****

[Dr. Z]

Came to do my rear brakes yesterday as the chap that sold me the car ;) had let them wear down a fair bit.

So, a hub puller, lump mallet and two crowbars later, I managed to get one side off. Everything about this car is backwards - it seems there is no adjustment possible to back off the shoes from the outside - crackers!

Anyway, after a few hours of bashing they came off, with the wheel bearing disintegrating in the process :mad:. A trip to the local scrapyards turned up nothing so it was off to the motor factors to be relieved of £40 for a new one.

Changing the handbrake cable was also a ridiculous amount of effort involving removing the exhaust heatshields and a lot of swearing. In the process, I managed to send my brakeless car through a neighbour's fence, damaging my rear bumper :'( Not *too* bad though, I suppose.

To top off the joys of the past 2 days, I have a buckled alloy to sort out, a completely gnarled up electric window motor and a really bad case of sunburn!

Damn cars!! :mad:

[Jonny69]

You sometimes wonder what the designers were thinking when they do stuff like that, It's not as if they were unaware because they would have run loads of prototypes tested to destruction and would have had to have stripped that assembly hundreds of times. You have to wonder why no-one asked the question "Why is this so difficult to strip down and is there a way we can design it to be a bit easier"

[mejinks]

You sometimes wonder what the designers were thinking when they do stuff like that, It's not as if they were unaware because they would have run loads of prototypes tested to destruction and would have had to have stripped that assembly hundreds of times. You have to wonder why no-one asked the question "Why is this so difficult to strip down and is there a way we can design it to be a bit easier"


Something to do with Ford setting a budget at the planning stage and sticking ridgidly to it even if it means people dying. Lets face it, Ford think that a human life is worth less than 15cents.

Thats all the piece of plastic would have cost to prevent over 2000 deaths.

Or the cruise control that won't give up...

Or the cheaping out on tyres.....

Or the use of substandard bolts which lead to subframes being dangerously bad...

Sorry, I've just seen quite an article on how bad Ford are.

[Dr. Z]

You sometimes wonder what the designers were thinking when they do stuff like that, It's not as if they were unaware because they would have run loads of prototypes tested to destruction and would have had to have stripped that assembly hundreds of times. You have to wonder why no-one asked the question "Why is this so difficult to strip down and is there a way we can design it to be a bit easier"

Oh, there are several "issues" with the design of this car that are ludicrous!

The engine is mounted "backwards" - the exhaust manifold is at the front rather than the back so just about everything you would ever want to get to is at the back of the engine or worse. To get at the oil filter you have to jack the car up, take a wheel off and squeeze your arm through a teeny gap to get a filter wrench on it. There isnt enough room to hammer a screwdriver through it from any angle, short of removing the alternator!

Did I mention that to slacken off the handbrake cable means removing the entire centre console thingy (armrest / handbrake lever cover etc etc)?

To me and the kind neighbour that was helping me and my Dad out, it seems like the designers have gone out of their way to get it so that as much of the work is as difficult as possible in the hope you will take it to a mechanic to sort out.

[Jonny69]

I refer to my posts on OcUK about my bike:

Dr Jonny Diagnosis is my new name, I have sucessfully diagnosed and fixed my scoot! I narrowed it down to a faulty coil, well it's not so much the coil it's the plug lead but it's glued into the coil so you can't replace it when the wire fatigues. Well done Piaggio, great design and £30 I didn't need to spend.

So let me talk you through how to change the coil on a Vespa. Take the small hatch off the front of the engine compartment and you can see the coil, it's the most accessible bit, easy job then. You can't undo the scew though because the bodywork is in the way so you have to take off the kickplates which in turn mean you have to take off the glovebox, then little panel on the front of the bike that covers the horn to get to the two hidden screws. Once the coil is undone you have to pull the lead off the sparkplug, which you can't do with the engine in place. Okay, ready for this? Take the two side panels off the back of the bike for accessibility, then undo the bottom of the rear suspension so the back wheel (and the engine) drops down. Then hook an engine crane to the back of the bike and lift it about a foot up in the air so the engine is completely exposed and finally you can pull the lead off the plug.

The actual time on the coil itself here is under 5 minutes, time with the rest of the bike: over 2 hours. This is a part that lasts about 8000miles so I have to do this just over once a year. Clap clap clap, great design.

and then

Some of you might remember I posted about the malarky I had to go through to change the sparkplug and coil in my ET4 Vespa a few months back. This weekend was oil change time, way overdue and I'm skint so I decided to do it myself. Forseeing that it might not be as straightforward as it sounds I consulted the Haynes manual. Now I've noted before that what's in the book doesn't bear much resemblence to the bike because it covers about 5 similar (but no way the same) models, but it's close enough to get you started. So out I went, Billy Big Balls, new filter in hand etc.

First up is to drain the old oil out, no problem, the drain plug looks like it's right underneath in the book, pan under bike, plug out and drain. Well no. First Piaggio have put the bike stand right in the way so you can't get a pan or a bottle underneath. Second, they have decided it is a good idea to BLANK OFF THE DRAIN PLUG!!! So how the bloody hell am I supposed to get the oil out the engine you Italian idiots? Who's great idea was this?

Right then, off with the old filter. Usual lark with the strap wrench except as usual there is something in the way, the exhaust, but it came off with the help of a bit of grunting and swearing. Some oil dribbled out the side so I tried to tip some out through the filter hole. No way, it's too small. So I go round the other side to the filler neck and that is clearly the only way it's coming out. Bike up on bricks straddling a drain, shallow pan over the drain cover and lean the bike over onto its side so all the oil dribbles out.

What a performance. It took me about an hour to get that far. I'll be paying someone to do that next time, I pity those that do this for a living :mad: :mad: :mad:

I think the guys who designed the ET4 had olive oil in their eyes and were too busy looking at themselves in the mirror and combing their greasy hair.