It ain’t our fault that the designers build cars like this. Somewhere buried in my files I’ve got a picture taken in our shop showing a relatively late model Audi in the process of getting a timing belt replaced. At the stage I took the picture the grill had been removed, the radiator ha been removed, the passenger side front wheel and the shock had been removed, and maybe a few other things I’ve forgotten. The car looked like it had been in a major wreck.
And this was just to get down to the stage where we could get to the timing belt. The repair bill was in four figures, and I guarantee we didn’t make any sort of killing on the repair.
The customer sort of has two options on this. He can take the car into the dealer and have them do the same thing and probably charge half again as much as we do, or he can buy a new $20,000 or $30,000 car. His choice.
As soon as my job is costing some soft-souled car engineer a couple hours of their life or hundreds of dollars, they’re welcome to tell me how much I suck at it. Until then, they should accept the fact that sometimes car engineers do shit work.
I had the unfortunate experience of riding in the backseat of that devil vehicle on a road trip and it was the most godawful uncomfortable fucking seat ever made and impossible to sleep in and I’m the kind of guy who can fall asleep anywhere in almost any position.
I thought the routine for changing the timing belt on my Acura Legend was a pain:
Dis-connect ALL hoses, wires, tubes connected to the engine.
Loosen the engine mounts
Place lift over engine
Raise engine until the lower cover bolts are accessible.
Remove belt cover.
It seems this was just the warm-up (1987 model year) for making timing belt replacement as difficult as possible.
On the bright side: I believe it was the Chrysler 440 that was installed in a body in such a way that a special tool was required to get to one or more spark plugs (this was when spark plugs lasted 3,000 miles).
Remember in my previous post about the Audi timing belt I mentioned that I may have forgotten something? Well, I just remembered - the left front fender also had to be removed.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever complained about a stupid movie, poorly written book, or annoying pop song? Are you, yourself, a director, novelist, or musician? Because if the answer to the first question is “yes,” and the second question is “no,” then you’re a hypocrite.
Ya gotta focus on the bright side – it’s been how long since you had a flat tire to encounter this situation?
I was replacing a tire a year for a while. Got pretty good at changing tires on the side of the road. Thankfully this was when I was in college, when money was oh so plentiful…
I help maintain some higher end vehicles…one of them,the audi 8 takes some serious tricks and time to change the oil (hours)…everything is PACKED so tightly into the engine compartment…
I ended up owning a little Scion Xbox, the funny boxy ones?
You can lie down next, reach around the front wheel and do the oil and filter change quick as can be, with just simple tools.
It also has weird little panels around, inside the passenger compartement… you open them up and the are access panels for repairs,tail lights etc:D I think the whole universe should have access panels everywhere!!!
And once a few years before that. And another time a slow-ish leak that I was able to inflate with a portable electric compressor and limp into an auto shop.
But other than that, never in many decades of driving, so you do have a point.
I strongly suspect that I’m dealing here with another triumph of engineering: a systemic problem with a particular model of Goodyear tire. In one case a defect was found in the sidewall and the tire replaced under warranty, in another, the tire disintegrated so completely that diagnosis was impossible. After that last episode I got a pair of Uniroyals.
Get off your high horse. You know as well as I that every drawing out of Design, every spec out of Marketing, and every budget out of Accounting comes with the invisible stamp, “Engineering to make this work.” It’s our job to do the impossible. Sure, we blame them for all of our troubles, which they richly deserve, but at the end of the day, when we’re still at our workstations solving problems and not getting overtime, we learn why Management made us salaried. And if it still takes four hours to change a lightbulb, somebody didn’t do his job.
It boils down to safety. There’s a reason that tires and windshield wipers are easily replaceable by most consumers and just about every auto parts and repair shops. Both are critical safety features of a car. By making the headlight a “dealer repair” issue the manufacturer is comfortable with risking the consumer’s safety in favor of making a few extra bucks.
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… In short, if you can come up with a better way to do it, then do so. Otherwise STFU. It ain’t 'cos engineers are stupid or incompetent.
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As an engineer I agree that we are seldom stupid or incompetent but you appear to be quite clueless. You’re challenging a non-tech person to come up with a better design. He doesn’t need to come up with a better design. All he needs to do is grab you by your white collar and shove your nose into the thousands of headlights on cars that DON’T require removing the tire and wheel liner to replace a single headlight bulb.
look, I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 15 years. When you get into an inconvenient service item like the Acadia’s headlamp, then the simplest explanation is that that was the “least bad” option for all involved parties." Looking at underhood photos of the Acadia, the radiator core support wraps all the way around from the front of the car halfway back to the doors. The core support is a major structural part, and the headlamps mount to it. Conveniently, the design studio (the ones who dictate how the car will look) wanted the headlamp lenses to sit right where the core support joins the upper structural beams. That’s an important part of the crumple zone, and has huge implications in crash safety. You aren’t going to just cut access holes in the structure of the car.
if that makes me a “clueless asshole,” so be it. Have a nice day.
If it helps, if LED-based headlights become popular, they might never (or only very rarely) need replacing. And I’ve heard the idea of using a light source at a distance from the front of the car, but using a fiber optic light guide to deliver the light to where it’s needed. In that case, the bulb could be in a more convenient spot.
That’s good information to know. When in the future the “least bad option” for me to enter the car is through the window I’ll be comforted by the fact that that guys like you have used your many years of experience to design something for all involved parties.
What’s next, a windshield wiper that can only be accessed via the oil pan?
Ironic comment from the guy whose opening statement was to tell the OP to shut the fuck up.
Through all of our pleasant insults it appears as if you still miss the point of the op. Most engineers don’t have full freedom over their creations. They work within the parameters that are assigned to them.
The op wasn’t necessarily jumping on the engineers. He wanted to take a swipe at what ever idiot out there mandated a situation where a safety necessity like a headlight somehow evolved from an easily replaced item to one where it took great effort to fix…
You yourself said that the design studio basically sets these parameters. The engineers are just the poor SOBs who somehow have to make it work.
I’ve had a few stinker projects handed to me where my only choice was to support a ridiculous design plan. Officially my signature was included in the product but I’d be the last person to defend a stupid concept no matter how much input I gave to it.
