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I have a 2002 Volvo S60 as a second car, I enjoy flexing my mechanic skills working on it, there's a certain satisfaction of doing it on my own and certainly the savings of being self sufficient. But I lived through the years of 60's and 70's cars, when those were my daily drivers and I can tell you, I spent many a miserable night in the winter fixing something so I could get to work in the morning. Front ends needed alignment constantly or tires would wear out unevenly, tune ups were about every 8K-10K miles, carburetor rebuilds, fuel pump replacements, belts and hoses every year. Parts were cheap, but needed replacement with more frequency. I don't touch my new car, it's a 2015 Optima EX, when I bought it the salesman eyes me and says, "you probably want to take a look at the engine?" I told him to forget it, I said "you're going to fix it, not me". Only 30K on the clock, no issues, just oil changes, it runs great, mileage is great, enough power for me. My last car was a 2006 Ford, we went 100K before the first tune up, it was running fine but figured it needed it.
I'd agree with those.. But what about power windows? That's one that I tend to avoid.. Though.. I drive a truck with a regular cab.. So.. I don't really gain anything by having power windows. I can lean over and roll the passenger window up or down while driving.
Cruise Control is something I don't care about.. I don't use it. But I wouldn't avoid a vehicle because of it. Cruise Control breaking won't leave me stranded or with a window that I can't roll up.
I'd also rather have old school analog gauges vs the 'smart clusters'.. But.. I think the day for them has come and gone.
This is the one fear that I have always heard people lamenting about and I understand that this was a real potential concern (that and sunroofs) decades ago.
However, in almost 29 years of driving, I have never had a window motor or sunroof motor fail to close for me and I only know of one person who has had an issue with a window motor fail (twice) and in all fairness, she was driving beaters each time.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen but I think the quality and reliability of modern electric motors is so high that virtually no one ever worries about it when purchasing a vehicle today.
This is not about whether older cars or newer cars are better, it is about which are easier to work on.
Using the fuel pump example:
Older car: Open the trunk or crawl under the car. Remove the fuel pump which is readily accessible. Plug the line so you gas does no leak out, install the new fuel pump. Usually you need one open end wrench and one socket and ratchet, it takes about fifteen to twenty minutes.
New Car: Cut exhaust system in a location where it will be easy to weld it back into place and drop the exhaust. Remove everything below the gas tank. Remove everything attached to the gas tank. Drain the gas tank and dispose of the gasoline. Drop the gas tank and open it up. Change the fuel filter and test it. reseal the gas tank with a new gasket. Put the gas tank back in and re-attach everything. Re-install the things that are below the gas tank (varies car by car). Weld the exhaust system back together. For me this ia a three weekend job because i only have a few hours at a time available to work on a car. Plus I have to have a friend come with his welder and put the exhaust back together because i am not a good enough welder to weld exhaust pipe without burning through it or leaving a leak. You can also pull up the carpeting in your a car, cut a hole through the body (hopefully in the right place, then get into the gas tank from the top. I am not sure of the details, I have not done that personally, but I had it done on one car. It took them five hours. the replacement fuel pump burned out 13 months later, but at least there was already a hole for easier access. Of course then you have a hole in the body of the car that is sort of patched back together.
This depends on the car. Here's two examples of fuel pumps I've done.
1980's Mustang. (same basic design as far back into the 70's models) Drain fuel from tank, undo tank straps and lower tank precariously balanced on jack while trying to not tear the wiring and filler neck out. Get covered in fuel while replacing filler neck gasket which always tears. Remove clip and replace fuel pump, then lift it all back up trying to realign the fuel filler neck with the tank all while holding it balance and trying to reinstall the two top straps. Plan to get covered in fuel, dirty, and take 3-4 hours.
2006 Infiniti G35 (same on newer models). Pull out back seat cushion....there it is. Maybe an hour or so to do this job.
I think the more or less has to do with overall design of a vehicle, vs the age. For example, changing an alternator on a modern, FWD vehicle can be a total PITA. I've done some on caddy northstar V8's that require removing so much. However, change an alternator on a Ford 4.6L engine. I bet you could do it in 15 minutes if you had the correct size sockets ready to go and not even get your clothes dirty
Last edited by BostonMike7; 07-19-2017 at 11:29 AM..
Yeah exactly. I'm really curious what vehicle Coldjensens is talking about. Surely that is not the proper procedure as called for in the repair manual.
This is the one fear that I have always heard people lamenting about and I understand that this was a real potential concern (that and sunroofs) decades ago.
However, in almost 29 years of driving, I have never had a window motor or sunroof motor fail to close for me and I only know of one person who has had an issue with a window motor fail (twice) and in all fairness, she was driving beaters each time.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen but I think the quality and reliability of modern electric motors is so high that virtually no one ever worries about it when purchasing a vehicle today.
The motors are usually not the issue on most relatively modern cars, but the plastic rollers that the power window cables run on. As I had mentioned, I just replaced the passenger rear window regulator on my '01 BMW (original at 170k miles) due to the top plastic wheel disintegrating making it not roll down (and it made a horrible noise when it tried). But, the replacement lifetime warranty part (entire regulator with motor) was $100 and took not much longer to replace than the manual window regulator assembly in my '61 Falcon (which had a bad gear on it making it just click at a certain point in it's travel instead of going back up). As you surmise, however, window regulator failures are much less common than imagined and can usually be easily dealt with.
Yes and no. Assuredly, internet resources help. But they only go so far. An example is recent work on the water pump of my Camry. There are plenty of you-tube videos and advice on the forums. Fine. Advice includes things like denting the inner-fender to alleviate difficulty in removing a long bolt, holding part of the engine-mount assembly, that's in the way, above the water-pump neck. Good advice. This was followed, and it worked. But then, cracking open the thermostat housing, the finding was that there was no coolant! The upshot was that somewhere in the system – probably the radiator side-tanks – there was a slow leak. When enough coolant drained out, the water temperature sensor was exposed to just air. It thus alternated between showing overheating (because there wasn’t enough coolant circulating) and fairly normal temperature (reading fell down when the sensor was not immersed in coolant). The remedy? Button everything back up, top up the radiator, drive the car (no problems noted) and keep the coolant system topped up (it still leaks). The water pump itself turned out to be fine.
The lesson from this is that a classical problem – a leaky radiator – won’t throw an OBD-II code or otherwise give electronic signal. A PC, smart-phone or RS-232 cable does nothing to help. Instead, traditional intuition is required to make a diagnosis. Internet wisdom does help with the procedure of repair, but if the engine-compartment weren’t so cramped, the problem would have been obviated. And because the space is so cramped, and there are so many widgets to remove, well, if you end up making the wrong diagnosis and making the wrong repair, that’s a lot of wasted work – whereas it would have been less work in a simpler car. Finally, the true problem is cheap plastic parts (radiator components), and not anything electronic or high-tech. It stems from cheapness and cost-cutting, rather than complexity per se.
Diagnosis is diagnosis. If there's no water in the system look for a leak before throwing parts at it, whether the car is a 2010 model or a 1970 model. If you're working on cars yourself you SHOULD have that level of basic knowledge to begin with otherwise it won't matter what year your car is, you're gonna screw it up somehow. Car overheating? Check coolant level. If it's low, start looking for leaks.
Engines are still basically air pumps. They need air, fuel and spark to work. You still check the basics if one fails to run. But newer cars (newer than '96 with OBDII) at least can help tell you were to start looking by checking codes when an engine fails to run. That saves time on the basics, where an older car you're left to guessing and checking EVERYTHING. brakes are still brakes. Suspension, even fairly complex multi-link stuff, is still easy to check and diagnose.
Electrical components just need the ability to read a wiring diagram. Yes, some new cars are more complex (but they have less complex vacuum systems so often it balances out) but you can break down systems by group and diagnose that way. An ohm meter and a set of pinouts from an owner's group and you can check to see if a component is bad or of the wiring is bad, or even if the computer that controls it is bad (though that's not as likely as many shade tree mechanics think). Computers in cars are not anything like a desktop or laptop machine. Once you understand the basics of a 12V system (power, work, ground) it's fairly easy to diagnose something even if you've never seen that wiring harness before or if it runs on fiber optics or coax.
My point was that I've worked on old cars (and I apprenticed in a vintage car restoration shop so I've work on cars as old as 1914...) and I've worked on cars as new as 2006 (anything newer and it's been under warranty, so I don't need to work on it). I don't see the difficulty in working on them that some people here do (and generally those people haven't actually worked on newer cars, or haven't had much skill or experience with working on cars in general). Working on newer cars is different, but not necessarily more difficult. And after working on engines of the early '80s with miles of vacuum hoses, I'll take the computer controlled stuff any day of the week. lol.
That's insane. What car did you experience that on? In my experience they are accessed by just getting the rear seat out of the way, pulling carpet back, and access is right there. I've only done it to check on the filter on a modern car haven't had a need to replace. But the whole thing can be pulled out that way so hard to imagine it being more than a 10 minute job.
Ditto on the headlight bulb. The longest part of that in my experience is just trying to get the clip back in properly. But again just a few minute job without a need to remove anything other than the dust cover.
A lot of cars do have a fuel pump access panel under the rear seat, but lots of them do not, especially domestic cars, and dropping the tank is required to change the fuel pump.
I've also had to remove the whole front bumper fascia in order to change a marker light (2010 Chevy Malibu I think it was). So yes, some things that are easily serviceable on some cars are a nightmare on others. Some cars you can have the starter out in 15 minutes, but the alternator is a PITA, or vice versa, so it all depends really on what you're working on.
Also, most old cars were made to be easily serviceable in most cases, whereas nowadays that's not even considered because the whole car is considered "disposable" to most people. The majority of people don't fix things anymore, when it breaks they just get a new one.
90% of the acess to the engine on a modern car is blocked by a massive air filter housing. Pop off a connector and maybe a saddle clamp and a lot more space opens up.
Changing a modern headlight bulb takes me about 5 minutes. Changing an even newer led headlight is unlikely to even need to happen.
Again, not all headlight bulbs can be changed in 5 minutes, some can, like the ones on my 02 Saturn SL, but I've changed many that were a PITA and I had to remove the entire front fascia and headlight assembly just to get access to the bulbs.
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