Im a BMW tech... I get to enjoy that *****e for a living! 850i is worse, intake gaskets suck arse on both. Sometimes i really belive an engineer designed somthing to be a complete PITA cause a tech banged his wife:eek::P

BUT if any of you have had to work on a 2000ish V-6 Mercury Cougar.... OMG what a pile of steaming crap! Everything fails and it sucks to change!

So if you get the chance.....KILL YOURSELF, much better option:eek:

Oh and late 90's Cadillac Eldo evaporator core.... Pull out engine/trans 20 some hour job iirc!

Ford 6.0 PSD headgaskets.... lift off cab

My dmax injectors suck arse cuz its an LB7 and there under the V/Cs and tons of crap to remove for them alone.

Fox body mustang w/ bad heater core....Sell car!

I agree with Hatteras, in-line 6's are my favorite. Even the one in my old Triumph TR-6, which was basically a British tractor engine adapted for auto use. For a relatively primitive cam-in-block engine it was pretty smooth and sounded great.

I'm surprised the mods haven't gotten pissed about so much gasser talk in this thread.........but what the heck it's New Years!:)

Try a tune up on a on a late 80s ford Aerostar V6. You will trade it in.

Agree 100%

We've changed the plugs on two generations of them and they get WORST with every new model.

If I had a car with one of those engines where you had to jack up the engine to get to the rear plugs I wouldn't change them until I was forced to. I'd just do the easy to get at front 3 and wait until I had a missfire from the rear 3 to do them. Than I would use the best 100k mile platnum plugs I could get and hope to never have to touch them again.

My sisters Old's is like that. At 80k miles the rear plugs were original, and missfiring. We put 100k mile platnum plugs in and hopefully won't own the car when they need changing again.

In difficulty to work on......

Ferrari 375 America. (Spark Plugs and Wires.)

1943 Covenanter tank.( Radiator.)

Z32 300zx VG30DETT .( Clutch job.)

Cadillac L62 - the V8-6-4, most of the time 0. ( Anything)

...and...Timing belts on nearly everything.

...oh, nearly forgot...the one I'm doing now...head gaskets and head bolt repair, 1998 Cadillac Northstar.

Stick with me here, this is one of the toughest and most unusual jobs ive done!

Nobel M-12.... 3.0L Twin turbo V-6, 6-speed, mid-rear engined, Hand built british supercar, fiberglass tube chassis construction built for speed & cornering!

One of our customers brother in-law has one dowm in Texas, hes a racer/instructor down there he prefers we work on it, so he loans it to his bro and we work on it when its here in Kansas. This one is special, its Nobel's brothers former car, so it has bigger turbos, intercooler, etc. Well im the performance guru in the shop and i converted his Z3 track car to true M3 power by transplanting an S52 3.2L into it (fun in itself) so i have there trust and im the one that gets the "fun" jobs! Well the Nobel sprung a power steering leak, i found it had blown at a connector under the rear hatch going into the engine bay, ok no biggie, rest of the hose was ok. Well a local hydraulic assembley place fixed me up with a screw-togather fitting end to repair the hose that would suck to change. I fixed it and refastened the hoses better with Adel clamps and cleaned the mess. Well it wasnt upto the psi of the P/S system of this car and it burst the hose at the connector. Great, so i had to remove this hose that runs from the engine bay in the back to the rack in the front. WELL, the passage for the hose is somthing, the tube chassis constuction of the car makes routing of things bad, EVERYTHING has to run through the
"center tunnel" of the chassis to the cab or front of the car! This tunnel is approx 6" wide and 12" tall inside, this tunnel contained, thick insulated coolant lines to the frontal radiator, A/C lines, wires, oil cooler lines, P/S lines, shifter linkage, and anything else in the bay! Picture how Snug it is! And then, this car has a full alum underchassis pan, held with thousands of rivets and no way of removal on the lift! Then the tunnel is closed in and only accessable by two 5" wide 24' long Louvered channels! in the whole lenth between bay to front (like 6-7ft) and when they assembled this car, they tie-strapped all this sh!ite together inside there! :mad: This damn line is a bizzatch to remove from the rack in the cramped front end too, so i wrestle this damn pressure line out of all this mess and install new one and clean the mess in the bay. Great, all is well....for a week and the line Burst AGAIN! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHASSIS TUNNEL!!! Because the hose place used the wrong hose! well great, all over again! But now the un-removable chassis pans were holding pools of slimey P/S oil, imagine cleaning this crap out of there inside, and it oozing from rivets.... And it MUST be clean! This car is a track/race car and i dont wanna be the reason for a spinout into the wall, ruining a pricless car or the owner, cause oil got under the tires and track policys of zero leak tolerance! I must have used a small barrel of brake clean and 1/2 the atmosheres air supply to clean this sucker to spotless condition! So YA IT SUCKED BAD!!! But the test drive was awsome!

Thats one of my worst and best at the same time!

Wow, I thought Noble's were pretty neat cars, although since its British I'm hardly surprised.

Ever work on a Zonda?

Car has the original Rochester 4 bl carb. The car was purchased with almost no options except SS version, Power pack (4 bl carb, duel exhaust), 4 speed trans (manual) and AM radio. No A/C, no power steering. On the way home from the dealer, I knew the car would run 70 MPH in first, 100 MPH in second and somewhere past 120 in third. At that speed, you could shift to fourth and leave enough rubber on the road that you could go back and find it. Those were the days when you could drive for maybe 10 miles and not see another car. I started have oil burning at about 150,00 miles and replaced the engine with a 327 and the car never ran good again. I believe the 283 had the best HP/Torque/power band combination of any engine ever built.

The car is being restored now and will probably go back with a 350 FI engine from a Chevy truck with a 4L80E trans.

Paul

Ya besides the pain of working on it, it is a real cool car! You should see the looks you get drivin it:D The car looks all business, huge carbon wing, carbon difuser, carbon dive plane, huge sticky tires, roll caged, 5-pt harness, seats, carbon inside, gauges, etc.

Never worked on a Zonda, Im surprised to see some of these exotic cars in our town in the 1st place!

More Pics
 

More Nobel pics and one of our Nova Pro-Mod! Also a "fun" Vee engine to work on! And a pic of my Duramax's crappy injector location!:mad:

A v 8 diesel in a commercial truck with a flip front hood is just fine to work on, no worries, but I HATE the V8 International turbo diesel setup in my '92ford pickup as far as having to work on the thing, there is not one thing on that engine that is not a pain in the patute to work on compared to my intelligently designed European diesels, on the other hand,the thing sure does pull nice and is one sweet running engine :D

Nice cars! I have always liked the Noble, and well British cars in general.

Yowza! That 'Bu sounds like she was a screamer! I noticed that the 283 in my '57 Nomad with the powerglide was not able to move the car that quickly. Of course it was a heavier car and was stuck with a two speed auto. I did have dual exhaust with glasspack mufflers on it, but I did not have a crossover pipe. I figured she was pushing about 190~200 GROSS HP and probably 100 to the rear wheels:(

The 327 might have ben too big an engine for the stock Rochester carb as it was a 350CFM unit.

If you go with a 5.7 liter FI engine, look for a late model B Body with the LT1 and grab it and the transmission. My 1996 Impala was a BeaSSt on the road and made 27mpg to boot!

any pontiac, regardless of it being a big block, always had plenty of room to work. You should see my 67 Chevy truck with a straight 6 292...there is so much room you could set a lawn chair in the engine compartment while you work on it...sounds pretty redneck to me.