Drain plug rant

Why on earth can't they standardize the bloody drain plugs on a vehicle????

It's not rocket science. I've had vehicles that had plugs you could take off with a single tool. And what brain-damaged wanker thought to replace the huge, easily accessed 32 mm. plugs on the transfer case with 10 mm allen heads? Which, of course, some previous owner's knuckle-dragging mechanic rounded off using a 3/8 inch allen wrench, so that I had to spend a good part of my morning welding a wrench to the remains of the plug to get it out...!!

It would be sooooooo simple just to have every plug on every component on the vehicle have a 3/8 inch square recess, and nobody would ever have any trouble getting the damn things out.

Ok, rant over. I got my TC flushed, but it shouldn't have taken all day!

Sometimes I would like to line up the engineers on a wall and gun them down. I think the torx bolts on top of the bell housing is the worst though. They usually give me a bad case of tourette syndrome

I have had occasion to deal with a few engineers. Carroll Smith described an engineer as "a man who can do for a dollar what any fool can do for ten" - and that's usually true.

If I was going to line anyone up and shoot them, it would be the beancounters and the lawyers. The beancounters get involved and figure out how to make things a few cents cheaper (at the detriment of serviceability and more frequent replacement) and the lawyers crap things up with "features" for "driver safety" (the #1 safety device we all have is right between the ears, folks - and you can't come up with anything to improve that!)

Maybe get a few marketing people in there as well. And, while we're about it, I'll take anyone who didn't do any mechanical work before going into design - a vehicle should be something that can be serviced by a man, not a six-armed monkey with four elbows in each arm!

I've been thinking, however, of making patterns for various plugs and such - simply because they all weren't standardised, and things have gotten goofy (if you want Tourette's, try dealing with the 8m/m square drive on Peugeot plugs! Those damn things...) Make them take a regular wrench, make them simple, and make them out of a known size hex stock (probably brass - either to reharden at intervals...) so you know what you're getting into...

Also, if anyone can spare some later oil filter mount through bolts (you know, the ones that take 5/8" wrench/whatever size Allen key/T-60 Torx/Gawd knows what else?) for patterns, I'd appreciate it. I don't care if they're broken off in the middle - as long as I can get a useful overall/underhead length out of them, and get a thread pitch that goes into the block. That's also been on my list for a little while (but at least AMC did it right on RENIX - that's where the "5/8" box wrench" came in...)

5-90

I think being maintenance friendly is pretty much last on the list of criteria. for many engineers.
Some of the stuff is engineered for ease of assembly at the factory.
Some in an effort to save materials and lower production costs.
Some so it takes odd or special tools to do the job, designed to make the vehicle, dealer dependant.
Some just different, so an engineers can justify there existance.
Some of the oddities are to sidestep patent issues and/or from switching concessionares or suppliers.
And pretty much last on anybodies list (especially the French) is making the vehicle maintenance friendly.

One thing that irritates me or upsets me is that vehicles are often designed as a package. The intitial cost price and then the projected income from that vehicle over the years, from patented parts, licenses and commisions that can be expected during the projected life of the vehicle. The bean counters have it down to a science and I often feel like I'm being unfairly manipulated.
One thing that has always interested me, is many of the differences, in the same vehicle shipped to Africa (or other third world countries) and/or the military models. They often manage to build the same vehicle with mostly standard hardware. And the vehicles are often an improvement over the industrialized nation models.

I'd prefer the allen head transfer case plugs verses the shallow 32mm hex head.

I've had many crescent wrenches slip off those bitches!

8Mud said:

I think being maintenance friendly is pretty much last on the list of criteria. for many engineers.
Some of the stuff is engineered for ease of assembly at the factory.
Some in an effort to save materials and lower production costs.
Some so it takes odd or special tools to do the job, designed to make the vehicle, dealer dependant.
Some just different, so an engineers can justify there existance.
Some of the oddities are to sidestep patent issues and/or from switching concessionares or suppliers.
And pretty much last on anybodies list (especially the French) is making the vehicle maintenance friendly.

One thing that irritates me or upsets me is that vehicles are often designed as a package. The intitial cost price and then the projected income from that vehicle over the years, from patented parts, licenses and commisions that can be expected during the projected life of the vehicle. The bean counters have it down to a science and I often feel like I'm being unfairly manipulated.
One thing that has always interested me, is many of the differences, in the same vehicle shipped to Africa (or other third world countries) and/or the military models. They often manage to build the same vehicle with mostly standard hardware. And the vehicles are often an improvement over the industrialized nation models.

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Interesting that you mentioned the French. My first 3 cars were Peugeots, and while they had their quirks, one thing they did was to make every single drain plug the same! This was back in the 60's, and such things are undoubtedly long forgotten, but they all had a 3/8 inch recess, and the car's tool kit came with the necessary tool. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Peugeot was, and may still be, the best selling car in Africa, and at that time there was less difference between the US and other models.

GSequoia said:

I'd prefer the allen head transfer case plugs verses the shallow 32mm hex head.

I've had many crescent wrenches slip off those bitches!

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Perhaps, but when you use the wrong tool, you can't complain too much. At least when you have used the wrong tool, it leaves something to grab on to. When you strip out an allen head hole in a flush mounted plug, you're in for a long session.

My dad is an engineer. Helping him work on cars is where I learned my expletive lexicon of 287 curses, including the now infamous 'f**k-a-duck' and 'horse-piss'. What drove him crazy, as an engineer working on cars, weren't the comprises made in the engineering. What ran through his mind, as he was trying to get a wrench on a bolt he couldn't see, with room to turn it only one flat at a time (if you turned the wrench over each time), but was too tight to turn by hand was an image of the design engineer sitting in his office somewhere chuckling silently to himself. That image of the design engineer finding amusement in the suffering his design created would drive my dad crazy.

My dad was no stranger to compromise. He worked for McDonnell/Douglas for 34 years. He had a hand in some element of design on every fighter produced after 1950 - from airframe to fuel supply to flight controls (including flight control software design). When working on cars it wasn't the compromises that ticked him off, it was what he perceived to be a malicious intend on the part of the car's design engineer to cause suffering and anguish, simply out of spite and boredom. Being on the design end was a career that he loved. Being on the user end, trying to maintain a car, for example - being at the mercy of his fellow engineers, so to speak - was torture to him.

So, the drain plugs could be different for any number of reasons, but the one reason that should really piss you off is that it was done simply out of pique and spite by a bored, mid-level engineer - just to put a kink in your day

I'm a design engineer, and I often find myself wondering why things were done in a particular fashion when working on a vehicle. :huh: Granted, my background is in industrial machinery and I'm not up to speed on the specialized automotive design practices, but at its core a car is a machine. Why not use standard components and fasteners?:doh:

i just hate torx... period

Come now - Torx actually makes a little sense! It allows for an interally-wrenching screw (just like an Allen head,) but the Torx driver profile allows for more torque to be applied to the fastener - for when the application requires really tightening the screw, for whatever reason...

I've had hex socket thead capscrews strip out when I was doing everything right - not so with Torx socket heads.

Now, the E-Torx screws are an abomination, and I've no idea who came up with those and why. If you need a reduced head, you can do a reduced hex (it's been done before with no trouble...)

5-90

Actually I agree with Jon here. As long as the hardware is good (not those crappy TPS TORX bolts in the Renix Jeeps!) TORX works very well.

the key to TORX is a good driver. Lots of people get pissed because the cheapy torx bit set they have strips. With good bits I've not had any problems out of torx on the manche.

GSequoia said:

Actually I agree with Jon here. As long as the hardware is good (not those crappy TPS TORX bolts in the Renix Jeeps!) TORX works very well.

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That's OK - once I get around to figuring out what size they are (probably M4 or M5) I'll probably replace them with socket heads or hex heads. I've got all the Torx bits I'm likelty to need for nearly anything (including the "Security" bits!) but I don't like having to dig them out...

5-90

5-90 said:

That's OK - once I get around to figuring out what size they are (probably M4 or M5) I'll probably replace them with socket heads or hex heads. I've got all the Torx bits I'm likelty to need for nearly anything (including the "Security" bits!) but I don't like having to dig them out...

5-90

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I replaced mine with allens in the Red Jeep. Just remember that they're going into an aluminum throttle body and you'll be safe.

GSequoia said:

I replaced mine with allens in the Red Jeep. Just remember that they're going into an aluminum throttle body and you'll be safe.

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I don't suppose you remember what size screws you got, do you? I'm thinking they're either #10-32 or M4-.7, but I'd like to be sure - and I haven't gotten around to taking Frank to bits just yet...

5-90

I never even made it a point to know. I just walked into a hardware store with (the remains of) one of the bolts and sized it up.

ON my 87 I ended up slotting the heads with a Dremel cutoff tool. Worked very nicely.

I've done a bunch of reverse engineering over the years, I spent the last twenty or so years as a toubleshooter, for various machine installations. Trying to get into the engineers mind and figure out where he or she went wrong.
Many of the problems I've encountered over the last couple of decades, were engineers trying to improve a tried and true design and make improvements that weren't improvements.
Some of the old fifties and earlier, hands on engineer types, where pretty darned sharp. Many of there designs have really lasted and stood the test of time. Many of the redesigns much less so.
They have really segregated the management, design, engineering, production and maintenance facets of most industry. There seems to be very little cross over (or communication). The days of a wrench turner, moving up the ladder to engineer or manangement are just about dead.
Pratical improvements are very secondary, to company politics and defending your desicions, no matter how screwed up they are. Teamwork, seems to have become an oxymoron. IMO. Customer feedback, failry minimal, other than loud and persisitant complaining, usually heard by professional listeners and not the engineers..