ended up throwing the computer (and me) into a headspin. THAT is poor engineering anyway you slice it. Anyone who has ever added fog lights or rewired a stereo could design a better electrical system than that. These people have set aside basic engineering logic and made a sub-standard system... and then it falls on ME to magically know how to fix it by plugging in this magic OBD code reader.

The second shortcoming is the lack of diagnostic intuition. If they're going to put all of that sophisticated crap in there, at least they need to have an equally sophisticated diagnostic system. There is a dummy light that tells you when your brake lights are out, why not one that tells you that fuse #18 is blown? Or even a "most likely fault" when those 9 codes show up?

Sure, these cars separate the men from the boys and I have no problem admitting that I'm a "boy" when it comes to these computers. I personally find more art in tuning a carb by ear than trying to decipher what a computer thinks is wrong. Anyone can read a code and throw parts at something, but I would challenge any late-model wrencher to diagnose a 65 Impala that pops through the carb under acceleration. At least my artistic ear has value when dealing with new cars. Let's see a new-car tech diagnose an old-school car with just their ear.

Then to add insult to injury, the solution often requires an 80% guess, then tearing down half the engine to fix what you think is most probably wrong.

I know I'm too young to be this old-school, but I have rejetted a carburetor that I felt was a bit too rich while I was (literally) 13 miles offshore with a storm on the horizon. I didn't even think twice about it. I knew I would be able to get us back to port before we got stuck in 10' swells. But if I had been out there with an OBD2 engine.... scratch that... I wouldn't go 13 miles offshore with that.

curtis73 wrote: Like the VW oil temp sensor that uses a 23mm socket. Nobody makes a 23mm socket. It doesn't exist. Fortunately 15/16" is close enough to work.

23mm Socket

I have been reading all the comments about car engineering and I just wanted to take a minute to defend our kind. I work in in the automotive engineering field and the problem isn't the lack of engineering knowledge or whatever you think it is. The main factor - money. The parts you change go there for a reason.

I hate it when people complain about a component location or the way something is done. All the guys I work with are all "car guys" too. We see a better way to do things on a daily basis, but are held back by budget or some other department that we can't control.

You should be happy that they have to come to you because that is just job security. It is always better if you would take a look at the situation from both sides of the street.

If you don't like the work, then change jobs.

I fully understand that... One of my good friends was a [very embarrased] designer for the Avalanche. He and his team designed an incredible vehicle, and what hit the showroom was something entirely different.

I don't care who is at fault. The bottom line is that the engineering sucks. I'm working on a 90 Accord right now. The bolt for the timing belt tensioner is ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE TIMING COVER. How on earth can I tension the timing belt if I have to put the COVER ON FIRST?

brilliant engineering. All it takes is a bulge in the timing cover to fix it, but instead they make you think for a few days on how to do it.

curtis73 wrote: All it takes is a bulge in the timing cover to fix it, but instead they make you think for a few days on how to do it.

A few days? Dude, seriously, start looking in the classifieds for a new job. I was a Honda tech for 4 years and they are probably the most logically engineered cars on the planet. Never once had a problem doing any timing belts on any year.

Do you know how to read? There are these awesome things called BOOKS that tell people who can't figure things out how to do them. There is even a book dedicated to doing timing belts on most any car you could name. Haynes manual I believe. I've never needed it, but I've known quite a few mechanics who swear by it.

A few days? Dude......just ......dude!

Junkyard_Dog wrote:

curtis73 wrote: All it takes is a bulge in the timing cover to fix it, but instead they make you think for a few days on how to do it.

A few days? Dude, seriously, start looking in the classifieds for a new job. I was a Honda tech for 4 years and they are probably the most logically engineered cars on the planet. Never once had a problem doing any timing belts on any year. Do you know how to read? There are these awesome things called BOOKS that tell people who can't figure things out how to do them. There is even a book dedicated to doing timing belts on most any car you could name. Haynes manual I believe. I've never needed it, but I've known quite a few mechanics who swear by it. A few days? Dude......just ......dude!

I don't quite understand your anger here. Why not just tell us the trick you learned to achieving proper tension for the timing belt on this model? RTFM doesn't help.

Just saying that there are no great mysteries that proper information/research will not solve. The "trick" I've been trying (apparently unsuccessfully) to point out is that investing in the proper tools and reference material will make any job much easier. Instead of bitching about this stuff a good TECHNICIAN will put in the time and money to solve not only the current problem but any problem he might encounter down the road. My anger is that whiny half assed MECHANICS are what gives us properly trained and equipped TECHNICIANS a bad name. Because 99% of the populace can't tell the difference. The only thing worse IMNSHO is flat rating thieves. Don't even get me started on THEM!

So, NVHEngr sez that he designs pieces of crap, knows they are pieces of crap, "the bureaucracy" won't let him make a car that isn't a piece of crap (like Toyota and Honduh apparently have no trouble doing), and we should all be happy they are making pieces of crap because that’s job security for the mechanics out here. Uh, yeah, I can see that. And how’s that GM job doing? Obama Motor Corporation gonna give you a raise or save your pension invested in GM stock? Or is Fiat gonna fix you up with one of their fine, reliable vehicles rated at lower customer satisfaction than the dredges of Chrysler?

G_Stock wrote:

curtis73 wrote: Like the VW oil temp sensor that uses a 23mm socket. Nobody makes a 23mm socket. It doesn't exist. Fortunately 15/16" is close enough to work.

23mm Socket

Have fun removing a sensor with that.

Feedyurhed wrote: On the flip side............what's easy to fix?

BMWs are pretty easy to fix once you learn the tricks of unfastening bits that need to be removed. I should know. I had to fix my BMW on many occasions. It broke a lot. But in its defense, I probably didn't keep up with the dealer-recommended maintenance in the last two years that I owned it.

Miatas are stupid-easy to work on. I haven't been stumped yet by that car (meaning, it hasn't had to go to the shop when I couldn't figure something out).

Curtis, I'll go with you on the B5 Passat. There's not much room to work on the intake tract on the 1.8 turbos. Plus, the thing's an electrical nightmare if you start to modify one.

American cars bother me because they often use metric and, um, non-metric fasteners on the same car. I think this comes from our Canadian brothers up north building some of the components for the cars. I noticed it on my Mustang and a few trucks.

MX-6 V6. A friend of mine changed the alternator in one of these. Twice. In three months. I helped him the first time. We had to notch out a piece of the frame to get the berkeleying bolt out, in addition to loosening all of the engine mounts. I made sure I was somewhere else the second time.

One more: Two of my friends and I tried desperately one day to remove the speedometer cable from the transmission from an early 90s Sentra. Why? To replace the dashboard illumination bulb, of course. We strained to get the nut loose, which you can't access from the bottom of the car OR the top, and even then, it was still fastened in there so tight that we gave up after a while. There is no way to pull the gauge cluster out far enough without doing this.

John Brown wrote:

ddavidv wrote: I can't say for mechanical repairs, but VW/Audi products are on the top of my hate list for auto body repairs. These cars literally explode into 2 million bits of unidentifiable plastic when they get hit in the front. Coupled with motor mounts that shear from the block and engines that go back and hit the firewall, trans cases that fracture, intercoolers mounted with designed-to-break mounting tabs...they are just awful. I junk every one I can because they are always a nightmare. And I used to own/drive VAG products...

Dwight, I will post up some pics later of a 400 mile 2009 2.0TDi Jetta that caught a manhole cover on a road that was just "shaved for repaving" at about 30mph... Customer bought the car friday and it was totalled by monday.

Driving on roads like this terrifies me. I used to drive down a road that was shaved for miles when I was going to work. I cringed every time I went over one thinking it was going to tear the bottom out from under the Z3. And there were pipes and manholes everywhere!

confuZion3 wrote: American cars bother me because they often use metric and, um, non-metric fasteners on the same car. I think this comes from our Canadian brothers up north building some of the components for the cars. I noticed it on my Mustang and a few trucks.

If they were Ford trucks, I am pretty sure Ford is under a moratorium to use as many different size fasteners as possible. Gotta use that 11mm wrench for something besides looking pretty!

In reply to Dr. Hess: Having to settle on a design that isn't the best, but still gets the job done doesn't have to be "a piece of crap." I don't really care about mechanics or technicians and their job security. I don't work for any of the big three. I was just trying to illustrate that engineers aren't always at fault.

curtis73 wrote: My point is not so much with the diagnosis, its with the method of repair. Not only are old cars easy to fix without having to drain coolant to change a spark plug, but you used your artistically trained ear to diagnose. With the advent of OBD, it started telling you what was wrong with all that new technology. An example... a customer was driving down the street in his Hyundai when is check engine light came on. He saw our shop a block ahead and stopped. It had 9 codes including EGR, variable intake malfunction, knock sensors, limp mode, and that the limp mode was even malfunctioning along with several others. He left it with us on a Friday morning. His wife was 9+ months pregnant and he desperately needed the car, but I couldn't tell him to drive it in limp mode... let alone that limp mode was malfunctioning. I spent hours diagnosing all of these issues with varying levels of failure. Its not only a matter of testing things, its the fact that you have to find all of these components, then find all of their controlling mechanisms, and devise logical ways of testing each one. After leaving the car over the weekend, you know what the problem was? A blown fuse. His aftermarket stereo blew a fuse that controlled a few things like the tach and speedo. The tach helps determine when the EGR opens which caused the EGR fail. The EGR fail caused the knock sensors to reach their limit of ignition retard and cause detonation. The failed tach also caused the variable intake to fail. All of the above put it in limp mode. Once in limp mode, the computer uses the RPM to help plot a basic map allowing the engine to run on minimal input, but since it had no tach it said that the limp mode was failing. The first problem I see is that the computer derives information from a secondary source: The tach signal should go to the computer, then through a fuse to the tach. That way, if the fuse blows you lose the dash display, but the car still operates. This car has the tach signal drive the tach and the computer reads from that. The single blown fuse ended up throwing the computer (and me) into a headspin. THAT is poor engineering anyway you slice it. Anyone who has ever added fog lights or rewired a stereo could design a better electrical system than that. These people have set aside basic engineering logic and made a sub-standard system... and then it falls on ME to magically know how to fix it by plugging in this magic OBD code reader. Sure, these cars separate the men from the boys and I have no problem admitting that I'm a "boy" when it comes to these computers. I personally find more art in tuning a carb by ear than trying to decipher what a computer thinks is wrong. Anyone can read a code and throw parts at something, but I would challenge any late-model wrencher to diagnose a 65 Impala that pops through the carb under acceleration. At least my artistic ear has value when dealing with new cars. Let's see a new-car tech diagnose an old-school car with just their ear.

I couldn't agree more;I have experienced this very phenomenon in the past as a diesel mechanic and more recently as a machinist. There are always differing schools of thought on things of this nature and I believe it goes back to what you are familiar and comfortable with.Computers and diagnostic tools are definitely useful SUPPLEMENTS for the machinist and mechanic,respectively.But as such I do not believe they should be solely relied upon.They are like crutches;useful for short periods of time but ultimately it comes down to you to fix things or know what command produces what movement.On the other hand sometimes a crutch is NEEDED and neglecting to use one is comparable to using a crescent wrench on every nut and bolt;very counter-productive.I am most assuredly not an advocate of blind obedience;"The computer is telling me to change this so I'm going to ignore my own instincts and follow what it says." I believe the Mechanic/Machinist is always the magic ingredient. ramblerambleramble...