Making It Work - One Way or Another

[Garcky]

While I was apprenticing with my father in his auto repair shop, I learned a lot of things about fixing cars. He had shortcuts for some tricky jobs that he'd show me. Saving time was always his goal, since that's how he made his living.

One day, in the 70s, a customer brought some 70s-era Chevy model in with a miss. The customer said, "I just had it in for a tune-up at the dealership, but it's still running rough." It had a V8 engine in it. As usual, my father listened to it run. "Yup," he said to the customer, "It has a regular, constant miss. Come back in an hour or two and I'll have it fixed for you." The customer left. Normally, my Dad would have hooked the vehicle up the scope to diagnose the problem. This time, though, he didn't. Instead, he put it on the hoist and raised it up. He went to the bench and got a drill and chucked a 2" hole saw in it. Then he pulled the passenger side front wheel and put a 2" hole in the inner fender.

Then, he removed the rear spark plug from that Chevy through that hole. He showed it to me. It was really fouled. He said, "Changing this plug on this model is really, really hard to do. So, a lot of guys change the other seven plugs and just don't bother." He put a new plug in, reattached the plug wire and then tapped a 2" stainless steel spring clip hole plug in the hole. After reinstalling the wheel, he lowered the car and started it up. It ran perfectly. Later the customer came back, and Dad showed him the fouled plug and explained what had happened. He charged the customer a few dollars, and the guy drove off in his Chevy. He never took his car back to the Chevy dealer again. Dad had another loyal customer.

He told me that it wasn't the first time he had done that. That's why he had the hole plugs on hand. "There's always a way," he said, "but you should never send a car out without fixing the problem. Nobody ever looks at the inner fender, but a lot of guys won't replace that spark plug. They don't find a way to do it easily, so they lose a customer. There's always a way."

 

[Skyman]

I'd bet the price of a nice dinner that car was a Chevy Monza. They built a few with a small-block V8 in them, and that one spark plug was truly inaccessible without either cutting an access port, or moving the engine. I had one in the shop back when I was wrenching for my daily bread, and was able, with great difficulty, to replace that eighth plug by unbolting one of the engine mounts, then lifting the engine a bit while winching it off to the opposite side of the car. The hole saw would have saved many hours of labor.

Steve

 

[Garcky]

I'd bet the price of a nice dinner that car was a Chevy Monza. They built a few with a small-block V8 in them, and that one spark plug was truly inaccessible without either cutting an access port, or moving the engine. I had one in the shop back when I was wrenching for my daily bread, and was able, with great difficulty, to replace that eighth plug by unbolting one of the engine mounts, then lifting the engine a bit while winching it off to the opposite side of the car. The hole saw would have saved many hours of labor.

Steve

It probably was. That's been a long time ago, so I don't remember the exact car. On the other hand, I had a 1993 Ford Ranger that had 8 spark plugs in its four-cylinder engine. Two of those were really hard to get to, as well. Why did it have 8 plugs? Well, they helped it meet the smog requirements. I didn't have the Ranger long enough to need to replace them, though, so it didn't really matter to me. It looked to me that it would be easier to pull the manifold to get to them, though.

But, yes, the hole saw made it easy. I wonder why GM didn't put an access hole in there in the first place.

 

[zmotorsports]

I'd bet the price of a nice dinner that car was a Chevy Monza. They built a few with a small-block V8 in them, and that one spark plug was truly inaccessible without either cutting an access port, or moving the engine. I had one in the shop back when I was wrenching for my daily bread, and was able, with great difficulty, to replace that eighth plug by unbolting one of the engine mounts, then lifting the engine a bit while winching it off to the opposite side of the car. The hole saw would have saved many hours of labor.

Steve

Monza is exactly the car I thought of as well. Had a friend in high school that his dad had one. When I first started wrenching, and learning, I was hired to do a tune-up on it and had to do the same thing, remove motor mount bolt and raise slightly and even then it was a pain in the you know what.

When I had my speed shop for 20 years I prided myself on the fact that I never had a car leave the shop that I couldn't fix. Granted, some kicked my *** and a few others I lost my *** on due to time lost on it but never did one leave my shop that I didn't do what I was hired to do.

 

[AldeanFan]

In college I worked summers for a taxi company that had a fleet of Chevys.

One summer a new hotshot mechanic decided all 250 cars needed a transmission flush and some additives poured in.

This resulted it about 50 to 75 failed transmissions over the next few months. I got the job of remove and replace all of these. The worst part was the 4 torque converter bolts that had to be done with a wrench while holding the engine from turning over.
I very quickly discovered that if I took the oil filter off I could remove the torque converter bolts with an impact gun and save a significant amount of time.

 

[Ricky Joe]

Don’t you guys miss the old flathead straights with all the plugs on top?

 

[Garcky]

Don’t you guys miss the old flathead straights with all the plugs on top?

Well, I'm old enough to have worked on some of those, although they had been phased out on the new cars of the time. I remember adjusting the valves on MOPAR 6-cylinder engines. I also owned a few British cars with side-valve engines. I do not miss any of that, though. No, sir.

 

[Ricky Joe]

Well, I'm old enough to have worked on some of those, although they had been phased out on the new cars of the time. I remember adjusting the valves on MOPAR 6-cylinder engines. I also owned a few British cars with side-valve engines. I do not miss any of that, though. No, sir.

Ahh, but you have to admit: changing plugs was easy!

 

[Garcky]

Ahh, but you have to admit: changing plugs was easy!

Oh, yes, indeed. On the other hand, it was just as easy on most OHV four or six cylinder engines. There they were, right under those plug wire caps.

 

[DAustin]

I had a Dodge D-150 with a slant-6. I don't think there was anything on the motor I couldn't touch. It was the easiest vehicle I ever had to work on. VW bugs were easy to work on also, you just dropped the motor and that didn't take much time at all.

 

[Garcky]

I had a Dodge D-150 with a slant-6. I don't think there was anything on the motor I couldn't touch. It was the easiest vehicle I ever had to work on. VW bugs were easy to work on also, you just dropped the motor and that didn't take much time at all.

Really, all of the 4 and 6 cylinder cars from the past were easy to work on. Today, not so much, though. On the other hand, you had to work on those older cars more often, as I remember. There's always a trade-off, it seems.

 

[Blackbyrd]

HA! I deleted my ac on my firebird becuae plug #8 was incredibly difficult to change from the top, and if it had factory manifolds equally as impossible from the bottom. I fowled plugs left and right with my poorly tuned 60lb injectors..... I got so mad at it one after noon i ordered the AC delete plate (the firewall components were still there but the compressor and condensor were long gone anyway) I started hacking and chopping and removed the housing from the engine bay side so I could retain heat and delete the AC coils..... number 8 is now very easily accessible...... as is the rest of the passenger side of the engine haha.

 

[CoogarXR]

After owning a few Chevy Astro vans and cutting my arms and hands to shreds doing the plugs through the doghouse, I learned that you could take the wheels off and do them super-easy through the wheel wells. You still have to take the doghouse off to get to the distributor, but the job is WAY easier even with the extra time spent jacking it up and taking the wheels off.

 

[dnschmidt]

Come on guys. This sounds like a discussion at an old folks home.

 

[DAustin]

Come on guys. This sounds like a discussion at an old folks home.

Get off of our lawns.

 

[CoogarXR]

Come on guys. This sounds like a discussion at an old folks home.

Well, we could talk about more modern things like adding NOS (pronounced all Vin-Diesel-like, "naaaahhhzzz"):

https://jalopnik.com/biker-drops-double-shot-of-nos-into-fuel-tank-makes-5264672

 

[richfinn]

While I was apprenticing with my father in his auto repair shop, I learned a lot of things about fixing cars. He had shortcuts for some tricky jobs that he'd show me. Saving time was always his goal, since that's how he made his living.

One day, in the 70s, a customer brought some 70s-era Chevy model in with a miss. The customer said, "I just had it in for a tune-up at the dealership, but it's still running rough." It had a V8 engine in it. As usual, my father listened to it run. "Yup," he said to the customer, "It has a regular, constant miss. Come back in an hour or two and I'll have it fixed for you." The customer left. Normally, my Dad would have hooked the vehicle up the scope to diagnose the problem. This time, though, he didn't. Instead, he put it on the hoist and raised it up. He went to the bench and got a drill and chucked a 2" hole saw in it. Then he pulled the passenger side front wheel and put a 2" hole in the inner fender.

Then, he removed the rear spark plug from that Chevy through that hole. He showed it to me. It was really fouled. He said, "Changing this plug on this model is really, really hard to do. So, a lot of guys change the other seven plugs and just don't bother." He put a new plug in, reattached the plug wire and then tapped a 2" stainless steel spring clip hole plug in the hole. After reinstalling the wheel, he lowered the car and started it up. It ran perfectly. Later the customer came back, and Dad showed him the fouled plug and explained what had happened. He charged the customer a few dollars, and the guy drove off in his Chevy. He never took his car back to the Chevy dealer again. Dad had another loyal customer.

He told me that it wasn't the first time he had done that. That's why he had the hole plugs on hand. "There's always a way," he said, "but you should never send a car out without fixing the problem. Nobody ever looks at the inner fender, but a lot of guys won't replace that spark plug. They don't find a way to do it easily, so they lose a customer. There's always a way."

Seen something similar but way less professional on an ancient Jaguar when I was a kid where they had cut the floor to replace brake pads on inboard mounted rear brakes instead of dropping the diff down!!!

Also seen the fuel sender wiring hole opened up on old British Ford's to replace fuel pumps without dropping the fuel tank.

Of course they didn't bother to drill & repair the holes like your dad/they would just cut it with tin snips and hide the damage under the carpets

Probably before they were due to go to car auctions

 

[RTM]

Back when I was 16, and working on a car lot, I worked on a ‘68 Mustang GT with a 390. I managed to change 7 of 8 spark plugs, but couldn’t reach the one by the drivers feet. They took it to the pro mechanic. Chatted with him a few days later, he said it took three swivels, with 12” extensions in between.

Drilling the fender well would have got me killed.

 

[Renegade1LI]

I see it everyday in nyc, I watch guys swapping an engine on the side of the road. Mismatch of tools, stuff everywhere, cars and trucks driving by. I give these street mechanics allot of credit, and the car always seems to run when they're done.

 

[mike93lx]

Don’t you guys miss the old flathead straights with all the plugs on top?

I much prefer the 80k+ intervals on modern engines.

 

[Jim C.]

Drilling the fender well would have got me killed.

Agreed. Although it’s a relatively quick solution to a tough problem, if my dad had been the customer, I’m not so sure he would have liked having a hole drilled through the inner fender. I’m going to ask him about that. As a younger guy working on cars in a non professional environment, just doing basic maintenance, to include tune ups, I would have never even considered drilling a hole in the inner fender for any reason. That would have been the end of me.

Jim C.

 

[Garcky]

Agreed. Although it’s a relatively quick solution to a tough problem, if my dad had been the customer, I’m not so sure he would have liked having a hole drilled through the inner fender. I’m going to ask him about that. As a younger guy working on cars in a non professional environment, just doing basic maintenance, to include tune ups, I would have never even considered drilling a hole in the inner fender for any reason. That would have been the end of me.

Jim C.

Well, since that spark plug had never been changed, clearly the access hole, properly plugged, was a good solution. That guy became a regular customer of the shop. I'm sure my father told him what he had done, and probably showed him the stainless steel hole plug. The bill for the other way of getting at that plug would have been pretty high, too, which is why the plug had never been changed.

 

[Garcky]

Seen something similar but way less professional on an ancient Jaguar when I was a kid where they had cut the floor to replace brake pads on inboard mounted rear brakes instead of dropping the diff down!!!

Also seen the fuel sender wiring hole opened up on old British Ford's to replace fuel pumps without dropping the fuel tank.

Of course they didn't bother to drill & repair the holes like your dad/they would just cut it with tin snips and hide the damage under the carpets

Probably before they were due to go to car auctions

My 1991 Volvo 740 wagon had an factory access panel over the fuel pump in the gas tank. That's how cars should be designed. Now, it wasn't easy to remove and replace the fuel pump, even with that access panel open, but it could be done. Still, It probably cost a dollar or two to add the access panel to the body of the car, so US manufacturers would never do it.

 

[Garcky]

Come on guys. This sounds like a discussion at an old folks home.

It does, doesn't it? Still, sometimes the old folks know stuff. Sometimes.

 

[AldeanFan]

I wouldn’t have a problem with a plugged hole in an inner fender.
I don’t think I’d like having an access hole in a floor board, but lots of early cars had exactly that to access the under floor master cylinder.

Hacking would be drilling a hole and not plugging it or just not changing tuneup parts that are hard to get to.

My ‘54 wagon has a factory access panel under the spare tire to get to the fuel sending unit. Much easier than having to drop the tank which is always full of fuel when the sending unit fails.

 

[VolvoRyan]

My 1991 Volvo 740 wagon had an factory access panel over the fuel pump in the gas tank. That's how cars should be designed. Now, it wasn't easy to remove and replace the fuel pump, even with that access panel open, but it could be done. Still, It probably cost a dollar or two to add the access panel to the body of the car, so US manufacturers would never do it.

Way easier to drop the tank on a 740, IMHO. Two nuts and the sender collar, and the tank comes out. Previous owner of my 1991 745 had his fuel pump replaced. Fuel gauge froze after the repair. Mechanic bodged up getting the sender back in. When I got the car 17 years ago, I dropped the tank, pulled the sender and found it had gotten bound up. Reinstalled, and it's been fine ever since.... which is to say it was fine until that sender rotted out and I had to make a new one out of two or three spares units.

Speaking of Volvo and holes cut in things. The PRV V-6 engine in the 260's ate camshafts. Easy way to get them out was to cut holes in the firewall and pull them into the cabin. Volvo got sued six ways from Sunday after a few years of this practice. Probably rightfully so.

For better or worse, modern cars have plastic flaps in the wheel wells to peel back and get access to things.

-Ryan

 

[joel63]

It does, doesn't it? Still, sometimes the old folks know stuff. Sometimes.

Yes, they most certainly do.

 

[Garcky]

Way easier to drop the tank on a 740, IMHO. Two nuts and the sender collar, and the tank comes out. Previous owner of my 1991 745 had his fuel pump replaced. Fuel gauge froze after the repair. Mechanic bodged up getting the sender back in. When I got the car 17 years ago, I dropped the tank, pulled the sender and found it had gotten bound up. Reinstalled, and it's been fine ever since.... which is to say it was fine until that sender rotted out and I had to make a new one out of two or three spares units.

Speaking of Volvo and holes cut in things. The PRV V-6 engine in the 260's ate camshafts. Easy way to get them out was to cut holes in the firewall and pull them into the cabin. Volvo got sued six ways from Sunday after a few years of this practice. Probably rightfully so.

For better or worse, modern cars have plastic flaps in the wheel wells to peel back and get access to things.

-Ryan

Not in your driveway, it's not, and not with a 3/4 full tank. I did have to read someone's instructions for removing and re-installing the fuel pump/sender unit, though. It involves a couple of turns and twists that have to be done just right. However, with those instructions, the job wasn't bad at all. The hard thing was getting a replacement pump unit.

I liked that wagon, but it finally developed an intermittent problem that made it quit running at random times. I did a number of things to fix that, without success. Since it was intermittent, I finally decided I couldn't trust the car, and sold it to some guy after describing everything I had done. Apparently, the last thing I did actually fixed the problem, because the guy was still driving it around a year later. Oh, well...

We ended up buying a brand new 2013 KIA Soul. First new car I ever owned. Kept if for seven years and replaced it with a 2020 model. Zero issues with those. I decided I like warranties, now that I'm in my late 70s, so no more older cars for me.

 

[Garcky]

I wouldn’t have a problem with a plugged hole in an inner fender.
I don’t think I’d like having an access hole in a floor board, but lots of early cars had exactly that to access the under floor master cylinder.

Hacking would be drilling a hole and not plugging it or just not changing tuneup parts that are hard to get to.

My ‘54 wagon has a factory access panel under the spare tire to get to the fuel sending unit. Much easier than having to drop the tank which is always full of fuel when the sending unit fails.

Exactly. So, that's what my Dad did. He had done one like that before, and had figured out exactly where to put the hole on the previous car, so he didn't have to figure it out again. The customer was fine with this technique, since it saved him a good deal of money. The people who had failed to replace that plug were the ones at fault, not my father. Once he figured it out, he bought a couple of extra hole plugs for the next time the problem occurred. Really, it would have been easy for GM to have engineered that access for that model. GM didn't.

 

[bwringer]

I once had a car that needed a new engine mount, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to git 'er dun. I took it to a shop, and they did the same; used a hole saw to gain access to the bolt down inside. I had never heard of that before.

Sometimes a little creative destruction is called for; on my wife's car many moons ago, the factory procedure for accessing the blower was to take a couple of days to remove the entire dash. Orrrrrrrr.... snip a flimsy plastic non-loadbearing sprue behind the glovebox in two and you're in and out in 15 minutes.

On my van (Toyota Sienna) the service manual procedure for replacing the water pump starts with "1) Remove engine".

Aw HELL naw.

Visit YouTube U., and you'll find any number of videos showing how to do this by taking the engine mount loose on the passenger side and repositioning the engine a little. I can't begin to imagine why Toyota couldn't figure this out.


Another thing I've learned from working on computers and electronics is that you can often get something done without removing electrical connectors. Connectors are often stupidly delicate, brittle with age and heat, or pre-damaged, so the less you have to monkey with them the better. Leave the frammis connected and just move it to the left a little. The same applies to assorted liquid connections; don't mess with radiator hoses, brake and fuel lines, etc. unless there's absolutely no other way.

And on a related note, you often don't actually have to completely disassemble parts A and B to get to part C. Maybe take a couple of bolts out to relax pressure and wiggle it free, or loosen the bolts enough to pop part D out of the way, etc.

Contrariwise, sometimes it's much easier and faster overall to just zap the bolts out and get something out of your way, or invest the measly $10 or $20 for a gasket for an interfering widget to save hours of aggravation and bloodletting.

 

[Garcky]

I once had a car that needed a new engine mount, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to git 'er dun. I took it to a shop, and they did the same; used a hole saw to gain access to the bolt down inside. I had never heard of that before.

Sometimes a little creative destruction is called for; on my wife's car many moons ago, the factory procedure for accessing the blower was to take a couple of days to remove the entire dash. Orrrrrrrr.... snip a flimsy plastic non-loadbearing sprue behind the glovebox in two and you're in and out in 15 minutes.

On my van (Toyota Sienna) the service manual procedure for replacing the water pump starts with "1) Remove engine".

Aw HELL naw.

Visit YouTube U., and you'll find any number of videos showing how to do this by taking the engine mount loose on the passenger side and repositioning the engine a little. I can't begin to imagine why Toyota couldn't figure this out.


Another thing I've learned from working on computers and electronics is that you can often get something done without removing electrical connectors. Connectors are often stupidly delicate, brittle with age and heat, or pre-damaged, so the less you have to monkey with them the better. Leave the frammis connected and just move it to the left a little. The same applies to assorted liquid connections; don't mess with radiator hoses, brake and fuel lines, etc. unless there's absolutely no other way.

And on a related note, you often don't actually have to completely disassemble parts A and B to get to part C. Maybe take a couple of bolts out to relax pressure and wiggle it free, or loosen the bolts enough to pop part D out of the way, etc.

Contrariwise, sometimes it's much easier and faster overall to just zap the bolts out and get something out of your way, or invest the measly $10 or $20 for a gasket for an interfering widget to save hours of aggravation and bloodletting.

Yes. Absolutely. Procedures written by manufacturers are often not designed to get things fixed without charging the customer an arm and a leg. Finding work-arounds is standard practice for people who actually fix vehicles. Your example of the Sienna is an excellent one. Water pumps are wear items that will be replaced during the useful life of any vehicle that is not air-cooled. If replacing a water pump requires removal of the engine, that vehicle was horribly engineered. In fact, if the engine truly must be removed, any car requiring that is more than five years old is a total loss when the water pump fails for most people.

This is why I stopped working on my own vehicles. Now, I only own cars that have the new car warranty active and in place. I can't work on late model cars myself, realistically. With shop rates coming up on $150/hr. or more, it doesn't take long before a complicated repair costs more than the car is worth. A water pump replacement should never be a job like that. If it is, it is because the vehicle is badly designed.

So, shops and mechanics figure out ways to get around the factory procedures. They have to, or they can't fix customers' cars. Cars should not be disposable items. Stuff wears out long before the car is old enough to warrant junking it. Any stuff like that needs to be replaceable in a realistic amount of time. But, that's not the case for quite a large number of vehicle models.

I'm old. I'm probably driving the last cars I will ever own. Their warranties won't expire before I do. If something goes wrong, the car goes back to the dealer for a warranty repair. Period. I won't work on cars designed so I cannot even see the engine without removing some big plastic cover. It's too damned bad. It's too wasteful, it seems to me.

There's something badly wrong with all this, it seems to me.

 

[AldeanFan]

Mid 90’s flat front bus needed an engine replaced.
The bus was built as a chassis with drivetrain installed and delivered to the coach builder who dropped the bus body on top.

The “correct” way to pull the engine was to lift the bus and drop the entire front suspension and steering and pull the engine out the bottom.

We didn’t have a hoist capable of lifting the bus but we did have a body and paint shop. A few strategically placed cuts with a sawzall and the entire front of the bus below the windshield was out of the way and we pulled the engine out the front. After we repaired the fibreglass front end and painted the areas we repaired.
The customer had agreed to this approach before hand and couldn’t tell after it was painted where we had cut the bus.

Saved the customer slot of $$ on that one

 

[Garcky]

Mid 90’s flat front bus needed an engine replaced.
The bus was built as a chassis with drivetrain installed and delivered to the coach builder who dropped the bus body on top.

The “correct” way to pull the engine was to lift the bus and drop the entire front suspension and steering and pull the engine out the bottom.

We didn’t have a hoist capable of lifting the bus but we did have a body and paint shop. A few strategically placed cuts with a sawzall and the entire front of the bus below the windshield was out of the way and we pulled the engine out the front. After we repaired the fibreglass front end and painted the areas we repaired.
The customer had agreed to this approach before hand and couldn’t tell after it was painted where we had cut the bus.

Saved the customer slot of $$ on that one

Yup. Good call.

 

[ez-duzit]

OP--that was a good story.

On my 1997 Saab 900 I made an access hole to get at the fuel pump. Then added a flange and welded some nuts, using the cutout piece to make a replaceable cover.

 

[Garcky]

Perfect!

 

[RPH]

1969 camaro, heater core goes bad. It’s December in Detroit. I take it to a shop and the mechanic refused to change it out. Too hard he claimed. Owner of the shop fired the guy but at same time felt bad for me. He gave me the heater core as compensation. Got into the books on changing it out. Hard part was marking 2 arcs across the inner fender from this and that bolt. Where they crossed you drill a 1” hole for access to the hidden bolt. Took about an hour once I got into it.

 

[Garcky]

1969 camaro, heater core goes bad. It’s December in Detroit. I take it to a shop and the mechanic refused to change it out. Too hard he claimed. Owner of the shop fired the guy but at same time felt bad for me. He gave me the heater core as compensation. Got into the books on changing it out. Hard part was marking 2 arcs across the inner fender from this and that bolt. Where they crossed you drill a 1” hole for access to the hidden bolt. Took about an hour once I got into it.

Excellent! These days, there's a YouTube video for almost everything. Thanks to all of those people taking the time to create those videos. If you can watch someone doing something, it's much easier to do it yourself. I'm glad you found the instructions for doing what you needed to do.

There are spring-type hole plugs for all common hole sizes. They just snap into the hole and you're done, without leaving a hole for water to get through to engine bay components. Good hardware stores have them, or you can order them on Amazon, as well.

 

[VolvoRyan]

Not in your driveway, it's not, and not with a 3/4 full tank. I did have to read someone's instructions for removing and re-installing the fuel pump/sender unit, though. It involves a couple of turns and twists that have to be done just right. However, with those instructions, the job wasn't bad at all. The hard thing was getting a replacement pump unit.

I did them all in my driveway that way. Totally easy. Full tank, empty tank, didn't matter. Per the title of this thread, get creative and "make it work". A good friend, mentor, and Volvo master tech (for the entire time the OHC Volvo red blocks were produced) was impressed with the trick.

The 240 is much more fun through the hole in the back.

-Ryan

 

[HalfTonTom]

Don’t you guys miss the old flathead straights with all the plugs on top?

Yeah, but hoods back then had a seam down the middle that often leaked on those flatheads and rusted those plugs in place.

 

[LukeOresk]

I’d pull the inner fender to do an oil change on my ram 3500. The oil filter held almost a litre of oil, that way it made a lot less of a mess and it was easier to guide into place when full. I think I stole that idea from a YouTuber. Never hurts to watch a video on something to try to find a better way