Much has been said about cars that suck to work on. Too much, in fact, that the internet is swamped with tales of misery, and I want to do the opposite of that. Let’s talk about what happens when designers and engineers think of the people who’ll be wrenching on their vehicles. Called “design for serviceability,” it makes working on your car a little bit easier, possibly even turning a chore into a joy.
Easy as it is to harp on German complexity, I must say that cabin air filter placement on most BMWs is excellent. It sits atop the cowl, meaning you don’t have to empty your glovebox to change a cabin filter and any accumulated dust doesn’t end up in your interior. Just pop the hood, loosen a couple screws, and replace the filter. Simple as that.
Likewise, I’m a huge fan of the trapdoor-style engine air filter changes on the Kia Telluride. Just drop the door on the side of the airbox, pivot two tabs, and the filter slides right out. No messing about with unwieldy clip-on filter lids or screwed-together airboxes. Sure, it’s a little touch, but it makes life easier, and that’s what it’s all about.
So, let’s celebrate examples of design for serviceability, when manufacturers made it unusually easy to carry out maintenance or repairs. Whether you want to celebrate cartridge-style oil filters or laud easy-to-replace headlight bulbs, the comment section is yours for the taking.
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
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The gen 2 Prius has a separate cooling loop for its electronics. When the time comes to replace the fluid, there’s a simple drain plug on the bottom to empty it, but the best part is bleeding air out of the system is stupidly easy. They included a nipple on the highest part of the system so you can just stick a piece of tubing on there, run it into the reservoir, and then just turn the car on so the pump runs. Fluid flows through the tube and once you stop seeing bubbles you’re done.
Reminds me of how my Focus has a non-pressurized coolant overflow bottle – just a simple pop-top to add coolant, whenever, should you need.
I come from the era of “whatever you do don’t open the coolant cap if the engine is hot!!” cars so it always creeps me out for a minute to open the Focus’.
Subaru Forester has its oil filter right on top, sitting in a metal cup.
Came here for this.
Fuel injection and electronic ignition. I learned to work on cars in the 70s and if you had an issue, it was always one of those. The broken block on the points so they didn’t close. The carb with the busted electronic choke. Short plug life. Screwing around with dwell. All that stuff went away and, as a result, those are two systems that often don’t require much more than regular maintenance to stay healthy.
Yes, I really fell in love with throttle body injection and electronic ignition in the 90’s.
The Smarter Every Day video with the see-through carb really demonstrates how carbs basically splash vaguely the right amount of fuel in the general direction of the cylinders and hope it works out. So much fiddling with layers of hacks and compensation for different specific situations, all to approximate measuring air and metering a matching amount of fuel.
My 2012 Prius v gets a few things right out of the things I’m likely to touch (since I don’t like getting my hands dirty).
Under the hood, all the bulbs are easy to change by hand (except the fog lights…but I guess that would be hard to facilitate by design).
Inside the car, with installing an under-seat subwoofer, two dashcams, and an aftermarket Android Auto head unit, I’m continually amazed with how the entire interior is essentially all just thin plastic with tabs. Take parts out carefully, run the wires, click the panels back in.
In contrast, I’ve looked at the instructions for replacing the head unit in a Chevy Express, and it does not look like a fun time.
I suspect the replacement procedure for the chevy radio is “replace vehicle”. The paint doesn’t even last more than a half decade, so they want you to replace it with the same thing and repeat the dance all over again.
Well, I mainly compare it to my old E-series van, where removing the factory radio consisted of…putting 4 flathead screwdrivers around its edges and gently prying inwards. Didn’t leave a scratch on the dash and popped it right out.
I’m still on the lookout for used conversion vans and at this point I’m mostly ambivalent about Express vs. E-series. But upgrading the radio would be one minor inconvenience I wouldn’t look forward to.
My 2002 S2000 oil filter has plenty of room around it for easy access, it’s angled up so when it unscrews the oil stays in the filter, and if any oil does spill there’s nothing underneath it for the oil to get on. Just so so nice to do oil changes.
Compared to my old ’95 Land Cruiser that had a tight squeeze to reach the oil filter, it was tilted down so all the oil spilled out as soon as it was unscrewed, and was positioned right over the front axle so the oil spilled all over it.
Can confirm. The first time I serviced my LX450 I did the tuna-can air filter first (yeah, it’s a squat cylinder, but it’d take like ten pounds of fish to fill it) and thought “Bless you Toyota, such great design” and then spent a dark, desperate few hours trying to remove that horribly located oil filter, ultimately having to borrow a specialized tool. I learned to suffer through it but the robust aftermarket for those trucks means I’ll probably get a kit to relocate the thing.
Relatively minor but the Toyota 1GR-FE in the Tacoma/4Runner has the oil filter topside, situated in a little catch basin with a nipple on the bottom to easily attach a drain tube to.
For regular service work, I have to give props to GM on my ’06 Z06 Vette. They clearly thought hard about packaging and did a great job making the things you really need accessible. The various fluid drain, fill, and filter locations are easy to get to and not make a mess. Plugs, wires, air and cabin filters are all easy to reach. Brake pads, rotors aren’t complicated and the fluid is easy to flush with no weird procedures or fancy scanners needed.
Repairs can be hit or miss. The fuel pump is a PITA with the dual tank setup. A clutch job means pulling the diff and trans assembly, although it’s not as bad as it could be.
As easy as you make that sound is as bad as the GM lambda platform cars are to do oil changes on. “The Devil’s A-hole” is a common nickname for the work area.
Porsche 996/986 headlights are held in with a quarter turn bolt. Remove a rubber cover in the frunk, turn the bolt and the headlight just slides out, then you can replace the bulbs.
That’s nice to know, I might just take mine off to polish them instead of masking the paint around them.
The procedure has changed slightly on new Porsches
R.I.P Taycan Turismo – brutal headlight theft
Perhaps one of the things that I appreciate with modern cars is that you can replace whole modules rather than disassembling them for components.
Whilst I understand that it does increase part cost, it does lend itself for general ease of replacement & ability to create sealed units. Things like wheel hubs as a complete unit comes to mind.
Sealed wheel hubs/bearings are one of the best unsung advances in automobiles ever. No more bearing pullers, and you get new wheel studs in the process.
It’s a trade-off, though. The bearing /hub assembly for a Stratus took less than an hour from engaging the parking brake to starting test-drive, but the assembly was iirc around $100 whereas the bearings & races for my 300D were about $36 plus a $5 seal. And I rather enjoyed packing the bearings with grease.
Oof, that’s expensive. The rear hub/bearing for my ’95 Corolla was like $24, and I think the front one for my old Caddy was about $40. No ABS sensors in either one, though, maybe that’s the difference.
To be fair, that was a front bearing for a fwd, and the Mercedes was front bearing for a rwd. Apples & oranges really
also, the Stratus bearing was 10-12 years ago, while the Mercedes prices were closer to 15-20.
memory will mess with you!
While hubs are much more $$, it’s better than a shop calling you back saying they f’d up your $50 bearing pressing it into the spindle you took all afternoon taking off and they’re still charging you for the labor!
Flushing the manual transmission on my Ford Ranger was so easy, one bolt goes out, it drains, you close it, open the higher one, you fill it up until its full, back on.
Cars from late 90s, early 00s are peak for serviceability, there is plenty of space to work , after that things got more complex with added turbos, sensors, everything so cramped under the engine compartment, you cant even change a bulb.
Coming from a 91 Civic and working on a new 22 GR86 I’ve been really impressed with how easy the plastic body clips/fasteners are to remove. Some have a simple button you push in to release them others require you to pry under the heads but both are so much easier than I’m used to.
On my old Civic the plastic was old and brittle but beyond that the methods for removal were far worse. Some clips unscrew some needed prying off. The ones that screw off were much easier if you could get behind them and just push them loose as they dont always thread out and the plastic heads get stripped or they may just spin in place. The clips requiring prying aren’t too bad but definiely not as cooperative as my new car. I also dont really need a box of spare clips to replace broken ones like my old car did.
Oh and the Subaru FA24 engine has a super easy to access oil filter on top of the engine. As other have mentioned its very convenient and almost makes up for the spark plug access (which is much harder).
I change oil on my BRZ way more than the spark plugs (thank goodness), so I appreciate the filter placement.
Yes! I’ve busted so many clips on my civics I’m still searching through the Dorman catalog for replacements.
OBD II. Sometimes it tells you exactly what the problem is. Sometimes!
“60% of the time…
It works, Every Time!” 😉
Definitely beats the OBD 1 paper clip dance.
Also…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu84Yq8YJ5s
True, though I’ll give props to late-’80s/early ’90s Volvo and using the Bosch LH Jetronic EFI system with the “blink code” OBD system. No special tools required to use, and all you needed was a smidgeon of patience and the blink code guide.
Love the “blink code!”. Never plugged a scan tool into any cars from the 90’s
Scrolled through to find this comment, cause it’s mine.
OBDII is by far, the biggest leap, of all leaps, to making cars easier to work on.
2nd to this would be coatings that prevent rust (basically any car after the 80’s).
Remember a few months ago, the article about having to cut holes in F-bodies to change the fuel pump? My Audi has a plate you can remove. The back seat literally lifts up, no bolts or anything, and bam, plate covering the fuel pump held on with 3 bolts.
There’s also “service position”, which I guess depends on how you want to look at it. It is a way to make servicing the front guts easier, but plenty would argue that shouldn’t be a problem to begin with. Taking the front bumper off and moving the lock carrier is super fast, super easy, and makes a huge difference in servicing anything in the front of the engine.
Lastly, erWin is amazing. I paid $30 for a day pass to VAG’s online portal and was able to download (for both my cars) every manual, diagram, TSB, self study program, and pretty much any other documentation one could ever need to care for an Audi DIY. If an OEM making their own manuals and documentation easily available, and affordable, isn’t a nod to serviceability then I don’t know what is.
Similar system in the Boxster, except the fuel pump is right under the battery, so there’s an extra step of fool-proof safety in that you HAVE to unplug and remove the battery to open up the tank, making it much harder to blow yourself up.
While I can see some aggravation… removing the battery b/f replacing a fuel pump does seem like a good safety idea
Oh I have zero aggravation, I was only talking about how good of an idea it is, I’m glad it makes “disconnect spark box before opening explosive box” a physically necessary step instead of a recommendation.
I must mention the opposite. I was astounded when the technician had to cut the exhaust system and drop the fuel tank to repair the fuel pump on my XC 70.
Pretty much every Volkswagen/Audi/Porsche has has an access door for the fuel lift pump ( or back in the 1970s when it was just a fuel sender ). I appreciate this every time i’ve had to access a lift pump..
My E82 had that style. My E36’s cabin air filter on the other hand involved snapping your forearm so you could gain an extra axis of rotation. My Camaro’s involves popping the glovebox out of socket to reach back and change the cabin air filter, but at least I don’t have to remove any covers or flaps to change the oil on it, so that’s nice.
Suzuki puts drain plugs on differential and automatic transmission oil pans.
I also miss the old days where you could mount a deployable step on the front license plate holder on pickups to reach into the engine bay.
I need a ladder on my ’23 Sierra 1500 (no lift whatsoever) to reach the engine dipstick.
i came here to say my dads 1980 C10 has that flip out front plate (not being taller guys, super useful)
The original VW Bug was so easy to take the engine out of there used to be engine-out-and-back-in speed competitions at meetings. For us regular guys, a clutch change would take an hour and a half, comprised of ten minutes removing the engine, an hour hanging around shooting the shit, then five minutes changing the clutch and fifteen minutes waggling the engine back in.
Had a rusted vw bus that aggravated me but that engine sure popped out & in rather easy!
My 1971 Fiat 500 was made easy by having no oil filter, no gauges, no coolant, and only 2 spark plugs.
I’m definitely a fan of the top of the engine cartridge oil filters.
Sometimes. I have a few engines that they found a way to make them hard. But I guess anything is better than being on your back.
The 500 Abarth is like that. It’s on top, but buried under the intake and some hoses. Both disassembly and an extension needed to remove. Nice that it drains the oil from the filter first, though.
Salute to pre-LED Volvo headlight replacements. Just pull up a couple of locking tabs, and the whole assembly pops right out.
Conversely, I’d like to wish a hearty “go fuck yourself” to whoever designed early P2 platform headlamps.
Most of the manufacturers have these amazing places you can go to and the work just gets done. The only tool you need is a credit card. Talk about seviceability!
While true, when engineers actually give a shit and design for servicability… it provides (at minimum) 4 benefits I can think of off the top of my head…
1.) Less labor involved in regular maintenance means that the less time spent and therefore should mean less $$$ you spend on said regular maintenance
2) if your dealership (or as a general rule if all dealers for a given make) charge way too much, for example $100+ to replace an air filter… if it is super easy to replace, an independent mechanic should charge you much less for the work
3.) If it is easy to service, it makes it more likely owners will be willing to service the vehicle themselves or at least give those of us enthusiasts who are so inclined to spend less time servicing our own vehicles, leading to better “health” of the entire available market of said make/model
4) positive snowball effect… if you are the manufacturer and your vehicles get a reputation for reliability and being easy to service (and therefore less expensive to service) your vehicles should become more popular and therefore increase sales for the manufacturer; this has a knock on effect of increased scale; increased scale allows manufacturers to lower their sale prices further increasing sales (by units sold) And enabling reduced maintenance parts prices (again scale value…)…
I agree with everything you said there. Mostly my comment was made in jest as I was considering the way too involved process (something like 15 screws and removing a sensor) to change the intake air filter on the Mercedes I used to have.
Ha sometimes legit sarcasm and what appears to be a mindless comment can look like the same ting online w/o “jk” or a simple smiley face
I should have suspected the former as this (Autopian) is one of the lovely corners of the internet where mindless comments seem statistically rare.
I forgot a 5th reason… makes/models well engineered for serviceability also will tend to have higher resale price too (see Toyota tax), so if the entry (purchase) price is w/in your alloted budget, it is reasonable to expect a higher than avg. (for the vehicle type/class) year & milage
BTW What year and model is your Mercedes?
I know many Mercedes are built with serviceability in mind, but not all of them…
When researching buying a new car looking at what’s involved for what should be regular maintenance including what’s involved in replacing a headlight bulb can be a good indicator of how well that make/model/year was engineered for servicability
It was a ’14 C300 sport. It definitely wasn’t engineered for serviceability. Even changing the cabin air filter required tools and contorting oneself into a pretzel to get down under the glove box. Now I have a ’19 C300 and I just take it to the dealer when it tells me it needs service. It’s expensive, but with time pressures and the hassle of it all, it’s worth it to me.
BMW has historically done a wonderful job of designing for serviceability, and seemed to even encourage owners to DIY—I suspect they’ve mostly gone by the wayside, but into the early 21st century a toolkit mounted on the underside of the trunklid/tailgate was a hallmark.
My E39s are a dream to work on. Cabin air filters are a piece of cake as you say (the E39s don’t even have any screws, just a levering clip), the oil filter is super easy, the oil drain plug doesn’t even require you to remove the splash shield to access…they even made it easy to jump the car, without having to fiddle with the battery in the trunk: there’s a positive terminal, clearly marked, above the intake manifold, and a big ol’ ground nut on the strut tower.
One of the things that reassured me when buying my E39 540 wagon was a claim I read stating that BMW engineers ensured that every fastener could easily be reached before a design was finalized. My first oil change was indeed the easiest I’ve ever done, but subsequent experience has led me to curse the day I read that mendacious propaganda. The car is currently sidelined with a parasitic electrical drain that a brand-specific code reader has yet to lead me to and which my mechanic denies exists despite the car’s breadbox-sized battery being exquisitely corpse-like after an idle week. Once the battery drops below useful voltage (and before I started keeping a small jumper pack in the glovebox to resurrect the locks), its home in the car’s far right-rear lower corner (because weight balance) – coupled with the hatch’s solely electronic latches – makes what should be a simple task an absurdly complex debacle. Here’s what I had to do to after those incidents (and before the jumper pack):
1-Unlock driver’s door (the only one with a lock) by twisting so hard that it feels like I’m breaking it.
2-Crawl into the back seat, because that manual unlocking procedure does nothing for the other doors.
3-Reach back and unhook the cargo cover screen (easy, or had been before I gained my Covid-30) before popping the recalcitrant latches on the 40-pound cargo screen module keeping my fat ass out of the trunk area and shoving it aside.
4-Drop the seats and clumsily rearrange all the stuff I leave back there to gain access to the tabs that open the huge, ungainly tailgate trim panel hiding its emergency release.
5-Push the hatch open just enough to shove some junk into the gap so it stays open. Now I’m finally allowed to crawl out of this claustrophobic clusterfork and start to address the problem I came to fix.
6-Lift the hatch, remove the carpeted side panel above the battery and unscrew the turnbolt securing a huge subwoofer over the battery and rotating it out of the way… or at least trying to, because it never quite gets out of the way.
7-That’s a theme that repeats with both positive and ground leads, which, once removed, have no space to move out of the way and keep flopping down onto the terminals. Sparks! Fun!
8-Unscrew the footlong screw securing a small anchor tab at the battery’s base, allowing said tab to fall into a gap between the stamped battery platform and the car’s floor…
9-Providing for a fun game with a telescoping magnet once I…
10-Finally lift that massive block of plastic, lead and acid up past all the stuff that keeps falling back into the way.
Maybe BMW’s development team really does (or once did) try to make their cars easy to work on, but I think the electrical engineering department heads out for a weizen or four during those meetings.
Oh, I’ve done the wagon battery dance many times. Agreed, the electric tailgate latch + rear-mounted battery combo is a spectacularly dumb asterisk to what I said before. It’s much easier in a sedan, which doesn’t use an electric latch for the trunk, although in that case the access panel for the battery requires removing three little plastic pop rivets, which is also dumb.
While we’re at it, how about those hatch struts? I was so proud of the way BMW hid them in the roof to eliminate the indignity of visible supports… until they stopped working. Now I try to hide my embarrassment about using a length of ABS drainpipe to keep the hatch from bonking my head until I have the spare cash and time to take out the headliner and associated bits in the way of what would be a simple repair on less… elegant… vehicles. I guess I’m responding with the opposite of this article’s prompt, but the Bimmer struggle is real and it’s hard for this old man to not yell at that cloud.
Don’t remove the headliner! The struts are in a cavity between the roof and headliner, so dropping the headliner won’t get you access. I’ve done the job twice (two different wagons)—the first time was a huge pain, the second time not too bad, though the second time I was only replacing one pair of struts, not both. The main thing to have in advance, besides the replacement struts, is something long and slender that you can insert into that cavity to use as a lever to pop the old struts off and push the new struts on. If you have a fan clutch hold tool, that should work.
Thank you for that! I’m actually jazzed to fix the struts now. I think I even have a fan clutch tool. The mechanic I recently stopped using gave me the story about headliner removal… probably to justify the $1800 he wanted to remedy the problem. I just thought “Well, f**k that for now” and forgot about it.
Oh, yeah, no, that’s someone not to go back to. It’s not what I’d call a “fun” job, but it shouldn’t be anywhere near that expensive, even if you’re paying someone to do it. I think the last time it took me around an hour, and even if you’re replacing all four struts with decent brand replacements, total parts cost shouldn’t be more than $200.
My dad’s Volvo XC70 has had a droopy tailgate for a few years now, which does involve dropping the headliner to fix. I’ve offered to do it for him for the cost of parts, but he doesn’t think it’s worth it, which sounds like something someone who’s been hit on the head with a heavy tailgate a few too many times would say…
Two from GM: the trapdoor in the skidplate on ’90s 4.3 liter S-10 Blazers to access the oil filter, and the retaining pins on GMT800 headlights. Pull two pins, and the entire headlight/turn signal/side-marker light assembly is in your hand.
Honorable mention: the little funnel/spout under the oil filter on our old Infiniti QX4 with a VQ35. Directed oil away from the frame rail and the brake lines running along it, to prevent a mess. Points off for having to remove a skidplate to get to it, though.
It took me about an hour to have my GMT800 radiator out and a new one in last week. The only thing I’ve seen that’s a huge pain to fix is the oil pressure sensor, and it’s not really that bad
One of my favorites are the Volvo headlights held in with plastic stakes, makes swapping bulbs a piece of cake. Compare that to the 2013ish Forester I tried to replace a taillight bulb on for a friend which had a Security Torx bolt blocking the bulb from making the standard 1/4 turn to remove. A security torx screw. For a taillight bulb. Why Subaru.
Also honorable mention to the NA Miata *Everything* just having loads of space, easy to access hardware, and just really sensible layout making just about every part of that car easy to access and replace whether it be anything in the engine bay, entire suspension, or anything on the interior popping out with a few easy to access bolts.
The oil filter is an arm twister but other than that.
That’s true, but its at least reasonable, and on a car as low as mine is, I’m awfully glad its not facing down near the oil pan where it could get knocked off on a speed bump or something similar. Also an oil pan gasket requires either pulling the engine or dropping the subframe which is absurd, but compared to many other things newer and older I’ve wrenched on, my miata is a total joy.
My ’97 Ford Econoline’s taillights, which you had to replace from the outside, had either torx or security torx screws, which made some sense since they were always accessible.
If they’re accessed from the inside though, yeah, that’s pretty redundant.
And that’s exactly the case, have to pop the hatch to pull the taillight housing off, which seems to like to break mounting clips of course, and then there’s the Security Torx to hold one light on. Granted, it is a special LED bulb, and the halogens are all just standard quarter turn unsecured, but the special bit for specifically the brake light is absurd.
Nissan put cutouts in the intake for the 4th gen Maxima, the early VQ engines. They even used a different shape for the rear ignition coils that fit in the space in the cutouts so that you can replace the spark plugs and coils without having to remove the intake manifold.
But the 2010 Versa I I did a plug job on with a little 4 cylinder required removal of the intake tubes and hose, throttle body, and intake manifold… on a versa… why…
I was going to do the plugs on my partner’s Versa Note, but when I saw how much I’d have to remove, I changed my mind immediately. That’s not a quick job in the condo parking lot.
Yeah that’s extremely fair, I got the job done in just over an hour and a half, but that was after researching procedure, torque specs, etc, ordering every part I needed, and with having a decent range of tools to pull from for some of the harder to reach bolts. Absolutely stupid for what the car is.
I’m fortunate that my partner makes good money and is extremely committed to making her transportation appliance last as long as is humanly possible, so she doesn’t mind taking it to get all of the periodic and corrective maintenance done. It may be a cheap little Ikea bag of a car, but she’s going to make it last.
Especially because I almost never bring a giant tool kit with me when I go visit, and her condo association doesn’t allow you to work on your car in the parking lot.
because Renault, that’s why 😛
Even on the VQ, the cutouts went away when Renault and Ghosn got their hands on it.
Yep, those cutouts were Ghosn, baby, Ghosn.
I love that my Subaru has a top mounted oil filter. Almost makes up for the clearance nightmare of changing spark plugs – going to tackle that this spring.
Sounds like that totally makes up for the spark plugs, since spark plugs are normally a very very infrequent maintenance item.
Don’t know the year of your Subaru but I had an 04 Impreza and removing the washer jug (or maybe coolant overflow, its been many years) made the job a snap. It just slides off a post. My wife has a 2012 Forester (different engine than the 04) and it involved moving a few more things around but wasn’t a horrible job either. Just get a selection of extensions and use a few smaller ones, not one big one
For the most part I’ve found Subarus easy to work on, at least for jobs I’m willing to tackle. Like anything they have their quirks but the “impossible to service” view is overblown.
loved that feature.