"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

This could be a really good group rant. I'll bet everyone here has some
stories like this. I have at least a half-dozen, but having to lower the
engine in my Caravan (said the manual) to replace the serpentine belt is
my personal best.

Late 80's Honda Accord. If you don't have a rack or means to get the car
off the ground a ways, and have to remove the lower center intake manifold
bolts from the top, well, it just ain't no fun...

My brother offered me a Maverick once dirt cheap. It had been our
grandmother's car and had been driven seldom and lightly. Had the 302. I'd
driven one of these before, they will get up and go. For the money, I was
about to jump, until Dad told me you have to undo engine mounts and jack
the engine up to get at one (or more?) of the spark plugs.

Years ago a friend had a nice clean Fiat X19 I admired. She offered to let
me take it out for a good spin, if I gave it a tune up, as her boyfriend
wouldn't touch it. Well after that disaster, neither would I. Several very
oddly bent wrenches are required just to access needed fasteners on the
distributor. But the best, though I certainly didn't do it, was the water
pump on that car. Now, being a dingy blonde, maybe she got ripped off. But
her car had air conditioning, something apparently quite rare for that
model. The stock water pump bearings would not take the additional stress
added by the compressor so it took a special pump with a shaft extending
out the back of the pump and alongside the block to a support bearing.
This made it impossible to remove the pump in the car. So the entire
engine had to be pulled out the bottom. $1400 for a water pump, IIRC and 4
weeks waiting for it to come from Italy. I did btw, enjoy the hell out of
flogging it (the car) on some twisty roads. Handles great. But I lost any
interest I ever had in owning one...

Best vehicle I ever owned, from a maintenance point of view, was a 1964
Chevy 3/4 ton truck. I could open the hood and sit on the fender while
working on the engine...

Jon

Yeah, that's a pretty good collection you have there. IIRC, there was a
small Chevy (Monza?) of about the same size, and the same time, as the
Maverick. With the optional small-block, it had the same problem: you had to
partially lower the engine from the tranny end to get to the rear spark
plugs.

Regarding your truck, those were the days. Working on those cars was
actually fun. Sometimes they handed us too much fun. g

Oldjag could tell us about working on the two-stage chain drive for the
overhead cams on a Jaguar XK engine. He's probably worked on the older ones,
which had no automatic take-up for chain wear. I used to have to take all
that stuff off my friend's XK-120 to adjust that sucker every month. Of
course, the carbs on my MG required adjustment about every other week, so
there was plenty of that stuff to go around.

So it's a tradeoff. Which would you prefer? A car that you had to work on
every two weeks, but which was easy to work on, or one that's a b**ch but
almost never has to be touched until it gets old? If I can keep affording
new cars every once in a while, maybe I'll stick with the latter. Otherwise,
I'm going to find something old and cheap to fix, and call it my "hobby."

--
Ed Huntress