Dear Ford engineers...

[T.O.M.]

Wife drives a Ford Flex.  Saturday evening, after one of the boys drove, she couldn't get the power seat to move.  Couple of things with the driver's door weren't working.  Look at the fuse guide online.  Yep, all run through the same fuse.  Stop on the way home from work.  7.5 amp compact/low profile fuse.  Auto Zone is out.  Advanced Auto Parts out.  O'Reilly has an assorted pack with one.  Sold.  The fuse panel is under the dash.  Gotta leave the door open, crawl under the steering wheel, push a wire bundle to the side.  There's a relay blocking my view of Slot 7, the one I need to access.  After 45 minutes of twisting, contortions, and scraping my back on the door frame, got the old one out.  New one went in easier...only 20 minutes, with dropping the damn thing twice.

Ford engineers...eat a grenade!

That is all.  Now, a drink to kill the pain.

[HankB]

Toyota engineers aren't much better.

High mounted brake light. It's on the rear deck, under the rear window. When you're in the back seat, you can easily turn around and touch it.

BUT . . . when it has to be replaced, you have to remove the rear seat to get at it. 

[Boomhauer]

That would be why I am not an automotive mechanic. I think a mechanic ought to be allowed to smoke one engineer in his life. And those weird low profile fuses are GHEY

Jesus Christ ATC mini, maxi, standard, glass, JCASE don’t provide enough variety? Oh no we have to add yet another type…

[bedlamite]

To be fair, a lot of the griping about engineers isn't their fault. Many of these problems are from management mandating that it not cost any more than X amount of dollars.

That said, whomever at Chrysler is responsible for the plastic petcock on my Jeep, I would like to see them in a ball of duct tape underneath the radiator so that stupid petcock drips on their face for all eternity.

[French G.]

I worked on things McDonnell Douglas engineers blessed, don't wanna hear it. If we do get to kill an engineer I have a list.

Ford though, in their infinite wisdom runs all voltage regulation through the dash on certain year F-350s. The dash that apparently has a pretty well known fault. I would have never traced the myriad problems of the truck to gauges that malfunctioned every now and then. Google and Youtube, pull dash, send to someone who makes a living soldering dashes, presto perfect truck.

[Bogie]

There are reasons why auto parts guys drink. And wake up screaming at night.
 
I want five minutes. Five lousy minutes. I'd be happy... With a Detroit automotive engineer, preferably from Chrysler, in a small room with a locked door and no upholstered furniture...

[PEfarmer]

Three words: concentric throwout bearing. Thanks Ford!

Once upon a time, an engineer came home to find his wife in bed with a mechanic. Engineers have been f$*king mechanics ever since.

[brimic]

I found an interesting engineering flaw in a chevy trailblazer a few weeks back.
When the fan speed control module in the climate control system burns out, the fan goes to full on setting and you cannot turn it off.
Shutting the vehicle off and removing the key does not shut it off.
you have to find both use boxes (one is under the rear seat, the other under the hood) and find the right fuse to pull labelled 'climate control' to shut the fan off. There were about 6  different fuses with that label between two fuse boxes.

[230RN]

When the final OK is made on any new model or variation, the Chief Engineer has to be locked in a big chamber with the new model or variant.

Chamber temperature can be varied from 0°F to 120°F.

He is to be given two screwdrivers, a flashlight, an adjustable crescent wrench, and a bumper jack.

He is to take the whole car apart and put it back together again using only those tools.  Temperature is to be changed randomly through the full range.  In human charity and empathy, rain is not included in this test.

Cheeseburgers and coffee are delivered through a window in the door.  No time limit unless you're feeling especially vengeful.

A terrible justice.

Terry, 230RN

[Kingcreek]

Ever time I deal with a technical issue or chasing gremlins on my modern vehicles, I find myself longing for my old Jeep CJ7 or my 70 chevelle or even my 89 F150.
Hell I helped my dad restore 2 model A fords and they were simpler than my thermostat.

[Hawkmoon]

I have long been of the opinion that no one should be allowed to work as an automotive engineer unless they have first worked for at least a year as a mechanic.

[Bogie]

Observation on the simple battery change:
 
With a LOT of American vehicles, it is... time consuming or awkward. Far back under the dashboard, you have to take a wheel off, that sort of thing. Braces (yeah, like that little screw is gonna do a lot...) and stuff in the way.
 
Most Hondas and Toyotas? Five minutes.
 
Some Hyundais and Kias? The computer is on top of the damn battery. Nope. Too many things to have go wrong.

[dogmush]

Some engineers make some dumbass decisions (Starter under intake manifold comes to mind) but they are also subject to packaging restraints. Also they are told to use existing off the shelf parts in different applications to keep parts counts low as well as limit costs.  Cars designed by committees get some weird compromises.

But you get no sympathy from me, because none of that holds a candle to what you get when the brain child of an evil ship designer has 30 years of modifications and fixes piled on it and you have to work with the unholy mess of parts that is left.  Ship builders honestly think "cut the deck out, fix the thing, and weld the deck back in" is an appropriate answer.

[French G.]

It’s the only way to fix a lot of stuff on a ship. No access. If I am never in a shipyard in my next nine incarnations I’m good though.

Interesting one was a 2015 Subaru. I serviced the front diff. I am looking at a giant fill plug high up on the diff but the girlfriend/car owner is insisting that I have to access the fill plug by pulling the wheel off on the opposite side. No way. Get my head around there and sure enough there is a plug. So what’s the giant plug? Off to google. Oh, that’s the transmission fill port but clearly in the case of the diff, one inch forward of the split line. Internal port to the tranny. Apparently more than one person has drained the diff, jammed two quarts of 75w-90 in the automatic transmission and then headed off a very short way to destination F$&!ked.

[Bogie]

My '96 Mitsubishi Mirage had a drain plug on the tranny pan. Oil change place once drained the tranny pan, and stuffed about 4.5 quarts of 5-30 in the engine. Luckily I checked things after pulling out of the place.

[WLJ]

https://youtu.be/K1Lo-d8AWL0?t=112

[HankB]

Remember when changing an air filter only involved loosening up one easily-accessed wing nut? (If you were the careful sort, you'd wipe out the dirt around the edge of the housing that the air filter stopped from being sucked into the engine before you put in the new one.)

Changing air filters with molded hoses that don't bend is one of the more minor - but unnecessary - annoyances with modern automotive designs.

[Kingcreek]

I had to cut a wrench in half and weld some weird angled extensions to change the fuel pump on a Chrysler crossfire. It was above the right rear axle and suspension. And it had 5 lines going in and out of it. I had to take pics and label the lines.
I have a very minor front axle seal leak on my Jeep JKUR. I’m told it is an all day job and a thousand bucks or so labor (because of the locking diff?)

[zahc]

Things can be designed for easy maintenance. Engineers are good at that, when that is the goal. I have seen a lot of industrial equipment where uptime is really important, and it's often designed with ease of maintenance as a primary goal. Things like common fasteners, jigs that make things easy, even ergonomic considerations for the maintenance people are forefront considerations. A machine that requires the maintenance guy to twist into an awkward position for a maintenance operation can literally cause customers to reject a multibillion contract. This is what happens when ease of maintenance is made a design priority by the customer and by the leadership of the operation. But in the automotive industry, it's not a design priority of the customers and it's not a priority for the leadership. So all the complaints about the engineers are completely off-point. Engineers will build your anything you ask for. The correct people to blame are the design people, marketing people, and ultimately the consumers who set the priorities. Blaming engineers is just no holding the right people accountable. Kind of like blaming a group of people for problems that are actually caused by government policy.

[K Frame]

a couple of years ago Subaru addressed the complaint that oil filters were hard to get to on their H-4 engines.

They redesigned it so that the oil filter is now right on top of the engine, unencumbered by anything. And, it sits in its own little catch basin so that there's no more spilling oil all over everything when you spin it off.

[Ben]

a couple of years ago Subaru addressed the complaint that oil filters were hard to get to on their H-4 engines.

They redesigned it so that the oil filter is now right on top of the engine, unencumbered by anything. And, it sits in its own little catch basin so that there's no more spilling oil all over everything when you spin it off.

That's kinda how my F-150 oil filter is. They make up for the ease of filter access by making me remove a heat shield before I can drain the oil though. 

It's interesting how different manufacturers make things easier or harder. I take my 4Runner in for an oil change because it takes me too much time to remove skid plates and stuff to do the oil and filter. The F150 is relatively easy access so I still do that myself.

The cabin air filter on the 4Runner takes literally under a minute to change. I finally sucked it up and did the cabin filter on the F150. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but still took me 20 minutes (I should have it down to 10 minutes for next time). You have to drop the glove box door, snap off one of those friction dashboard covers that you know has a limited life of "snap off, snap on" before something breaks, then remove another cover and disconnect a wiring harness, then reach way back where the filter cover is to swap the filter. Then when you put everything back together, you find out the glove box door doesn't open and close right because something is rubbing, then you take everything back apart again until you get that fixed.

On my old 2008 F250 diesel, I did nothing because there was no room. On that generation, they actually built them so that the first things mechanics would do to work on them was remove the whole cab.

[K Frame]

The CAF on my Forester is pretty easy. Have to snap off the glove box piston then pop out the whole glove box, but that takes about 5 seconds. Literally.

Then you pull the old air filter out of its housing.

That usually takes the longest because it's a very tight fit and, as often as not, the "handles" on the filter (tabs, really) snap off.

I've gotten so that I take two linesmens pliers with me and grab the tabs with those. That usually gives me enough straight line leverage that I can get the filter out without snapping the tabs.

If they do both snap off, I have to drill the filter and thread in a short bolt that I then grab with the pliers.

Pain in the butt mostly, but overall not bad at all.

[French G.]

a couple of years ago Subaru addressed the complaint that oil filters were hard to get to on their H-4 engines.

They redesigned it so that the oil filter is now right on top of the engine, unencumbered by anything. And, it sits in its own little catch basin so that there's no more spilling oil all over everything when you spin it off.

I do enjoy that on the new Subaru. Mercedes was similar. My 2010 Impreza had the oil filter in a tiny triangle between the 17 exhaust pipes a h4 apparently needs. Only filter I went out and bought a wrench for, burned all the hands all the times.

[Declaration Day]

I've encountered many of the issues you guys have described, being a mechanic on the side.

As a machinist in the automotive assembly line component industry, don't even get me started on engineering mistakes.

The strangest thing (cost-cutting measure, probably) I've encountered working on cars was when I had to replace the blower motor in my fiancee's Chevy Malibu.  The housing for it is molded into the HVAC housing and the correct way to remove the factory one is to take a pocket knife and slice through a perforated line in the plastic!

The replacement can then be mounted like in a normal car, and they at least bothered to mold divots into the housing for three self-tapping screws.

[AmbulanceDriver]

I have a friend that 20 some odd years ago had an early to mid 90's Pontiac (Grand Am I want to say).   Her turn signal went out, and she was used to just taking stuff to the family mechanic.   I mention to her that I can probably take care of it pretty easy, grab her a copy of the Haynes manual for her car (they're just handy I find) and glance at the section on the turn signals (they were in kind of a weird spot).   

I'm slightly ashamed to say that it took me over an hour to change that one turn signal.  Turns out I had to remove the wheel well trim/shield piece and essentially wrap myself around the front tire in order to get to this bulb.....  That was for the left one.  The right one took a little less time, as the Haynes manual pointed out a short cut by removing the battery and tray.  That one only took me about 40 minutes....