Worst car to work on
 

What to you has been the worst car to work on?

I feel like the 190E 2.6 is a PITA but my mom's 1996 Grand Marquis is far worse. Tried replacing a valve cover gasket today and once again ran into Ford's brilliant engineering, aka somehow making a 4.6L small block V8 engine hard to work on in a massive engine bay. The front of the engine is super easy to work on, unlike the 190E 2.6 but the sides and back are terrible. The catalytic converters also aren't the most fun things in the world. Problem is, most of the problems we've had the with car have been located on sides or rear of the engine bay (like the $230 blower motor resistor that we've had to replace 3 times).

We were finally able to get the valve cover out (took 30 minutes to get the back bolt out) cleaned it up, tried to clean up as much of the mating surface, put RTV where needed, then reinstalled it (also a PITFA) and it leaked like a sieve at the back bolt that is nearly impossible to get to and completely impossible to use a torque wrench on. Might be that you are supposed to pull the engine in order to do it properly.

1985 Buick.... something or another that my middle son bought from his grandfather. Transverse mounted V6 with absolutely incomprehensible levels of parts bin engineering - brackets with 47 arms and 12 bends and 83 holes to cover 3,639 applications.... used to mount a wiring harness clip, but which had to be removed to get the other 12 overlapping parts off so that you could get at That One Damn Bolt to remove the broken whatever part it was.

Close runner up would be the 72 AMC Matador that The Same Automotive Genius from the rant above (son's grandfather/ex-wife's father) bought for my ex-wife (then girlfriend).

The entire front clip had to be removed to replace a wobbly crankshaft pulley.

Volkswagens - any of the POSes!

Maserati.

I'll elaborate more later, but to pull the radiator, you've got to disassemble the front of the car.

N*

I don't like to work on Fords or Chebbies.

Name a volkswagen you have personally worked on

Honorable mentions for me is ford pickups with the triton V10, the VW taureg(sp?) with the tdi, and bringing up the rear is the diesel liberty.

All these vehicles have advantages, but i have the most trouble working on engineering compromise vehicles with large or unusual motors crammed in and the tradeoffs made to do that making for difficult repair procedures

Way at the top of the list is a military spec H1. Hardest vehicle i have ever tried to work on. Every single repair is a huge complex procedure.

Worst one I've worked on is this 2004 explorer. However a lot of that is due to neglected maintenance over the years and not necessarily the model or engineering. Currently sitting next to its engine, STILL trying to get the harmonic balancer off. Blowtorch and puller #2 today.


Sent from an abacus

The 5.4 is even harder to get to all of that and I had no issue. Removed with air ratchet, started by hand with a deep socket on a short extension and finished with a 1/4" torque wrench.

They all suck. Every model has something different that is a total pain in the ass to do. The ford 5.4 is a royal pita to get the power steering pump off. The valve covers are a pain, but doable. It helps having all of the different combinations of swivel head ratchets, short sockets, deep sockets, all different extensions, short wrenches, long wrenches, ratcheting wrenches.


To my surprise, the easiest car I have worked on lately has been an 08 bmw 325i iirc. Spark plugs were a 45 ordeal and a pleasure to do.

Pontiac Fiero with the V6. Most of them (that are still around) probably have the original plugs on the firewall side. You just about need to remove the engine to work on it at all.

Sounds like a challenge :D

Ide bet the van with the v10 is even more fun, perhaps not, the extra cyls might be at the back--more acessable under that cover.

I gotta say the chevy gmc vans are SCREWED to work on, I think ill rip that whole damn cab off...... and junk the last yr vortec v8 in favor of some lsx/computer combo.

Ask Brian Carlton :D.