Stupid Manufacturer Designs

Phil W

Phil W

Phil W

Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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What are your car design pet hates?

We've just stumbled across one on my fiancés '53 Astra. Thermostat is nackered. Water temp won't rise at all unless your sat on the spot for ages.

Cheap fix really, thermostat is £10. Until you read up on how to do it. The thermostat is located in such a place as you have to remove the cambelt to access it. Rather annoying as the cambelt was only replaced a couple of months ago and all was fine then!

Googling actually showed that most people do a mattyprice bodge and buy a Renault 5 thermostat, shove it in the top hose going into the engine block and secure it with jubilee clips!

Luckily i've got a friend who did the cambelt replacement and he says its a reasonably easy job so he's doing it for us next week, but what a pain!

On most other engine types in that era of Astra they are all easily accessible :o

How about yours?
 
Water pump and thermostat should be done with the belts on those engines as you end up in that situation! There's lots of cars with 'bad' designs like the VW's and Audi's that need the whole front end off the car to do the belts, some cars where you have to take the bumper off just to change headlight bulbs, Mercedes A-Class where you have to drop then engine to do the starter motor, the list is endless!
 
Water pump was done, there was no mention of Thermostat :( It should really be made as part of the "kit" so its not missed out. We had no idea until the above happened and it failed!
 
lack of cup holders on my 206, my mate has a Polo and it has a really cool flip out cup holder on the dash. Also lack of a proper flat glove box and dash board.
 
The mind numbingly stupid position of the air temp sensor for the climate control in the E39 and, staggeringly, the F10 5 Series.

It is directly behind the cupholder. Put a hot drink in the cupholder and all the temp sensor reads is hot air from the drink. It then pumps cold air into the cabin. I popped through the McDonalds drivethru last night, stuck the coke in the cupholder and within about 40 seconds the climate control was blasting out roasting hot air.

Sigh.

You'd think they'd have learned. The E60 didnt do it as the cupholders were in the dash rather than the centre console, but they are back in the centre console in the F10.. right in the same place once again.
 
Where to start. Glad I got an honourary mention for my brilliant thermostat placement... :p

There are a few that annoy me, although I've learned a lot are common to most cars, not just my 75.

- Concentric slave cylinders. While a great idea in practice, they're mostly plastic and tend to fail - necessitating the removal of the entire gearbox assembly. Annoying.

- Headlight bulbs you can't change without going through a daft panel in the wheel arch. Highly annoying.

- BMW having a rod on for using security TORX bits for holding sensors and the like - why? Grrr.

- Stupid thermostat placement - while you don't have to mess with the cambelt (it doesn't have one.. :p ) you do need to be a contortionist to change this, and the book time is something daft like 5 hours. Not to mention the £50 part cost.
 
Funny, I actually helped my mate change (add :p) a thermostat for his gf's nans Astra.

Yeah I was surprised to say the least when the "procedure" was to bung it in the coolant pipe and Jub' it in place.

Proper Ghetto.
 
[TW]Fox;20817476 said:
Have you ever made a post about your car without reminding us it has a BMW engine? :p
Click to expand...

Ha, i was just thinking to myself "Wait until Fox sees mattyprice writing about BMW in his post" :D
 
Gayjin said:
Funny, I actually helped my mate change (add :p) a thermostat for his gf's nans Astra.

Yeah I was surprised to say the least when the "procedure" was to bung it in the coolant pipe and Jub' it in place.

Proper Ghetto.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about it. Decided to do it properly but if the replacement fails in 6 months time i'll give the bodge a go :rolleyes:
 
In the Mercedes E class (W211). Can't remember for definite but there was some stupid kind of design with the stalks where by if you turned the lights on, you would twist the indicator stalk so that it was at a strange angle and made it awkward to use the stalk for indicating with the lights on.

Petty I know but I'm sure someone like Jez will know what I'm talking about. Used to frustrate me for being such a poor design. :o
 
[TW]Fox;20817476 said:
Have you ever made a post about your car without reminding us it has a BMW engine? :p
Click to expand...

Rover didn't use daft security TORX bolts, and as much as they sucked at pretty much everything they made I feel the need to point out this stupid design is implemented by the Germans.

Being a BMW engine wasn't enough to stop it getting a thoroughly embarrassing figure on the dyno last week, but I digress... :o
 
Corsa, lots of the waterseals in the engine bay seem to give up and leak rain water into the driver/passenger footwells. Great fun in the winter :)
 
Standard, 129bhp. It's currently running a whopping earth-reversing 143bhp, within 272 lb/ft of torque!

I guess the disconnected MAF is quite important given these figures... I really need to work out how to electrically connect the new sensor in. :o
 
mr tommo said:
In the Mercedes E class (W211). Can't remember for definite but there was some stupid kind of design with the stalks where by if you turned the lights on, you would twist the indicator stalk so that it was at a strange angle and made it awkward to use the stalk for indicating with the lights on.

Petty I know but I'm sure someone like Jez will know what I'm talking about. Used to frustrate me for being such a poor design. :o
Click to expand...

Mercedes use a single stalk and then overload it by putting all the controls onto it. They also use a foot operated parking brake which is somewhat interesting to use when in a manual.

Daft design on the Saab 9000 means that if there is any water on the hatch it dumps it all over the rear speakers when opened, unless you remember to open it half way to let the water drain off first.
 
mr tommo said:
In the Mercedes E class (W211). Can't remember for definite but there was some stupid kind of design with the stalks where by if you turned the lights on, you would twist the indicator stalk so that it was at a strange angle and made it awkward to use the stalk for indicating with the lights on.

Petty I know but I'm sure someone like Jez will know what I'm talking about. Used to frustrate me for being such a poor design. :o
Click to expand...

The lights in my car are operating by a knob on the dash, but the wipers control is on the same stalk as the indicator which is probably what you meant, but I have the wipers on one click forward, (intermittent) and I have not found it awkward, sometimes I even forget that I turned them off because my fingers fall on the same place really.

Few days ago though when I tried flashing my headlights, I did accidentally hit the indicator, when the stalk was pulled forward I must have pulled it down aswell, the stalk is so soft that I can see this happening often lol.
 
mattyprice4004 said:
Standard, 129bhp. It's currently running a whopping earth-reversing 143bhp, within 272 lb/ft of torque!

I guess the disconnected MAF is quite important given these figures... I really need to work out how to electrically connect the new sensor in. :o
Click to expand...

Reading that, I'm wondering where the MAF is on my Scania..... 500BHP here I come? :p
 
Alibaba99 said:
Mercedes use a single stalk and then overload it by putting all the controls onto it. They also use a foot operated parking brake which is somewhat interesting to use when in a manual.
Click to expand...
Once I've got my head around it, I quite like everything on one stalk with some Merc trucks, later ones tend to have reverted back to two though.


I used to hate the foot operated "handbrake" on my e38 and often wondered how it would work in a manual....
 
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