Thread: Best and worst cars to work on...

Post the easiest and worst cars you have worked on.

I just spent a really long time getting the passenger side CV shaft out of a 95 toyota camry. Had to cut the shaft take out the motor mount that is also the CV shaft support. Disintegrated the pressed in bearing on the CV shaft with an air chisel, finally got the shaft and I have been hammering on the bearing all night with a sledge hammer until I broke my vise in two. So I got to thinking about this....

Mines worst PT cruiser a complete funking nightmare, can't reach anything to change the spark plugs you have to take the intake mani off. It's like mercedes and chrytler teamed up to build a car around the motor, that needs to be removed for service.... To bleed the coolant system you have to find a small armed child with super human strength, or else you have to take the top half of the cooling system out first. Everything is rusted in place after 4 years, or it is a plastic connector that breaks if you breath to hard around it...It gets worse but keeping this short.

Easiest the NX I have yet to face something that takes more than two hours to change out (broken bolt and rusted stuck screws excluded, because in a perfect world they wouldn't exist )

Are you serious on the Camry. Ive worked on hundreds of camry's and you do know there is a snap ring that holds the axle into the carrier right? lol. Its a PITA to get pliers onto ill give you that much but after you remove it it came right out of the carrier. Camry's are one of the easiest cars to work on especially the 4cyl camry's Everything is soo easy to get to and change out. Timing belts I can change them on a 4cyl camry in about 45 minutes along with the tensioner, idler, cam and crank seal. Thats my quickest time on them. Taking my time, hour and a half at the most. Book rate charges 3 hours for that job.

Camry's have common problems with the passenger side cv axle when it gets worn you will get a really bad hopping or up and down shaking from the front under acceleration. Thats one of the ways you can tell they have a bad CV if its not yet making noise.

Camrys also have problems with control arm bushings and you will get thud noises on accel to decel or vise versa or going over bumps. Ive found working on Camrys to be quite enjoyable and have never had any issues working on them.

Another Camry common issue is brake lines getting pinholes in them and leaking. Ive probably replaced a hundred or so brake lines on the 03 and prior camrys.

SR powered cars are another easy but it just comes soo naturally especially when you know the cars in and out. Makes things much better. Worse jobs on our cars is probably changing the water pump and the only thing making it difficult is the limited room. Trick to that, take the passenger motor mount out and jack the motor up as high as you can go. Makes plenty of room.

As for my vote for one of the hardest cars to work on thats a hard one. People always say the 300zx Z32 is a hard one and i will agree they are a PITA but they are not difficult because of the lack of room they are difficult because there is soo much crap that you have to remove to do anything and then remembering the order that everything went back on. Such as during a timing belt job, if you get one step wrong or out of order you might not realize it till your almost all back together and then you have to take it all back apart to get one part back into place correctly. Thats whats frustrating. That and everything on the car has limited space to get to but I dont mind that as im used to working with imports.

My vote goes to any Northstar powered Cadillac, includeds the Deville, Seville, DTS, CTS, STS. Engine replacement book time...............42 hours.............Headgasket replacement time which includes drilling and tapping of the block for time serts install due to faulty machining of the block which caused head gasket issues anywhere close to and before 100k miles usually.........51 hours.

Oil pan replacement if you happen to shatter your pan on a road obstruction.......22 hours labor and requires the removal of the transmission. Pretty much anything on the front of the motor is impossible to get to. Wanna replace the starter....Remove the intake manifold....I mean the list of problems go on and on. We had one Snowbird come into the dealer with a shattered pan after running over a boulder on the road and got the 3300 dollar bill to replace the pan and ended up trading the car in for a new one. Thats what GM gets for stuffing a big fat v8 in FWD format into a tight engine bay. lol. I loved making good money off the Cadis. My favorite being window regulator replacements. Book time on it is 1 hour. I could do them in 10-12 minutes on average. 8 months at a Cadi dealer I probably replaced about 300 regulators in 99-04 Cadis. Cables snap every time and they are not cheap.

WRX's are another hard one in my opinion to work on, another tight engine bay. Dont care too much for those.

I think what takes the cake is the Cadis and late 80's early 90's Mercedes. F those cars. The front of the engine is literally less than 3" from the radiator and that includes the fan inbetween there as well. I hate those cars. PITFA.

So as many varieties of cars ive worked on

Best: 4cyl Camry's
Worst: Northstar powered Cadis from 96 to 2004 and late 80's early 90's Mercedes with the inline 6.

Z32 Twin Turbo. Fuck that car. 4SRS

Also, some Oldsmobile that my brother in law had a while ago, I think it was a v6 or V8.

Easy the good ole GA16

PITA a friend of mine back in the day had a FWD V6 Olds. Don't remember what model but damn.

Even easier than the GA16 is:

Micra K11 with CG10! It's like a tiny GA16 with enourmous room to work with

On the harder side, my father has a newish Ford Mondeo MK3, You can't do anything on it! Too much plastic covers! And shitty design...

Agreed The z32 NA is horrible...the TT even worse.

My B13 /nx has been the easiest to work on...thats one of the many reasons I love them so much.

My old BMW, a 92 750iL. The v12. Bought it needing a lower oil pan gasket thinking it would be an easy fix. Yeah right. I couldn't believe I had to pull the entire v12 motor out just to fix a leak from the oil pan.

mazda miata is awesome. it has attention to detail to make it easy to work on that i've never seen before.

hate working on nissan pathfinder. they just didn't care and it shows. changing anything requires removing 15 things you shouldn't have to touch.

my new rule when buying new cars. if it looks impossible to change the oil (or even find the oil filter) dont' buy the car.

Yeah I got the snap ring, both of them it did take me a minute to notice it was there though :o The bearing is just frozen as were all of the bolts holding it in. That one stud that goes to the motor mount from the top was the worst, hard to reach and frozen. I had to take the whole mess out just to reach it with the torch and wrench. The whole car is a mess, so many leaks I don't know where to start.

You are dead on with the brake lines, they went out it sitting in the driveway for a month. When I went to push the car into the garage the car ended up rolling backwards halfway into the street because the brakes were gone. The battery was dead too so I ended up having to call AAA to tow the car from the street into the garage, about 20ft :o (That's another thing I love about the NX I can just push it where ever it needs to go)