Poor car design

jbainbridge

N9eav wrote: »

Anyone got a new Astra? Our work bought a fleet of them.... Just a few annoying things;
When you release the handbrake you almost always squash your fingers against the centre consol.

I noticed that when we hired one ... it's just stupid!

colino

A lot of annoyances when it comes to maintenance are simply effects of mass production where sub-units are put together as a block and only then attached to the shell of the car as it rolls down the line.
Others are just plain daft and other areas are over engineered for no good sake, wereas other areas are totally ignored for improvement. Why do we still have metal sticks holding rubberlike material wiping only a portion of our windscreens?

Mr_Mink

N9eav wrote: »

Anyone got a new Astra? Our work bought a fleet of them.... Just a few annoying things;
When you release the handbrake you almost always squash your fingers against the centre consol.
When lowering the drivers seat with the lever you pinch you fingers against the side of the seat.

Ha, the very first 2 complaints I had after driving the future MIL's new Astra. All I can say is, glad it's her car and not mine

N9eav

I seem to recall that changing a headlight bulb in my daughter's Ford KA involved jacking the car up, removing a wheel, removing the wheel arch lining to access the back of the headlight.

adouglasmhor

forgotmyname wrote: »

Ahh the wonderful bypass hose.. They sell you a useless thin rubber tube that lasts 3 weeks if your lucky. You complain and the man says do you want a genuine one. Yes please.. He giggles when he sells it to you, knowing full well that your going be have pain, blood, sweat and tears trying to fit it.

Or buy 13mm (inside diameter) silicon heater heater hose, non hardening gasket sealant and jubilee clips
Drain some coolant out so the coolant level is below the bypass. Remove the grille to gain access to the water pump area. Removing the belt sometimes helps you get in there better. Cut the old bypass hose out, remove old hose clamps and anything left of the hose. Use glass paper or steel wool to clean up the bypass nipples on the head and pump.

Trim a length of the heater hose to just shorter than the gap between the head and the top of the pump. Fold the short length of hose in half and hold it bent into a "V" using mole-grips. Put a little non-hardening gasket sealant on the nipples and smear a tiny bit on the entrance to each end of the folded hose.

Use the mole-grips to push the folded hose up against the two nipples and as you push, slowly open the grips to release the hose. Keep poking & shoogling until the hose is seated. Now put the open jubilee clips round the hose, close, and then tighten them carefully. Top back up.
Lasts a lot longer than the rubber hose or the solid one.

colino

The A Series bypass replacement didn't seem to have a very high failure rate, certainly would last long enough until you could replace it with a new one when you changed the waterpump, which you invariably had to do on a regular basis.

OnanTheBarbarian

A clutch replacement on a modern discovery is a dream job as I understand (whole body lifted off the chassis), sexy.

AdrianC

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

A clutch replacement on a modern discovery is a dream job as I understand (whole body lifted off the chassis), sexy.

Sounds so scary, but I understand it's less than an hour from driving in to lifting the body off. Really nowhere near as bad as it sounds, and will save a LOT of time compared to working in a cramped engine bay.

N9eav

My old Peugeot 505 estate required the engine to be removed to change the clutch.

patman99

Actually, this thread reminds me of the time a friend of mine took his sister's Focus to get a new n/s headlight bulb fitted. The Halfrords 'expert fitter' took 20 minutes to do the job, eventually even removing the battery.
All he had to do was to remove the screw on top of the light, slide it out, fit the bulb then slide the light back in and refit the screw.
Ford designed it this way to get round the issue of the battery being in the way of the back of the light unit.

Anyway, don't get me started on the engine cover and bottom trays that car makers fit theses days. They serve absolutly no purpose whatsoever other than to act as a skip-filler.

Btw, did you ever wonder why car makers colour-coded the various caps under the bonnet (you know, green cap for coolant system expansion bottle and radiator cap, blue cap for screenwash & yellow for oil filler cap and dipstick)?. Well, it is a scheme originally introduced by Rover on their Metro as an aid to women drivers (the car's intended target market) when checking and topping-up the fluids.

The designers discovered that by talking to women owners, that the women did no basic checks as they were not confident in getting the right fluid in the right hole. The remedy ?, colour-code everything.