replaced a bmw starter today, what a bunch of bs, had to drop the trans mount just to get at the funny torx head bolts, who has a socket for that? i happend to buy a torx socket set a few years ago. those bmw engineers must have been given free reign to design whatever they felt like, until they realized they forgot to put in the starter. anyhow i had to grow a couple of extra wrists today to get arounf the fuel line clamps that were more than happy to dig into my arm. starter wouldnt even come out without removing the oil dipstuck tube. now i understand why the bmw dealer quoted my friends friend 600 to do the job, the anger was setting in!
all of those "funny" sockets and wrenches that various manufacturers require were done on purpose - to prevent the average Joe from working on thier cars, and to force you to the dealership for repairs.
The worst are the torx with the little pin in the centre - and you cant just go buy those torx sockets - Snapon and other proffessional tools sales carry them but that is about it.
A lot of engineering/design criteria is based on building cars even faster than before. Stuff is built in subassemblies and bolted together in big chunks with little thought of how to access parts like starters, alternators etc. There is often extremely stupid interference points which makes you say what were they thinking when they put this here? Truth be told they weren't thinking about it at All! They were just thinking how it was being attached to the sub assembly and and how it was not going to hit anything else when it was attached to the car regardless of how little it missed hitting its closest neighbour and if that rendered it inaccessible.
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Stu
"some things hurt more, much more, than cars and girls"
