curtis73 wrote:
But... I can honestly say that there will never be a mechanic that curses my engineering. Every single step, I fabricate the right part. Every blind hole in the frame gets a nut tig welded behind it. Every body fastener is stainless steel. The wiring harnesses are custom built from scratch, each wire labeled every 5", and all of them attached to their components with a DIN connector. Even right down to replacing the block drain plugs with 1/4 turn brass and stainless ball valves, and copper tubing that directs it to one easy, clean drain point. Same goes for transmission and oil drains. I even have fabricated conical funnel catches under oil filters so that you don't make a mess when the filter comes off. If its not in an easy place to maintain, I move it. If its an engine with a timing belt or a poor maintenance issue, I don't use it. I've taken to using Cadillac 500s in many of my projects; not only because they're an incredible foundation, but because they incorporate things like a dry intake manifold and an externally-mounted oil pump. Trepanier's rides might look a little more artistic, but try replacing a cam on one of his rad rides, or for that matter just getting a jack under it for routine maintenance. I build drivable art. No trailer queens.
If there is one thing I pride myself on, its engineering ingenuity... which is one of the reasons I get so frustrated with these new-fangled cars that constantly fail and are impossible to fix without skinning five knuckles and taking multiple hours.
A mechanic won't curse your work? I've worked/befriended/been-family-with enough mechanics to know they'll find something to bitch about, nothing is perfect. Also, while it might look pretty and/or seem easy to work with now, welding nuts and using stainless fasteners isn't really a good thing from an engineering standpoint. For example, when choosing stainless fasteners, many think that stainless won't rust. Wrong. Galvanic corrosion is something that needs to be considered if you're thinking long term used-in-all-elements machines, and with the tendency of stainless to gall you can have a compounding problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_series
TIG welding nuts? How do you suspect that heat treatment changes the nut? Sure, for cosmetic stuff it may not be an issue, but it's not really good practice on a structural part. You'll notice that most nut plates used in OEM applications don't weld the nut to the plate (it's usually disformed in one way or another to hold the two together). This is not only cheaper for mass production stuff, but also has less affect on the threads, material properties, coatings, etc.
I, too, try to make stuff serviceable, having done enough wrenching to know it's nice...but know that sometimes I have to compromise. It takes 30 minutes for me to pull the engine in my project car. If I spend another 15 hours reworking some stuff, I could get it down to 5 minutes. Sure, that's a significant time savings...but it's still a waste of my time. Same goes for car companies...sure, they could spend another 20% engineering time and money to make things more serviceable, but only if that means they'll save that much (or more) money down the road when warranty costs come through. It's an unfortunate reality to companies that exist to make a profit. If sales volumes reflected serviceability, you'd see a hell of a lot less Ford vans out in the world. 
Bryce
No more cheapie rebuilts for me.
I just keep putting it off.....
