When has a car's design turned a simple job into a torture test for you?

Mine was my wife's 2011 BMW 335i xdrive (aka AWD).

Someone (not me) tightened the oil drain plug too much and after one oil change I went to tighten it up and it started spinning. The pan is aluminum. I did everything to try to put a new plug in it. Oversized plugs galore and I had a mechanic friend come over and help me rethread the thing. Nothing worked, it didn't seal up. I contemplated welding it shut, but my wife wants to keep the car, so I made plans to replace the oil pan.

This is not that bad a job on most cars.

Well, on this one the front axles go through the oil pan, so I had to remove those and I had to remove the whole front subframe to get the pan off, because it would not clear. Luckily my mechanic friend came over and helped out and I have the lift in the garage, but what a nightmare. Not to mention a new oil pan with the required hardware (a few dozen aluminum bolts) was $1000 or so.

I'm counting the days until I can rid myself of that thing.

My Escape requires wiper arm and cowl removal to change the battery.

I own a mid-engine German car. Where would you like me to start?

Everything on a LT1 powered 4th gen camaro. What other manufacturer says check how far bushing is pressed in and then just press it in the same amount without an actual measurement, and by the way if you press it in the wrong amount its a problem. Still love the cars, I only work on them because I like driving them so much.

I hated doing timing belt on 2nd-Gen Probe GT

Anytime I have to remove the waterpump/timing cover in pieces from a sbf that hasn't been opened in a while.

Lower control arm on a crown Victoria. 

Get the car in the air, get all the bolts out, then somehow pass part of the arm through the frame and body of the car to get it out. 

Nissan Rogue (or any FWD Nissan product made in the last 15 years):

Subframe bushings require removal of the subframe, and replacements must be pressed in. (The old ones usually fall out but the bushing shells may have to be knocked out with a seal driver, I used an appropriately sized socket.)

Valve cover gasket replacement for the four-cylinder engines requires removal of the top engine mount, the coolant overflow bottle, the air intake piping and the throttle body. Along with the coil packs and other assorted brackets n stuff.  The six cylinder cars may actually be easier due to how they are mounted.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

I own a mid-engine German car. Where would you like me to start?

I'm drawing a blank on what that could be. BMW M1? 

Oh right... and you've also subjected yourself to the Porsche tax as well with that.

Anything on the left side of a Pontiac with a manual trans.

Torque is something like 12 lb/ft...

Aluminum, magnetic oil plug.

Was about 500 miles over the Cayman's limit when I started having just driven across country. Took me three trips to the auto hobby shop on a Marine base before I finally got the berkeleying thing off.

Cold chisel to the rescue. Not great.

It's silly but....the starter on my 84 caprice.

It's not impossible but they route everything over the top of it, tranny cooler lines, exhaust etc.

The other side? I can stand in the engine bay. The only way I could get the damn thing in or out is by flipping it upside down

Alternator on a FWD Lancer; the part itself came off in 15 minutes but it took another 30 minutes to snake the part out.

One of my early 80s Honda cars I owned, think it was the Accord. The water pump had all these extra bits in and around it that needed undoing, it wasn't hard to do it just took an extra 45 minutes.

On the self desgined self inflicted front: pulling the motor or trans in my Datsun. I moved the motor back 2 inches. now you have to undue the tranny and motor mounts, disconnect the adapter plates for the motor mounts then lower the motor and tranny back into the original location, just so you can get to the bellhousing bolts..................pretty sure I've failed at my one attempt as an automotive engineer.

I have a 2016 Corvette. At 19.5k miles it seemed the clutch pedal would occasionally bump the bottom of my foot. It took a week before I was sure it was happening. I took it to the dealer. They called and said it's the secondary clutch cylinder. Ok, that sounds reasonable. Not happy about it only lasting this long, but whatever. I asked where did the oil go? No leaks or odor from the car.

Well, the clutch and the cylinder is inside the torque tube.  So, that's where the oil is. And so to replace the cylinder you have to remove the back half of the car, the rear suspension and transmission, the whole exhaust system, and then remove the torque tube from the engine.  I think the job is estimated to take 23 hours.

Well, $3700 later, it was fixed.

I'm still butthurt about that one.

In reply to Harvey :

I would have covered the bolt in RTV every oil change before dropping a subframe and spending $1000 on a new pan jeez. 

On an A1 Rabbit without A/C, it tries to hand you the alternator. It's offered up at the top front of the bay, and takes about fifteen minutes to replace.

It was earlier in my wrenching days and maybe I'd do better now, but my '84 GTI had A/C. After days trying to work around the plate steel monstrosity to get to the alternator way down below, I dropped a bolt in there somewhere and had to have it towed to a shop. I think I'd just spent an hour or so cutting down allen keys small enough to *try* them to see whether they fit a bolt I couldn't actually get eyes on.

Water pump on a mini

starter on a 2000 expedition 

transfer case on a x type jag. you have cut a 1/4 inch thick bracket in half to get it out or drop the whole cradle. So cut the bracket take it out then put back in and weld the bracket back together. Takes 10-15 hours out of the job. 
 

944 clutch

heater core in 99 percent of all cars made after 1995.  

Shadeux said:

I have a 2016 Corvette. At 19.5k miles it seemed the clutch pedal would occasionally bump the bottom of my foot. It took a week before I was sure it was happening. I took it to the dealer. They called and said it's the secondary clutch cylinder. Ok, that sounds reasonable. Not happy about it only lasting this long, but whatever. I asked where did the oil go? No leaks or oder from the car.

Well, the clutch and the cylinder is inside the torque tube.  So, that's where the oil is. And so to replace the cylinder you have to remove the back half of the car, the rear suspension and transmission, the whole exhaust system, and then remove the torque tube from the engine.  I think the job is estimated to take 23 hours.

Well, $3700 later, it was fixed.

I'm still butthurt about that one.

 

Yeah, I've got a 2006 ZO6. Pretty much anything to do with the driveline requires dropping the whole rear of the car out.

iammclovin804 said:

In reply to Harvey :

I would have covered the bolt in RTV every oil change before dropping a subframe and spending $1000 on a new pan jeez. 

I'm not mentally built to deal with worrying about hacks like that, plus it's my wife's car and she drives to her parents house by herself sometimes which is a hundred miles away.

Oil filter on the turbo neon.  Some dummy put a sandwich adapter to pull oil temp and pressure between the filter and the filter pedestal.  And then ran the intercooler piping between the engine and transmission.  There isn't enough room between the filter and the intercooler piping to be able to completely unthread the filter.  A simple oil change involves removing some hard-to-get-to clamps on the charge pipe elbow at the intercooler and then unbolting the hard pipe section from the oil pan to clear it out of the way.

I have become that which I hate.

Go find yourself one of the Dual Twin Cam Monte Carlos and change the alternator.

I dare you.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Saw someone do it in a half hour.

HVAC doors in a Buick Envision are worse than even a regular HVAC door, because the car doors don't hinge forward enough to let you get the dash bar out. The instructions from GM tell you to take the front doors completely off the vehicle so that you can get the dash bar out of the car and then pull the heater box out of the vehicle and split it apart.

My sister's boyfriend had an early Ford Fusion, and the replacement procedure for the alternator told you to carefully bend the ground stud for clearance to get the alternator out of the top. Even once you did that, the alternator still only came out the top clocked one specific way. So you had your arms crunched down between the firewall and the back of the engine and were trying to turn-turn-turn-turn the alternator to get it turned just right, and even then it only barely fit out. Actually, everything on that car sucked to do, and the day it finally ripped the rear control out of the subframe was a joyous day indeed, because we didn't have to work on it anymore.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I guarantee their hands are smaller than mine, plus I will question whether they got all the air ducts back in place.

iammclovin804 said:

In reply to Harvey :

I would have covered the bolt in RTV every oil change before dropping a subframe and spending $1000 on a new pan jeez. 

I used to own a 328i xDrive and I thought that the axles through the oil pan was completely insane.  Its also incredibly common though, just about every RWD-based AWD system does it (Well if everybody was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?) .  Hell, even the older BOF Chevy Trailblazer has it setup this way.  

Also to note, I'm pretty sure you've got to drop the subframe to get the oil pan off of a RWD E90 too.  Its just not a billion pounds because there's no diff bolted onto it.  

Anyways, the insanity I'll mention for the OP is on an AWD BMW too.  The fill plug for the transmission has juuust enough room to get it in and out, there's a bracket that holds the transfer case up and a sharp little sheet metal bracket for holding up the exhaust, and the cats are right there too.  Its no biggie to remove when its cold, but the oil change procedure is one of those where you have to have the engine running and at temperature, so the exhaust and cats are really berkeleying hot and there's fluid trickling out so the fill plug is super slippery.  It took me over an hour to get the stupid fill plug back in, and by then the transmission was too hot so the fill level was wrong and I had to do it again.  berkeley AWD BMWs, never again.