I complained a lot about Honda and GM in here; but, hands down the worst automotive engineers go to any associated with the VAG. I could list thousands of things from their cars from the last 10 years. So I'll just leave it at tht.
I complained a lot about Honda and GM in here; but, hands down the worst automotive engineers go to any associated with the VAG. I could list thousands of things from their cars from the last 10 years. So I'll just leave it at tht.
DirtyBird222 wrote: 4th gen F-body as others have said. Every iteration of that car 3.4, 3.8, LT1, LS1, LT4, etc. Let's put our distributor right under the water pump! Oil filter placement on Honda/Acura K20 cars. If you love oil all over the subframe and burnt forearms these are the cars for you. Just GM X-motors. Anything on them. Oil filter placement on 4 wheel steering Prelude SH models. 4th gen f-body lower A-arm bolts. I do have praise for CD5 accord models. Easiest thing I've worked on in a long time. I work with engineers on a daily basis, network engineers, system engineers, software engineers, etc. I get to make their life hell.
Don't CD5 Accords captive rotors? I could have sworn the Acura CL and Accord of the same generation did.
Honda oil filter placement has always had me head scratching, nothing crazy, but annoying to remove without making a mess when working on the driveway.
bluej wrote: I also have a theory for all German vehicular nominations. It's called Oktoberfest.
Nominated for Say What.
MadScientistMatt wrote:bluej wrote: I also have a theory for all German vehicular nominations. It's called Oktoberfest.Nominated for Say What.
The first rule of nominating for "say what" is don't nominate anything for "say what". 
Me! Me!
Let's do dead British engineers:
Metric threaded bolts with Whitworth heads on MG T Series motors (and ONLY on the motors). Not really the engineers' fault-- that's on British manufacturing running on a shoe string through two wars.
Designing the MGA as a RHD car, even though 80% of them were exported to LHD countries. This necessitated a Rube Goldberg device that takes throttle travel across the inside of the firewall to the passenger side and then a cable out the firewall to the carbs. You learn all about this when you have a tallish passenger stretch his legs a bit and your car seemingly starts accelerating of its own free will.
This one is actually a good one on the MGA-- locating the heater valve so when it starts leaking it drips directly onto the distributor and causes a misfire. Investigating the misfire will keep you from overheating the car!
dean1484 wrote: My nut kick goes to the person that designed the brackett that holds the transfer case in my x type to the back side of the engine block. You can not get to the bolts unless you remove the motor due to the cats being bolted directly to the exhaust manifold.
I did an engine in an X-type. That bracket isn't really accessible even when the subframe and drivetrain are sitting on the ground.
I'm not an engineer, but this entire thread is based on taking things out of context. It's certainly fun and interesting as a bitch session (has anyone mentioned A3 starter motors yet?). And sometimes the design decisions are indeed boneheaded, but I'd bet that most of these things would make a hell of a lot more sense to a fly on the wall during the design process (Assuming said fly had enough of n engineering background to understand what was said) - a very rare quality in a fly.
I love to bitch about stupid architects and engineers, but I bet at least 40% of the bad design decisions here come down to money - being forced to use parts-bin components, cheaper materials / supplies, designed for speed of assembly rather than ease of disassembly, etc. etc.
It makes perfect sense from an engineer's or designer's standpoint. They don't have to work on them.
Knurled wrote: In reply to Swank Force One: I take it that unbolting the engine mount and ratchet-strapping the engine forward is also not an option. I remember doing a bunch of Saturn intake manifolds that wayIt seems like 90% of "bad engineering" is more down to "priorities at time of design/production were different than mine are now." Like when an engine designed 30 years earlier is put in a chassis designed 10 years earlier and now you need to run catalysts and the engineers from 30 and 10 years earlier didn't have very good crystal balls so the result is you have to drop the exhaust to change the oil filter. Pontiac eventually fixed that by no longer making Pontiac engines. However the 3.6 GM engine has no excuse. There are some chassis with spin-on filters where access to the filter is impossible from below and nearly impossible from above. And some 3.6s have cartridge filters up top. Why don't they ALL have cartridge filters?
Ratchet-strapping it to what?
I don't think there's an inch of movement available in the motor mounts in these cars.
Really doesn't matter on my car, so it's not something that bothers me. I just get to chuckle every time someone bitches about taking a whole day to swap a crappy FLAPS rebuilt alternator on their car, because i know they'll be doing it again in the next 6 months.
In reply to Appleseed:
I think it should be required for all automotive designers/engineers to work in a repair shop for a few weeks for basic and somewhat advanced maintenance. At least they'd have a bit of a clue. I am an automotive engineer, but don't work on design of cars.
When I worked in the machine shop at college, some of the senior design teams would drive me nuts when they couldn't understand that they couldn't drill a hole in the center of a block with no outside access.
I worked as an auto mechanic at my grandpa's shop when I was in high school. I used to curse the engineers who obviously did not think through the design.
I am now an engineer in the oil business.
Every chance I get I make sure the items I have design oversight for are easy to work on.
I argue about it with other engineers sometimes who think its too much trouble.
I forget which flavor of trucks it is, but somebody decided it'd be nice if, when you lock/unlock/dismount your truck, the REVERSE LIGHTS COME ON.
Don't want to think about how much time I've spent waiting for that truck to back out of its parking spot.
In reply to JohnInKansas:
Most vehicles do that now. Illuminates your way when you park at night.
wbjones wrote: Honda for the oil fill location on the '12 Fit
Oh come on! It ain't that bad! I can do a change in my 2011 in ten minutes, my 22re oil filter sucks ballz. Under the intake manifold, crossmember on the bottom.
And, Ya know what? After reading all this crap, I can certainly say I love my old Japanese cars. I don't have any of these problems. Hell. I rarely have to work on them...
In reply to JohnInKansas:
All GMs have been doing that for years, supposedly a "safety" thing, though I think it's just like DRLs, a conspiracy to sell more bulbs.
I like how, when doing a TPMS relearn, GMs will light up the turn signal at the corner of the wheel it's expecting a sensor response from.
MadScientistMatt wrote: My nomination is whoever designed the factory jack in the E36. Had one collapse into a pile of twisted metal on the side of the road and leave the car sitting on its brake rotor.
Hey, at least you GOT a jack! Half the cars today just have a can of Fix-a-Flat in a can.
My experience with designer dumbness is mostly of the older sort.
Jaguar Mk 2 sedan - need to change out a starter? The bolts are installed before the power unit went into the chassis so you can't really get at them. They fixed that - kind of- after awhile and welded a U shaped piece of metal to the two bolt heads so you could just remove the nuts from the front (notwithstanding which most Jags have a clearance hole hacked through the toe board to make it easier). OK- now you have it unbolted, so it should just drop on the ground, right? Nope, you have to winkle it up to the front of the engine, remove some stuff and weasel it out past the intake cam cover.
And having to remove the front fender on my Solstice to replace a battery leaves me wondering what they were thinking of, too.
Basil Exposition wrote: Me! Me! Let's do dead British engineers: Metric threaded bolts with Whitworth heads on MG T Series motors (and ONLY on the motors). Not really the engineers' fault-- that's on British manufacturing running on a shoe string through two wars. Designing the MGA as a RHD car, even though 80% of them were exported to LHD countries. This necessitated a Rube Goldberg device that takes throttle travel across the inside of the firewall to the passenger side and then a cable out the firewall to the carbs. You learn all about this when you have a tallish passenger stretch his legs a bit and your car seemingly starts accelerating of its own free will. This one is actually a good one on the MGA-- locating the heater valve so when it starts leaking it drips directly onto the distributor and causes a misfire. Investigating the misfire will keep you from overheating the car!
As the owner of many MGAs I can add to that. The heater valve doesn't even open all the way - they have to be modified to do so.
I've had the experience of passenger initiated throttle and have even committed it on unwary owners!
And installing the wide Twin Cam engines in the chassis before the body went on, without thought for whether you had any access at all to maintain the engine was brilliant - and resulted in a change to removable inner fenders, probably right after the first cars went back to the dealers for warranty oil changes and the mechanics went 'WTF?'
At least they handled and the chassis rarely rusted. The TRs managed to run the axle over, instead of under the frame, so that when you cornered too hard the frame would lift the rear wheel off the ground. And unlike the MGs, which bolted the fenders on from inside the wheel wells, Triumph used bolts with heads on the inside of the body, twice too long for what was needed, so that the excess threads were sure to rust quickly and make a fender removal that would take a half hour on an MG into a several hour exercise involving cussing, spraying, heating, and usually drilling and retapping. Oh yeah, and not catching the likelihood that the badly designed front A arm mounts would probably tear off the frames and as would the rear shock plates (Swallow instantly recognized these issues in 1954 when they designed the Doretti on that chassis and they corrected them - it took Triumph years and who knows how many warranty claims to redesign.)
Continuous welds on the chassis rails would have been another nice touch rather than creating areas where water was sure to pool and rot....
Zombie thread! How about having to remove all seatbelt anchors and disassemble half of the interior just to change the rear speakers on a regular cab GMT400?
Knurled wrote: I like how, when doing a TPMS relearn, GMs will light up the turn signal at the corner of the wheel it's expecting a sensor response from.
I hate how you can access the TPMS reset menu on the dash, start the procedure, but on 2012+ vehicles(at least the Equinox, I'm assuming most others too) you need a TPMS training tool to relearn tire positions. Used to be you deflate the tires in order until a honk to relearn. 
CVT transmissions. Especially the ones programmed to "shift".
Lexus 4.6 V8. (Found in the LS, GX, and stroked versions found in ISF, GSF, RCF. Probably others I'm forgetting. Try replacing a starter. It's on the passenger side of the engine. Under the exhaust manifold which must be removed in order to even see it.To do that, you'll wish the whole mess, engine subframe and all was on the floor. I know these engines are available in the tundra, but there might be more room there.
TGMF wrote: Lexus 4.6 V8. (Found in the LS, GX, and stroked versions found in ISF, GSF, RCF. Probably others I'm forgetting. Try replacing a starter. It's on the passenger side of the engine. Under the exhaust manifold which must be removed in order to even see it.To do that, you'll need the engine, transmission and subframe on the floor. I know these engines are available in the tundra, but there might be more room there.
wat? You can remove the headers just by dropping the subframe. Heck, this fella did it on jackstands. Now should you have to do all that to get to the starter...probably not.
TGMF wrote: Lexus 4.6 V8. (Found in the LS, GX, and stroked versions found in ISF, GSF, RCF. Probably others I'm forgetting. Try replacing a starter. It's on the passenger side of the engine. Under the exhaust manifold which must be removed in order to even see it.To do that, you'll wish the whole mess, engine subframe and all was on the floor. I know these engines are available in the tundra, but there might be more room there.
That sounds way worse than the old 4.0 1uzfe, which had the starter buried under the intake manifold.
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