My favorite JRitS posts of the week, Vol. 61

"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
06/17/2018 at 13:00 • Filed to: justrolledintotheshop, just rolled into the shop, reddit, wrenching, fail

Reddit’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is a veritable cornucopia of the many !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of shop lyfe. You never know what’s gonna roll in. Here’s what caught my eye this week.

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Can you replace my heater core? kthxbye

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These cars come in the door running like shit, customers complain it’s marketed as affordable, then cost $1500 in repairs at 40k miles

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The 4th one was hanging on by a thread. That wheel was about to come off.

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This bad boy comes out of a 3rd gen Toyota Prius... Lists out at $830.

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Trans fluid by the way... This was a 4l60e

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[Freightliner] Coronado

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The vehicle was in an accident, so probably just didn’t care.

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Motor locked up solid. Customer never answer the phone and basically abandoned the vehicle. Several weeks later an insurance adjuster shows up asking questions about water ingestion, turns out customer ate a pretty deep puddle.

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Put ’em together and what have you got? Bibbidi-bobbidi-BMW

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Yoo need noo nuts, numbnuts.

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On MY12 and up RAM 2500 and 3500's you have to tip the full oil filter on its side and pull it out between the frame rail and inner fender liner...

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Intake Air Heater, i never figured out what caused the fire. I’m guessing it was because of a large amount of carbon buildup

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Not again!

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Crusty cranker

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...it’s a mower brought in earlier this week. The pinion shaft was so worn it would jump completely off the rack.

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Well that would make me throw a Fit...

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(click for video)

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It came in seized. The video is me draining the oil before packing this engine in a crate and shipping it back as a core.

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The tire guy strikes again! Whoever pressed the tires on didn’t pack the bearings, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a cotter pin the keep the castle nut on. Good times!

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Obligatory tire post

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Obligatory brake post

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DISCUSSION (9)

gin-san - shitpost specialist > Urambo Tauro
06/17/2018 at 13:19

Urambo, I love your weekly compilation posts - they remind me that neither my mechanic or I are total idiots.

They also remind me that every time I drive I’m relying on blind faith that someone else’s poor maintenance (or lack thereof) isn’t going to maim or kill me.

gin-san - shitpost specialist > Urambo Tauro
06/17/2018 at 13:19

Urambo, I love your weekly compilation posts - they remind me that neither my mechanic or I are total idiots.

They also remind me that every time I drive I’m relying on blind faith that someone else’s poor maintenance (or lack thereof) isn’t going to maim or kill me.

His Stigness > Urambo Tauro
06/17/2018 at 13:32

The Ram oil filter fiasco is exactly why I hate working on American engineered cars. They don’t think about the simple things like a god damn oil change. Ford is very good at designing splash shields with holes for the oil filter THAT DON’T LINE UP! GM put the oil filter on the 3.6 direct injection motor right next to the exhaust so you WILL burn yourself and you WILL spill oil everywhere and potentially start a fire because you have to get it from up top.

This is all in comparison to German cars, who either put the filters up top and allow you to remove the cartridge without spilling a drop of oil, or they put a drain on the filter when they put it down below.

I’m so glad I don’t do oil changes anymore. And if I’m offered a job somewhere and they say I have to do a bunch of oil changes them I’m out the door. I’ve invested too much money to be doing shit they pay guys pennies to do.

Urambo Tauro > His Stigness
06/17/2018 at 13:45

Yeah, just a little consideration in the design goes a long way. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw an access panel for a fuel pump under the rear seat of (a BMW, I think it was?). I thought that you always had to drop the tank... apparently not.

His Stigness > Urambo Tauro
06/17/2018 at 13:47

Exactly. But don’t give BMW too much credit. On the 4.4 with AWD you have to take out the front dif to change a oil seal on a bracket. I was none too pleased.

shop-teacher > Urambo Tauro
06/17/2018 at 14:59

The first one reminded me of the hoarder Vibe I spotted the other day.

Kinja'd!!!

merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc > His Stigness
06/17/2018 at 21:19

The LS engines have their filters nicely situated next to the oil drain plug, and don’t get me started on the geniuses that designed the oil filter for the Audi 3.6L engines they used in the early Q7s. You had to dump the damn thing out to remove the cartridge holder and get the filter out. So my experience is it’s not limited to any one type of vehicle or brand. There are good and bad.

My 5.9L in my Dakota is a pain to get the filter out without making a mess, but the cartridge filter in my ‘17 pacifica is a breeze to swap out, as was the cartridge on my ‘06 caddy STS 3.6L. (Pre-DI, version). My ‘12 S4 and my current ‘09 S8 both had nice top mounted cartridge filters as well. But Toyota has a shit placement for the v6 on their early sienna vans, sideways up front and you end up dumping the filter as you pull it out, a real mess.

So I guess what I’m saying is the sweeping generalizations are crap based on a few examples. Because there are good and bad examples at all different car companies. Oh yeah, and the northstar filter is right up front down low, same as the v6 in the Pontiac G6s.

His Stigness > merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc
06/17/2018 at 22:40

Except you don’t have to dump the whole oil filter out on the 3.6 VR6, there’s a cap on it that you take off which drains the oil out of the canister. It’s the same as removing a drain plug. And VW uses a similar system on other filter cartridges located at the bottom. Generally, it involves a cheap SST which has a hose attached to it and you can drain the filter that way.

And I can’t tell if you were implying the LS filter location is a good thing, but in case you were, it’s not. Any location that gets oil all over the filter itself is a shitty location.

merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc > His Stigness
06/17/2018 at 22:59

The vw filter doesn’t have a drain plug in the cartridge sleeve, but even that doesn’t help much in the Q7 application as there is still a fair amount of oil left in the housing. It’s still a mess. As for the LS, yeah I was saying it’s a good location, the filter is down low and the filter sits flat so you don’t have to make much of a mess to remove it. Yeah there’s a bit as you unscrew it, but the drain pan is able to pick up anything that drips out. I used to open the drain plug, and spin the oil filter till the oil started to drip, and then let it drain for a bit. When I came back I could finish dropping the filter, spin on a new one, replace the drain plug. No drips on the floor and not any more mess than a pair of nitrile gloves could handle. So after the years of the Dakotas craptastic filter location, it was a nice change of pace.