Whats the most difficult (stupid,poor engineering,assxxxxx) thing you've run across??

Probably the worst I've ever had to do was on the wife's 97 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I had to replace the evaporator coil. When I finely got to it there wasn't anything left on the firewall other than paint. Took 2 days and a lot of room for parts taken off. There is a door that controls temp. in the cabin. It has a nylon washer on the bottom to allow it free movement. After changing the evap. and heater core. I put it back together, putting the washer on the bottom of the shaft where I took it from.....BUT I assembled it upside down for ease of assembly which ment I put the washer on top. I did that job twice. I will never work on that car again I sold it and bought another Suburban.

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Originally Posted by techinspector1

Several years ago, I bought a brand new '94 Nissan Quest to use in our courier service in the Phoenix area. It was mostly a good vehicle and I did most of the routine maintenance myself. It developed a coolant leak from a hose that was in between the cylinder banks and I didn't feel like fooling with it, so I took it to the dealer. It cost me a little over $1,400 to replace that hose, as the tech had to almost completely disassemble the motor to get to it. Ask me if I wanted to have my hands around the engineer's neck!!!!!

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Ahhhh, The famous rusted out coolant tube under the intake. Dang cheapos, making that tube outa stainless would have cost a bunch of customers and mechanics a heck of less grief.

As much as some things have gotten worse, some have gotten better, heck the computer tells you whats going wrong half the time(although without the computer tech stuff it would be easier to fix!). The one thing that was truely easy to fix was replacing my serpentine belt on the MR2. There is a piston controled tensioner, that you justplace a socket wrench on a it releases the tension while you slip the old belt off, and place the new belt on. I remember dropping off the car at the toyota dealer for an oil change, and being told I needed to replace the serpentine belt. I asked how much and they quoted me something like 225 bucks. I said I'll think about it, went to their parts department and asked how much for the belt, and got the 80.00 dollar figure. Went home and looked it up on the internet, found out how quick and easy it was, printed the pulley flow diagram for the belt, called a few part stores to find the most expensive belt was under 25 bucks, called toyota parts and asked again how much the belt was, talked the guy way down in price, bought the Toyota belt(probably made by gates!) and had it done in less than a few minutes. Mostly my service dept. is pretty good with fair pricing, but in this case they have to charge a full hour for labor, and the marked up value for the part. If you ever owned a sardine can, and opened it looking at the lack of space between the fish, you'd know why I hate the thought of working on the MR2, but I'm also a cheap Bas@$%#^ so some things are worth the pain, difinately not an oil change though! :)

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Originally Posted by HWORRELL

Ahhhh, The famous rusted out coolant tube under the intake. Dang cheapos, making that tube outa stainless would have cost a bunch of customers and mechanics a heck of less grief.

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There's one just like it on Fords

Replaced the compressor clutch bearing the other day----$14----------shops want $750-900 to replace the compressor and recharge system------------used a old truck mirror and flash lite-realized why all the stuff is mounted on the left side and lots of room on the other side-drivers side is the corner they do a crash test on and the more stuff there the more to compress /absorb the impact




anyway, nice cold air now and also have picked out the options on the Ford I'll get her when the next thing goes wrong---