No shit! My 79 f-100, top picture. My 93 4×4 Suburban, lower pic.
I was once told (and it could be urban legend) that Honda made their engineers actually twist wrenches on their designs. I’ve said for many years that I have a red-blooded 100% all American reason for buying Honda’s: They’re a superior product, and it’s only ‘Murican to want the best.
It’s probably no longer the case. We had to replace the blower motor on my wife’s Accord, along with the cabin air filter. Our shop had to dismantle half the dash to do it.
Yup, I had to replace the heater core on my 2001 Jetta (it croaked at only 200K miles) and had to completely dismantle the dash to get to it. The biggest PITA job I have ever done, and still needed a helping hand to pull out the crossbar under the dash while I maneuvered the new core back in to the limited opening. Seriously considered cutting a hole in the firewall but ended up doing it properly. Never again.
My uncle’s Grand Am needed to have a hole cut in the cowl to remove & reinstall the heater cor or the fan motor, don’t remember which.
Fairly recently did a timing belt & water pump on my 1997 Honda Civic. You would think that it would have killed the design engineer to put a half inch additional clearance between the engine and the inner fender. That little bit would have made a world of difference in the difficulty of the job.
This is the same car that you have to unbolt the brake master cylinder from the firewall and move it over as far as the brake lines allow in order to get the alternator in and out, and that is much simpler than what the Honda Shop manual says to do. Thank you YouTube.
I can do a full timing belt and water pump job on my 1991 Mitsubishi Mighty Max pickup in about the same amount of time it takes to get all of the external belts loose and removed on the Honda.
My 05 Wrangler with the 4.0 is pretty simple to work on, my 10 Sierra is a pain in the ass. The 74 Lincoln Continental I had in my youth had a 460 in it, and I could climb under the hood and stand on the ground. 85 Ford F150 short box with the 300 straight 6 was fairly simple other than the smog pump
My ’03 Jeep Grand Cherokee isn’t too terribly difficult, even if it DOES have the 4.8L V8 in it. My ’89 SHO, on the other hand, has that V6 shoehorned in to the compartment, with NO way to see the ground looking in through the hood. I have to pull the engine to replace the clutch, no matter what the Motors Manual says!
My ’85 Beaver Motor Coach engine compartment, with that bigass 427 Chebbie truck engine you can stand up in for most of the work. The engine and tranny can actually be dropped out of the chassis for replacement/major repair, even! But then, it was designed by Gillig as a bus chassis…
2005 Focus. Replacing the PCV hose (and valve too, I think) requires removing the intake manifold. According to Alldata, shop time is 2-1/2 hours. According to all but one YT video, replacing the thermostat requires moving the PS pump out of the way. Yes, Phil, I feel your pain. The sooper-special MTF that goes in the Getrag 5-speed was $20/qt last I checked. (Or, was it $40?) OTOH, oil changes at least are very easy.
My dad, after having changed his eleventeenth timing chain on 70’s chevy 350 (the ones with the plastic toothed cam chain) told me that “an engineer is a man whose daughter was r@ped by a mechanic”
Y’know, you CAN get metal gears and chain for small-blocks. Check out racing sites if not available from parts warehouses/chains…
No shit! My 79 f-100, top picture. My 93 4×4 Suburban, lower pic.
I was once told (and it could be urban legend) that Honda made their engineers actually twist wrenches on their designs. I’ve said for many years that I have a red-blooded 100% all American reason for buying Honda’s: They’re a superior product, and it’s only ‘Murican to want the best.
It’s probably no longer the case. We had to replace the blower motor on my wife’s Accord, along with the cabin air filter. Our shop had to dismantle half the dash to do it.
Yup, I had to replace the heater core on my 2001 Jetta (it croaked at only 200K miles) and had to completely dismantle the dash to get to it. The biggest PITA job I have ever done, and still needed a helping hand to pull out the crossbar under the dash while I maneuvered the new core back in to the limited opening. Seriously considered cutting a hole in the firewall but ended up doing it properly. Never again.
My uncle’s Grand Am needed to have a hole cut in the cowl to remove & reinstall the heater cor or the fan motor, don’t remember which.
Fairly recently did a timing belt & water pump on my 1997 Honda Civic. You would think that it would have killed the design engineer to put a half inch additional clearance between the engine and the inner fender. That little bit would have made a world of difference in the difficulty of the job.
This is the same car that you have to unbolt the brake master cylinder from the firewall and move it over as far as the brake lines allow in order to get the alternator in and out, and that is much simpler than what the Honda Shop manual says to do. Thank you YouTube.
I can do a full timing belt and water pump job on my 1991 Mitsubishi Mighty Max pickup in about the same amount of time it takes to get all of the external belts loose and removed on the Honda.
My 05 Wrangler with the 4.0 is pretty simple to work on, my 10 Sierra is a pain in the ass. The 74 Lincoln Continental I had in my youth had a 460 in it, and I could climb under the hood and stand on the ground. 85 Ford F150 short box with the 300 straight 6 was fairly simple other than the smog pump
My ’03 Jeep Grand Cherokee isn’t too terribly difficult, even if it DOES have the 4.8L V8 in it. My ’89 SHO, on the other hand, has that V6 shoehorned in to the compartment, with NO way to see the ground looking in through the hood. I have to pull the engine to replace the clutch, no matter what the Motors Manual says!
My ’85 Beaver Motor Coach engine compartment, with that bigass 427 Chebbie truck engine you can stand up in for most of the work. The engine and tranny can actually be dropped out of the chassis for replacement/major repair, even! But then, it was designed by Gillig as a bus chassis…
2005 Focus. Replacing the PCV hose (and valve too, I think) requires removing the intake manifold. According to Alldata, shop time is 2-1/2 hours. According to all but one YT video, replacing the thermostat requires moving the PS pump out of the way. Yes, Phil, I feel your pain. The sooper-special MTF that goes in the Getrag 5-speed was $20/qt last I checked. (Or, was it $40?) OTOH, oil changes at least are very easy.
My dad, after having changed his eleventeenth timing chain on 70’s chevy 350 (the ones with the plastic toothed cam chain) told me that “an engineer is a man whose daughter was r@ped by a mechanic”
Y’know, you CAN get metal gears and chain for small-blocks. Check out racing sites if not available from parts warehouses/chains…