Poor design

I've seen it in some cars over the years, but I think the heater core in my MkIII Volkswagen might take the cake among cars I've owned. In order to change it, one pretty much has to disassemble the entire interior of the car. Whoever designed this should have their head examined. Heck, send the the designer for the E30 BMW heater cores along with him, but that job doesn't seem so bad now after reading about the MkIII travesty.

The knock sensors in some Nissan v6 engines are also trouble as they're buried under so much crap it's ridiculous.

Changing the battery in a Breeze is way harder than it needs to be. Ditto the timing belt.

What other cars have parts that are prone to failure in places that are not easy to service? I want to make a list. Not so I can avoid them, mind you, but just to have to talk the prices down in case I want to buy one.

Heater core on a 94-99 mustang is a boat load of fun.

Lower intake manifold gaskets on Chevrolet 60 degree V6. 10 hours to change because you have to disassemble the entire top of the engine. Some jack a$$ ran the push rods through the intake manifold. All the rockers have to come off.

Spark plugs on Ford Triton V8s. Five hours on my van. Coil on plug is bad enough. Why the hell did they decide to mount the fuel rails right on top of the coils. Do you think it would have been so hard to move them over an inch.

The right rear spark plug on a 81 Chevy Malibu wagon. The other five took 15 minutes. Number six was in there when I bought the car and still in there when it got totaled. I never did figure out how to get it out without half removing the engine or the A/C box.

Those are the ones I have the most vivid memories of. I'm sure there are others that are worse, but I have blocked those memories to save my sanity and to stop me from driving to Detroit with a gun.

Starter on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

Alternator on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

Power steering pump on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

For most cars the heater core is the first part hung on the assembly line. The rest of the car is built around it.

A1 VWs should never have had A/C.

With my '80 Rabbit (no A/C), it was as though the car was trying to hand you the alternator. It took about fifteen minutes to swap one out.

On my '84 GTI (stupid American-market A/C aberration with bizarre welded up steel plate bracketry), it was a couple of days of reaching, swearing, cutting allen wrenches off so they'd fit up where I couldn't see them, and eventually stripping something to the extent that I had it towed to a shop to finish the job. I hate foisting off unfinished jobs...

I have to say, the heater core on a BMW 2002 is no fun, either. Things have to come way further apart than they ought to to get at it... I've only done one on a car I had apart with the windshield out, and it was still no fun...

I would agree that the E30 heater core change makes a good "sucky but not this hellish" comparison for either of the above.

Oh, as long as I'm rolling... The '84 Marquis I used to have: I never did get a look at the #1 spark plug while I owned it. I believe it was perfectly boxed in by some combination of ancillaries, and I could never back it out. I'm not sure I could even get a wrench on it.

i always thought e30 heater cores were one of the easiest to r&r out there. what heater cores are significantly easier?

FC RX-7 heater cores are pretty easy.

ignition module in 90 cavaliers...its actually a breeze to get to if you have more than one wrist per arm. For the rest of the humans on the planet, it will have you considering jumping off tall things.

In reply to WilberM3:

Ford E-Series vans I can do in less than an hour and I only have to stand on my head once.

Toyman01 wrote: Ford E-Series vans I can do in less than an hour and I only have to stand on my head once.

I seem to be better with cars than motorcycles for some reason, but one of my favorite things about working on motorcycles is that they don't have dashboards.

Thus, I never spend any significant amount of time with my feet marking up the headliner while the brake pedal gouges my head and I try to ignore all of the above long enough to do stupid task XYZ under the dash...

toyman lower intake gaskets on the 2.8 3.1 and 3.4 once youve done a few only take about 2.5 hours.... starter on 4.7 iforce v8 under the intake manifold (WTF?!?!) timing belt on pt cruiser and side motor mount same car a serious loss. ummm half of what chrysler designs! 3 valve triton v8' spark plugs.... who ever came up with that design needs to be shot. plugs breaking and requiring either head r&r or special tools not cool... plus needs a 9/16's plug socket for them. grrrrrrr...... ummmmm ever done an oil pan on a cadinorthstar in the fwd caddi's? ya you gotta pull the motor supposedly. ive done it without but still took 9 hours. plugs a 5.4 triton in the trucks really arent that bad once you learn that you need 2 swivles to do them easy. alternator on most for duratecs... ya you gotta pull the axle out..... or pull the exhaust mani on the back side.. the axle is easier. 4 cylinderfury.... do them from underniether.... or tilt motor forward.... wratched strap and loosened motor mounts make it easy. thats all ive got for right now.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Starter on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Alternator on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Power steering pump on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

Can't remember exactly what I replaced on the Saturn I once owned but the only way to get at it was to remove the front passenger side wheel and inner fender. Ridiculous.

dean1484 wrote: Heater core on a 94-99 mustang is a boat load of fun.

That would be heater cores in ALL fox bodies. The 86-88 Thunderbird / Cougar are probably the worst of the lot.

T.J. wrote:

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Starter on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Alternator on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Power steering pump on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

Can't remember exactly what I replaced on the Saturn I once owned but the only way to get at it was to remove the front passenger side wheel and inner fender. Ridiculous.

That would be the alternator. Oh, neat little tip. If you're swapping a motor, double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple-check that you put the bottom alternator bolt in the right way. Because if you have to take it out again, and the bolt is in backwards (and it'll go in backwards just fine out of the car...), you're going to be up there with a sawzall to cut that bolt. No bueno.

The power steering pump isn't any better. Unless you have tiny TINY hands, the "easiest" way is to get the alternator out first, then take the pump out from the bottom.

Brilliant packaging. NOT.

oo, vw heater cores. That brings back dark, repressed memories...

When I had to do mine in a '93 Passat, the Bentley manual claimed, and I am not making this up, that I had to DRILL OUT the bolts holding the steering column on, in order to get the dash out. Needless to say, I did not do this...

The cabin air filter on the 1st. gen. Mazda3/Speed3 is a PITA to access. On some cars with cabin air filters, it's mounted int the glove box and is simple to replace. In the Mazda3, however, you have to take out a dash trim piece, the entire glove box, the fuse box and its sharp-edged, over-tightened mounting bracket, the center console kick panel, and four small, easy-to-strip screws. By this time, you are on your back, underneath the dash with the door sill digging into your back. The filter element itself is in two pieces, on that stacks on top of the other, but the access slot only allows you to insert one at a time. So, you then need to insert the top filter first, then try your best to hold in in place as you slot in the second element underneath it.

I repeat: Pain. In. The. Ass.

Batteries in the stupid Chrysler FWD clown cars (cloud cars)!!! Who was the crackhead that decided the battery should be put in the front bumper, nearly on the ground, right in front of the left front tire. Ridiculous.

Isn't there a few cars that you have to remove the bumper to replace headlight bulbs?

there are a few..... which in all truth isnt all that bad on the ones u have too..... most cars now you can remove the front bumper cover in 10 minutes.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Starter on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Alternator on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Power steering pump on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

I was a Saturn tech for 2 years in the mid-90s. All can be done in under an hour if the car is on a lift. On the ground.....not so much.

Junkyard_Dog wrote:

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Starter on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Alternator on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn. Power steering pump on a 1.9 DOHC Saturn.

I was a Saturn tech for 2 years in the mid-90s. All can be done in under an hour if the car is on a lift. On the ground.....not so much.

Really, though, aside from the accesory packaging (had to replace an alternator myself, and yes, they are a bastard) those are well thought-out little cars, IMHO.

While I'm here, the experience I had trying to remove and replace the 3.0 V6 in an early 90's Toyota pickup was bad enough that I took a really good look and wound up saying "no thanks". Looked like they dropped the cab onto the frame with the engine already in it (which they probably did).

The winner in all of these threads so far, though, has been the back plugs in a V8 Monza, which apparently require you to take motor mounts loose to get to.

I have recently, finally, put the dashboard back together on my Elan. This is after I took it apart to fix the gauge cluster, clean up the wiring and replace the stereo like 10 months ago. Good god, what a clusterberkeley. I ran into the situation where I couldn't put the dash fascia back in with the trim around the steering column in place, and I couldn't put the trim around the steering column back with the fascia where it was supposed to sit. I don't understand how they built that in the first place?

Also, they used some godawful 2-part epoxy all over everything that melted in the intervening years into horrible sticky goo. If you so much as brush a blob of it with your fingernail it will thoroughly coat your hands and be transmitted to everything you touch. The only thing I've found that gets it off reliably is acetone, but that also melts the paint on all the GM-sourced switches and dials. Oh, Lotus!

You haven't even begun to learn all the swear words until you've changed the HVAC blower on a Volvo 240.

EvanR wrote: You haven't even begun to learn all the swear words until you've changed the HVAC blower on a Volvo 240.

Or the timing belt on a 1.8T Jetta.