Lets hear them, should be fun.

What prompted this is the blend door actuator on my mom's Grand Marquis failed, in the heat position, so no AC, just 140* hot air. Part is less than $30, but the FOOL Engineer, who I want to take a Louisville Slugger to his manhood repeatedly, and I know it was a man because woman wold not do something this stupid, put the damned replaceable part INSIDE the dash where you cannot get to it without removing the entire dash!!! Four screws hold it in place, to get to it you have to remove the glove box and air bag, and then try to get the duct out of the way. You can get to 1, repeat, 1 screw. The other three are in such a place that you can't even get a hand in there to find them let alone a wrench, and if you happen to get a wrench on them, there is not enough room to swing the wrench, and if you only have a 6 point, forget it.

I eventually busted the bugger out, only needs one screw to hold it in place. I did get a quote from the dealer to replace it, 5.5 hours, $70 for the part, $1000 to replace it. They couldn't put it in such a way that you could easily reach it to remove the screws, or make the dash so that the front part could be removed. Nope, and the sad part is, this continued from 1992 to 2011!!!

 

But if they made the actuator with hardened steel gears and put it somewhere accessible then how could Ford dealerships across America make tens of thousands of dollars a day in repairs identical to this one?

 

You would love to do a heater core in a 1997 F150. I wish I had pics of the entire dash pulled back laying on the seat….

 

I replaced the actuator for the blend door on my 2011 F 150 when it went bad.........not a particularly hard job, but you did have to remove a bunch of stuff from the dash.........

 

Buy a Ford Transit van. You'll have hourly rants.

I will likely purchase my first new non-Ford vehicle since 2006 in the next few months. Trying to wrap my head around the idea of owning a Mercedes.

 

stick with older toyota if you want to repair it yourself. best part is youll hardly never have to make any repairs

 

Can you imagine how big a car would be if they had to leave maintenance access space around EVERY part?

 

Try working on modern German cars. German engineers are at a whole other level when it comes to designing things that are hard to work on.

 

I have a 2006 crown Victoria and I am dreading the day the blend door actuator goes. I know a few other panther owners and every one of them had theirs fail between 100k-150k miles.

 

yep. We have a 98 Camry and the thing has 190k miles, original everything except water pump and radiator , runs and handles like new, stil gets me 32mpg at 70mph. It’s getting to the point though ~25years of sitting in the sun and rain is causing some normal cosmetic damage but dash is in tact and interior is still rattle free

I can’t imagine that with a 98 Taurus.

 

Yes, was it Mercedes or BMW that put the alternator under the intake manifold on one of their V8 engines?

 

Oh, SAAB is another one of those what were they thinking in engineering cars. Backwards engine and all. Worked on my fair share of what were they thinking cars. Ford Tempo, have to drop the entire powertrain to replace the water pump, and just changing the belt was a 4 hour job.

GM, I forget which ars, but transverse V6, to replace ONE spark plug required removing the top engine mounts, the rear engine mount and rotating the engine forward to be able to get a wrench on it, and even then you have very little room to get to it. Yeah, there are a lot of them out there.


What ticked me off so much is that there is NO way to get to the screws with standard tools. At least they could have made ONE of the parts in the dash removable to reach it.

 

Mid nineties 4.0L Explorers had the timing sets on the rear of the engine. I believe this was a German design.

 

That cluster fk OHC engine continued well into the 00's. I had an 04 Explorer with it. It was indeed a German design engine.

The driver side timing gear was up front like normal, it was the passenger side that had the backwards timing gear/chain. I loathed that engine and traded it in on my current truck.

The OHV 4.0 was a much better engine longevity wise and easier to work on.

 

I once asked a Ford instructor why engineers designed some of the bs ways they put some of these vehicles together and he told us because Ford doesn't build them to work on, they build them for ease and speed of assembly so they can keep the line moving faster.