The flight school I taught at has an airplane equipped with a four cylinder rotax, like you might find in a snowmobile or wave runner. Like most light airplanes, you can pull the cowling completely off the airplane to gain easy access to the engine. However, to get the oil filter off, the exhaust manifold has to be removed from the block. Stupid.
My former BIL had a 70s Dodge product with a slant-6 engine. You could see the filter from the top, but couldn’t get to it. There was a removable panel in the wheel well that required removal of the tire to get to it.
Chrysler seemed to revel in making things impossible in the engine compartments of the 70s. I had a '71 station wagon with a 383 that was a total PITA to work on. Only one spark plug could be removed from the top; all the rest had to be removed from under the damn car, and only by blindly fumbling to find them. And the one that could be removed from the top required the use of a combination of the ratchet, an extension, two wobblies, and the plug socket. :rolleyes: The car also had the removable panels in the wheel wells, but the one time I tried that method, I still couldn’t reach all the plugs.
I’ve got a rear engine 3.8 and it’s remarkably accessable. In fact, while a ramp certainly makes it easier I’ve slid underneath far enough before to reach the drain plug and filter, although I usually take it to a mechanic friend with the specific synthetic oil and filter I’ve order and he does it for cheap. Here’s a simple guide. Darn thing holds just shy of 9 quarts but I change it every 10 - 12k so no big deal really. When you’re racing them you of course do it far more frequently, which I’m sure is why they engineered the ease factor into it.
Saturn Ion Redline. Directly under the supercharger. Not only that, but under some other stuff under the supercharger. You have to have a special tool to even remove the filter, forget about taking the whole dang car apart to get there.
My Chevy, my Toyota, my Saturn SC2, my Chrysler–I always changed the oil in all of them. Not with the Redline. Rather pay my mechanic (Saturn specialist, and really good) and read a magazine while he tackles it.
Is it 5000 miles already?
Don’t mind me. I’ll just stay here in the corner twitching and weeping into my beer.
1981 Honda Civic Sedan?
That one was at the bottom of the engine, but the metal skid plate made it impossible to reach from there. You’d end up leaning in under the open hood, extending your arm as far is it could go through the engine compartment and around the belts.
In your hand (don’t drop it) was a tool … a metal loop with a handle… that would crimp around the old filter.
You had to slip the loop around the filter and then tighten & lock the tool… all before trying to loosen the filter at the awkward angle.
I just have to check in here with the amazing situation with my 2014 Subaru Forester. The oil filter is on top of the engine, right in front, next to the oil filler cap. What a crazy idea!?!?
1981 Chevy Citation (gone these 15–Thank Frith–years):
Had to jack up entire front end (you’ll see why) and use stands. Turn wheels one direction to get filter wrench in and filter loose, turn wheels other direction to get my hand in there to twist off filter (unless I want to spend hours loosening filter 1/4 inch at a time), turn wheels other direction to get filter to fall into pan–Splash–yum, yum, turn wheels other direction to clean off filter mounting area, turn wheels other direction to fit filter into place and twist onto block, turn wheels other direction to insert filter wrench and tighten. I think I’m done! I might have missed or added an extra wheels direction turn.
Fun. Good times. Expletives.
I know, right? It’s totally stupid. I don’t even get through half a beer changing the oil on my '14 Subie!
I still have a spot on my left arm where the hair doesn’t grow back from burning in on the exhaust pipe every-effing-time on an old 80’s Accord that had the filter on the back side of the engine. I really didn’t understand that one-- usually the impossible filter locations are due to the engine being used in multiple applications but at that time Honda basically made two cars and had no engine options. How hard would it have been to put that filter on the front?!
Sounds like it would’ve been easier to just take the tire off.
While there are some amazingly stupid places to put the oil filter on the outside of an engine, would you believe Moto Guzzi actually put them inside their engines?
Not all 4 cylinder oil filters are found in the same location on the lower part of the block. My Subaru has the oil filter located on the front upper corner of the engine…the filter itself sits in a small “moat”. So after the oil is drained from the engine in the normal manner, the filter can be unscrewed, leaving only a trace of oil that is captured by the “moat”. There are lots of details like this on the Subaru - I’m beginning to suspect the car was designed by engineers rather than auto stylists!
The best my wife or I have owned recently:
WJ Jeep Grand Cherokee - vehicle can stay on the ground, always a plus.
E36 BMW M3 - cartridge filter right at the front of the engine bay, not a drop to spill.
My current (2013) WRX is a bit of a pain…a big splash guard has to come off first which requires fasteners in a few different places to be removed, and the filter is in a weird spot where it’s a bit hard to reach and there’s lots of stuff for the oil to drip onto as you pull it out. Oil down the shirt sleeve is always fun.
Speaking as someone who works for an independent auto repair shop out here in the great State of Washington, I can safely state that the best friend of repair shop is the modern auto designer.
Take the fender off to put in a new headlight bulb. Check
Take the gas tank out to put in a new gas filter. Check
Remove the whole front end of a car to change a timing belt. Check
Take most of the engine out to change the spark plugs. Check
I could go on and on.
The day of the shade tree mechanic is fading fast.
Daylate, name names please. I would be interested in knowing what models have those stupid maintainence requirements.
Although some of those “tear half the car apart to turn this one bolt” jobs can be good ones for DIY-ing to save money since sometimes they’re not all that hard, just really time (and labor charge) consuming.
I think I recognize some of them from certain 1990’s Volkswagen models.
Of course the other foible with the old Subaru EJ engines is not only was the oil filter kind of hard to get to, if you happened to have an automatic there was a canister-type transmission filter that really looked like the oil filter and was sometimes easier to reach. I suspect Subaru sold more of the transmission filters to quick oil change places who accidentally pulled them than to people intentionally changing it.
On my '14 with the FB engine, it has the oil filter right on top but it amused me that the genuine Subaru filters still say “ENGINE” in huge letters.
That’s my favorite part of my Subaru compared to dropping the tranny pan and swapping the filter on my 92 Cherokee.
The oil filter location still sucks, although I’ve found longer filters that make the job slightly less painful compared to jamming my hand into the centre of the exhaust manifold.
Will try to get these for you, but probably not until next week - if this thread is still alive then. But, here is one example of what I’m talking about. It’s an Audi getting a new timing belt.
Please note the missing fenders, the missing radiator, the missing grill, the missing wheels, etc. Not to mention the lose hose ends drooping around.
BTW, we love DIY jobs at our shop. The usual sequence of events is as follows:
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Owner finds out how much the job will cost at a valid shop and says to himself, “Hell I can to it for a LOT less than those crooks want”.
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Owner goes down to NAPA or O’Reilly’s and buys the parts he needs for the job.
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Owner spends hours installing these parts. Car now will not run at all.
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Owner hires a tow truck to haul the car into our shop.
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We spend time undoing the DIY job (at $100 per hour), including removing all the recently installed parts which are now either ruined or the wrong part to start with. These are now usually a dead loss.
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We now, at standard rates, do the work properly.
7 Overall cost of job to owner is now two or three times what it should have cost in the first place.
We do a lot of these.
Yes, I did just that sort of thing when my 95 F-150 needed rear leaf spring shackle brackets. My mechanic (who I trust) wanted ~$400 so I decided to do it myself. About 12 hours of struggling and $200 of parts and tools later I had only gotten one side mostly done. The part that stymied me was getting the rubber bushings out of the end of the leaf springs.
Anyway I’m still glad I tried it myself; I learned to use an angle grinder, they didn’t need to undo anything I did, and I still saved about $50.