My first car was a '71 Superbeetle, the things they call Beetles now aren’t anything but a Golf in drag.
Working on my old Beetle was pure simplicity… I once removed, cleaned, and reinstalled a clogged fuel pump in under an hour.
A friend of ours works for a VW dealer and she has said repeatedly there’s no way in hell she’d ever own one simply because of the maintainence costs.
I can’t remember which model of Audi she was describing but when you open the hood, the entire engine is shielded and without removing this cover the engine cannot be worked on at all.
VW isn’t the only one that has made such blunders… I think there’s a '70 or '71 Mustang that has to have the engine removed to change the spark plugs.
What the fuck is up with that?
Coldy… Peugots are wonderful cars, any company that designs a fan belt system that can be changed without tools in under five minutes has their head in the right place. I think this feature was on the 504 and 505’s but am unfamiliar with the newer models.
I’d personally love to get my hands on a 504 diesel. They’re virtually bulletproof. A friends 504 has gone over 2,000,000 km without any serious problems.
SUCCESS!! The Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] can now ply the highways and byways safely at night! We printed out the web page with the instructions and figured it all out. The bad light was on the passenger side, so the battery wasn’t an issue. I let my daughter do most of it, partly because she needs to know how to do it, and partly because I couldn’t see. It’s mighty hot here in northeast Florida and when I bent over to look in the engine compartment, I had sweat dripping on my glasses.
Anyway, the instructions we downloaded were pretty good. She had to use a couple of flat blade screwdrivers to pry the light unit loose, but then it slid out easily. She used her needle-nose pliers to remove the electrical connections and the only other tool we needed was a phillips screwdriver to remove one screw. The most difficult part was sliding the light unit back into place - it took a little playing to get the three tracks aligned and a bit of jiggling to get it seated solidly.
I’m confident the kid will be able to change her lights in the future. I had her put the downloaded page in her owner’s manual (useless piece of crap publication) for future reference. Funny - she seemed to be a little miffed last year for her birthday and Christmas when we gave her a tool box and tools. But she’s used all of them on several occasions. Now, if I can just get her as comfortable with a needle and thread…
Once again, thank you, Benanuel, for the link. And thanks to everyone else for your stories and comments. Now pardon me while I do a very unpit-like Happy Dance! WOOHOO!!
Oh, I can answer that one. It’s the A4. The first time I opened the hood to check the oil, I thought I had bought an electric vehicle. There’s an enormous apron covering the entire engine. Taking it off was no picnic either. Oh, and flybynight is right on the money. Audi dealerships are the absolute pits. Everything is laughably expensive, for no reason at all.
I finally got rid of that thing and am now happily behind the wheel of a 2003 Forester XS. Great service, great dealers, great car.
Glad you got it worked out, FairyChatMom. Best of luck with the “Drivers wanted” thing!
Well, sure. What I said was that I see a lot of brand NEW VW’s with blown bulbs. Our license plate system is such that you can easily determine the age of the car, if you know a little bit about it. I see one month old Golfs driving around with blown bulbs all the time. I realise the fact that I see them so much comes with the fact that you pretty much have to take the friggin’ thing to a garage to replace a bulb, but a life span of a month for a light bulb? That just tells me they’re factory-installing crap on purpose.
Feynn, I can’t speak for all modern Peugeots, but my 1996 306 has an easily accessible fan belt as well. Not that I’d know how to replace it! But it’s an easy engine to work on, if the mechanics are to be trusted. It’s also very reliable: I’ve had it for 4 years, and outside regular maintenance, the only things that broke down on it are a drive shaft (bad luck: it had a crack in the oil “sock” encompassing the shaft, and had leaked grease for too long, until it broke), and a wheel bearing.
The 504 and 505 were great cars, but they were rust monsters too. Peugeot seems to have that flaw under control now: mine doesn’t show any rust. Neither did my 1989 Peu 205 when I sold it in 1999. Peugeot is known for their excellent diesel engines: 505, 504, and even 404 diesels still are frequent cars in Northern Africa, where rust doesn’t kill them. 2,000,000 kilometers IS a lot though!
The modern HDI diesels Peugeot makes are the smoothest in the market today. Turbo-charged with almost no turbo lag, and a smooth delivery, and SILENT. Compared to it, a VW TDI feels like driving a tank. A close second are the JTD engines the FIAT concern makes: mostly in Alfas and Fiats. In the higher price segments, Mercedes are of course the diesel kings. Unsurpassed, but expensive.
My next car will probably be a Peugeot 307 HDI. Car of the year 2002 in Europe, and you don’t get that title when you build a crap car.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Dooku *
**Only to discover that one of the bolts required to remove the old water pump was located behind an engine mount. An engine mount machined to the engine well. Yes, that’s right - in order to replace the water pump on a late 70’s model Scirocco, you had to remove the entire engine from the vehicle.I’m a bit suspicious. I owned a '78 Rabbit which has the same chassis and drivetrain as your '78 Scirocco and I was able to replace the water pump quite easily. I later owned a '78 Scirocco as well and though I never had to replace its water pump the engine bay seemed identical to the Rabbit.
Anyway, the stories about the new Beetle’s headlight bulbs sucks. All the other VWs I owned, including a '66 beetle were the most mechanic friendly cars you could find.
Well, what can I tell ya Padeye - I remember this quite clearly. I called in the big guns after I discovered the problem, (my grandfather, mechanic for International his entire life), and he concurred that the engine would have to be removed to get at that final bolt. In fact, that’s what we ultimately had to do at a local garage. I guess I can try and find one of those manuals with the invisible half of the car and all the wiring displayed on the cover and confirm. Does anyone remember the name of that book?
You turned your sweet, innocent daughter into a tinkerer.
Your grandchildren will be engineers. Do you really want to consign them to that fate?
When they’re about to graduate from high school, they’ll say, “Grandma, I don’t want to spend my late teens and early twenties at MIT. And I sure as hell don’t want to go to Cal Tech for my masters, and back to MIT for my doctorate. I just want to be a kid.”
Will you really be able to look them in the eyes and condemn them to an educational process that is guaranteed to drain the humanity out of them?
Coldy… my friends Peugeot 504 diesel (1975) still looked like new after those 2 million km, the interior and body were nearly perfect, and the doors still sealed perfectly. You could cruise down the highway with that diesel purring away and barely hear anything but your own breathing from inside the passenger compartment.
IMHO, automobiles and trucks have become increasingly complex with the passage of time, such that the days of the shade tree mechanic are waning. My roller cabinet is filled with tools that will perform a specific task on a given vehicle, and nothing else-one reason why I don’t want to part with an old Ford van that has >358K miles on it. Having performed every possible service on it, I don’t need a book or special tools.
Sigh I do wish I still has my '62 Beetle. Converted to 12 volts, that was a runner!
FYI-check with your local community college regarding adult evening education. I teach a course in automotive maintenance for women, and keep classes small so each student’s vehicle can be the topic of one night’s exploration.
Just where was this? And if in North America, didn’t it have any rust?
A friend of my father used to have a 1969 504 Diesel Familiale (the station wagon with the two back seats, seats 8 people!). Igniting it took 2 minutes, but that thing had done well over 1 million kilometers when it finally croaked because it became too hard to find parts for the car (regular stuff like brake pads, fan belts, what have you). The engine literally outlived the car, by FAR. The guy has since upgraded to a 1985 505 Familiale Turbo Diesel, relatively new with just 375,000 km. on the clock when he bought it.
My dad used to own a 504 TI that was property of the Egyptian embassy to the Netherlands prior to him buying it. I’ve never seen so much luxury on a 1979 car, unless it were a Rolls or something. What a great model it was, too. It’s one of the Peugeots I’ll buy one or a few of, when I get my farm out in the country, complete with a barn large enough for 50 cars and 100 motorbikes.
Nah, I don’t think so. Halfway thru the process, she uttered the ultimate girly phrase: “Darn, I broke a nail!” :eek: She’s not interested in tinkering, but she is careful with her money and knowing it’d cost a chunk of change to have the dealer replace the light will keep her hands occasionally dirty.
Well, the body shop called and said the car was ready last night, but when my husband went to pick it up, he could tell they did a half-assed job. You could still see where it had been hit, it wasn’t aligned properly. When he questioned them, they told him well, it was still missing a few parts that hadn’t come in yet. WTF? Then why are you giving it back to us and saying it’s done?
They also didn’t even look at the CD changer that didn’t work like we asked, and claimed we never asked them to, and that we would have to get that done somewhere else. Then they tried to charge us for the deductable, which our insurance company waived.
They still have the car, I’m not too optimistic. Although a lot of this is their fault and has nothing to do with it being a VW.
I haven’t read the entire thread since I’m at work and have things to do. But I wanted to mention my Yamaha XJ600 Seca II. Great bike. I’ve put almost 74,000 miles on it since new. But the headlamp! Aiyiyi. I’ve come to the conclusion that one’s forearm required one more joint in it to be able to change the headlamp easily. Either that, or you need to be a skinny little guy. It can be done without removing the fairing, but it would be easier with an extra arm joint.
When my mom’s husband went to change a headlight, he couldn’t do it. He took it to a garage, and the first guy THERE couldn’t do it either. Apparently you have to have teeny tiny fingers, because there was just no room to reach the bulb.
He was kind enough to replace a taillight on my Saturn this morning, though I’m sure I could have done it myself.
Well, what can I tell ya Padeye - I remember this quite clearly. I called in the big guns after I discovered the problem, (my grandfather, mechanic for International his entire life), and he concurred that the engine would have to be removed to get at that final bolt. In fact, that’s what we ultimately had to do at a local garage. I guess I can try and find one of those manuals with the invisible half of the car and all the wiring displayed on the cover and confirm. Does anyone remember the name of that book?