“Design for serviceability” was the name of the class Chrysler encouraged its engineers to take. A long-haired union technician who has clearly dealt with far, far too much bullshit with engineers like us kindly, but firmly, described how to design cars so they can be easily repaired. This is important not just to customers, who want their vehicles fixed quickly and cheaply, but to Chrysler’s own technicians, who are tired of going through hell just to change a damn spark plug. With this concept in mind, and with me having recently described having gone through wrenching hell to unsuccessfully replace subframe bolts, I’d like to know: What’s the most painfully annoying repair job you’ve attempted?
Last night was just awful. Trying to remove the rear lower control bolts from my HHR has been awful, as I described yesterday. Here’s a diagram describing the problem:
Today my right elbow is absolutely killing me from all the vibrations of that sawzall, which — despite wielding the most expensive saw blade one can buy a Home Depot — was unable to slice through the subframe bolt quickly. It was able to slice off the two aluminum control arms quite nicely:
This exposed the aforementioned subframe bolt:
Unfortunately, this sent aluminum all over my face.
Since the sawzall couldn’t handle that big subframe bolt, I did what any desperate man does: I broke out the Death Wheel — a six-inch cutoff wheel that was able to reach past the control arm brackets in the subframe, and cut the bushing sleeve and the bolt seized inside it. Here’s the big-ass cutoff wheel and the angle grinder that literally stopped working after about seven or eight minutes of cutting:
The sawzall was able to handle the tiny amount of cutting still needed to get through the bolt and sleeve, leaving me with this:
The sleeve is still stuck to the bolt, and though I tried using a dremel to slice the sleeve off (see the diagonal cut in the sleeve above), it started raining last night, and I was uninterested in being electrocuted using power tools in a downpour. So I gave up, and had to cancel my trip to New York. I still have no answer to removing these bolts, but will likely end up buying a pancake-style air compressor and air chisel; hopefully that will solve my issue. I’m tired of screwing around with cutting tools that don’t really fit into the limited space I have.
Anyway, my trip to New York to see Andrew Collins, my friend Bobby’s mom, and Matt Hardigree is officially postponed due to this awful bit of serviceability. [Ed note: Nah, gonna make him come anyway! You’re not getting out of this trip that easily – MH] But this isn’t the only example of an automaker’s poor engineering for serviceability (and to be clear, I consider GM the company with the greatest automotive engineering capability of any company ever, for reasons that I don’t have time to explain. Also, I’ll note that the design here is not specific to GM: Subarus have similar subframe bolt issues. Also worth mentioning is that calling this an engineering flaw is a bit of a stretch, given that it’s only a problem for older cars with over 100,000 miles on them; yes, an engineer should have known that corrosion would cause issues here, but it wasn’t her/his priority when developing the car, and that’s fair enough).
The union tech teaching “Design for Serviceability” at Chrysler mentioned that third-generation (?) Dodge Rams didn’t have crush cans at the front of their frames, meaning a small fender bender would cause catastrophic damage to the frame. Can you imagine that? You bump into a car at a few miles per hour, and your frame is all messed up, requiring a fairly involved (and expensive) repair? I’ve been receiving messages overnight from people who followed my plight on Instagram last night, many consoling me for my struggles, and even more talking about how they had to remove an engine mount to replace an alternator (for example) or how they basically had to bathe in gasoline because their fuel pump removal procedure is such a pain in the arse (and because the pump went out twice within a short span).
Now I’d like to hear from you: What was the worst wrenching experience you ever had to deal with that was a result of poor engineering design for serviceability? Write it up in the comments, and send us diagrams/photos/videos at tips@autopian.com describing the shitshow in detail. We’ll write a follow-up post so the rest of our readers can enjoy learning about your perils.
Not sure if this qualifies as a nightmare, but I just replaced the Multiair filter on my 500 Abarth. That required removing the intake and air filter box, unbolting the coolant expansion tank, removing the passenger side engine mount, then unbolting the wastegate solenoid. And while one of the timing cover’s screws is easily visible, the other is in this wonkily-placed position that even stubby wrenches have trouble accessing.
It’s doable in an apartment parking lot, but it took me most of the day.
Chrysler Sebring 6cyl thermostat housing
I looked and researched, looked again, said many bad words, and drove it to the junkyard!
Not proud, but there’s only so much you can do in an apartment parking lot.
I had an LS1 Camaro that I put over 200k miles on. Didn’t have the LT1 problems (optispark!) but the layout was the same. I must have turned every nut and bolt on that car at some point.
I’ve never made a better decision than when I cut the access hole for the fuel pump at about 220k miles.
The #8 spark plug seemed impossible, and a lot of people said you had to unbolt an engine mount to get it out. I found a particular tool combo that let me get it easily enough, though. All I remember was that it involved a 3″ extension and a swivel, and I think I reached it from underneath.
The fasteners were a mess in your LT1 because much of that engine was designed in the 50s when SAE was the standard, and the rest of the car was designed with metric as the standard. Had the same problem on my 86 Camaro. Luckily, the LS motor solved that problem.
Always drove me nuts that I had to use a Ford special tool to remove the line from the clutch slave cylinder, though.
I cut my 95’s access hole two weeks ago. Not dropping the axle, exhaust, and tank while it’s on stands in my garage.
GM does great engineering? One of the most maddening wrenching moments I have ever found was a Saturn Vue.
Some smart engineer came up with the great idea that if they put a 1/4 in. hole in the arm that has the tensioner pully so we can just slap a 1/4 in rachet in there and get the job done.
Then they put the thing 1/4 inch from the frame rail so no rachet (other than the special tool they want you to buy) will fit into the space. Prime example of a car designed by a person that has never actually worked on a car.
The Ford Twin I Beam Front Suspension is what it sounds like. An I shaped beam holds the hub where the wheel bolts on and it’s hinged on the opposite side of the vehicle. There might be another couple pieces to control it’s motion in certain directions but it’s very simple. So simple that it doesn’t have the typical linkage for a sway bar. It’s got bushings up front but the ends of the bar feed into holes in the I-beam on each side. For bushings it’s got a metal sleeve with rubber bonded to the inner surface pressed into the hole. They eventually get oval shaped when they wear out. Access to the hole is pretty limited by other suspension components So I had to do what David is thinking about, get an air compressor and an air chisel and get it out by crushing the rim of the bushing with the pointed chisel, working my way inwards until I could get enough to metal in the middle to use a flat bit and push the bushing out of the back.
It was horrible. Doing it on sandy bare ground in 90°+ temperatures made it even worse as did the shard of metal that got in my eyes despite wearing eyeglasses and safety glasses. They could have figured out a way to just bolt the thing together but that would have cost slightly more and take slightly longer. When I checked on YouTube to see if there was an easier way half of the videos were people who just removed the rubber and not the sleeve then were surprised it was so difficult to get the bushings in or put the bar back in place. Then were even more surprised when the new bushings squirmed their way out shortly after. Thankfully I realized what I was up against from the beginning. I replaced them with sleeveless polyurethane bushings and they lasted longer than the van did.
Note to David: get a bigger air compressor than the pancake. I got the hotdog style since it had more CFM than the pancake kinds at Harbor Freight. As you’re a man of culture I assume you’ll be shopping there. Even then it barely met the requirements for the air hammer and it was really obvious using it. The whole time I was wishing my SDS MAX electric demolition hammer would fit under there because it would have had it out in seconds albeit with the possibility of damaging the bushing surface and some risk of damaging the I-beam itself.
I deal with these daily in the rust belt. Two three minutes tops with the oxy-acty torch does them in. I’ve learned to not even attempt to loosen before heating, haven’t had to re-weld a cage but since then. This is technician failure and nothing more.
No doubt I could use some better tools. MAPP ain’t getting it done.
I’ve found in most cases you just need more tools than the general DIYer has, but they’re trying to do a complex job with minimal toolage.
There are always going to be manufacturer required special tools.
To me, the real car killer will be when some of the electronics fail, there are no parts and no way to fix what has failed as they’re all potted. Maybe it will be something that can be adapted over with an Arduino or raspberry Pi, but I’m doubtful.
Subaru Wheel Bearings.
For some reason, the videos about replacing these parts are all filmed in the southwest, where some guy just un-bolts the bearings of some 300k mile Legacy and it practically jumps into his hand.
For the people who drive Subarus anyplace where it snows (You know, the places that most Subarus live), the experience is much different. I successfully replaced the one worst bearing on my Outback. It was so terrible that I just learned to live with the groan of the other bearings after that.
The bearing bolts to the knuckle with the steel dust guard for the brakes sandwiched between the two pieces. If anything rusts, that rust makes its way into the negligible tolerance between the bearing and knuckle. With mileage, road salt and heat cycling this rust forms an adhesive that makes Gorilla Glue seem like lubricant.
There is a tool now that makes the job easier – it’s basically a length of 2″ steel tubing welded to a plate you bolt to the knuckle. You then strike the far end of the tubing with a sledge hammer.
Replacing the transmission on my Suzuki Swift GT in my driveway was a truly hellish experience…
Just kidding, it was like velcro.
I used to own a 2014 VW Amarok pickup, one day a headlight globe went out so I thought I may as well upgrade as the factory globes have notoriously poor output. Thinking to myself Jeremy Clarkson’s infamous “how hard can it be?” I thought I’d roll up my sleeves and give it a crack.
Well, the LHS globe – easy – unscrew the dust cover, lift open the little metal retaining clip, pull the old globe out, swap globes and reverse the process. Done in 2 mins, including smugly saying to myself “well that was easy”. Little did I know….
Then I slid across to the RHS and I had my first of many “ahh shit” moments. First I had to disassemble most of the intake system, only once I’d taken the filter out did I realise that a whole heap of electrical components have brackets that mount to the bottom of the air filter box “ahh shit”. Then there were a couple of relays that were in the way that necessitated removal to fit my hand in to access the back of the headlight, again “ahh shit”. Finally I was into the actual process of swapping out the bulb as mentioned above, albeit with the added complexity of being unbale to see when I was doing and having to do this with my non-dominant hand just to get the angle of attack right enough so I could reach the bulb. All of this left handedness resulted in dropping the globe “ahh shit”, which required another trip to the auto part store bleeding knuckles and all to grab another globe “ahh shit”.
Finally, after fashioning a custom tool to flip the retaining back over to secure the globe, I had the dust cover screwed on and checked the lights to ensure my hackery was successful, thankfully it was. All that was left was to reassemble the intake system and everything that I had undone, moved and zip-tied out of the way. A couple of well-deserved “attitude adjusters” (read – beers) were deemed absolutely necessary for this final step in the process.
All in all, what I thought would be a 5 minute job turned into 3 very stressful hours of swearing, bleeding, and contorting my left arm in ways I never thought possible.
Thanks VW, although I wouldn’t expect anything different from the company that gave us the Type 3, where doing the most rudimentary maintenance reads “Step 1 – remove engine”
Note: I have since sold the Amarok
I remember similar experiences with my sister-in-law’s 2014 Subaru Outback!
Years ago I helped a friend replace the hand brake cable on his old POS 80’s Subaru wagon. For reasons that continue to haunt my conscience, the hand brake works on the front wheels and not the rears – like 99.9% of all other cars ever made.
Long story short re-routing this new cable (the old one had broken and most of it had fallen out) from the lever, over the gearbox, over the engine, under the spare tyre mounted above the engine (WTF), then it split in two where each cable snakes through each side’s intake system where it finally attaches to the front wheels!!
There was more than one occasion where we thought it would be easier to pull the engine/gearbox out and route it that way!! We got there in the end by bending up old wire coat hangers into various different pullers, pushers and guides.
NEVER. AGAIN.
well, well, well, Mr. Tracy, since you worked for one of the big 3, or 2.5, i am not good with decimals :), why don’t you tell us what the primary considerations were for engineering a car?
Ford Pinto. Needed to replace a heater hose. And the clamps on the heater core are INSIDE the firewall. Had to pull the core just to swap hoses.
My friend’s Audi is a nightmare of poor wrench clearances and having to take unrelated parts to get just barely enough access. I gave up trying to fit a clutch master cylinder I just could not see properly or contort enough to get the thing to bolt back in even tho I did succeed at getting the bad one out. But something that should be a ten minute job like replacing the alternator is a whole weekend project the entire front bumper and radiator and air conditioning cooler has to be removed to get to the “service position”
Every Toyota I’ve ever worked on has been excellent at surface-level design for serviceability (light bulbs, brakes, etc.) and absolutely nightmarish for any large jobs. In the first gen Scion tC, for example, the rear motor mount is perched on top of the rear subframe, partially sandwiched between the subframe and the steering rack, held in with three bolts and with one stud.
There is a bolt in that car that goes through all three of these items, all of which have some amount of wiggle to them and tension in various directions and getting them lined up is HELLISH. It took myself and an experienced mechanic friend 3 days to do a clutch on that car.
At the same time, my Chrysler PT Cruiser is just… wholesale the most miserable pile I have ever worked on. For this one my Mercedes tech friend has been helping me a little and he has declared it without question the worst vehicle he has ever worked on.
In a similar vein to your HHR there are bolts for the front control arms that go up into the unibody. These cars are notorious for those captive nuts in the unibody breaking off when you try to undo the bolts. The fix? Pull up the carpet in the footwells and cut access holes in the footwells so you can hopefully weld something to the offending nut and twist the bolt back out of it.
I have not done this job yet. I am probably just going to sell the car as soon as I finish replacing the clutch.
Spark plugs on the Ford 5.4 engine (I’m told the V10’s were worse). IF they actually all stayed in the heads for their service life (which was a big IF), the “easy” way to replace them was to drop the engine slightly and jack the cab off the frame to get to the rear plugs that were well back under the cowl.
I’ll admit, replacing the starter on my ’98 Tacoma (V6) took about an hour of figuring-out just how in the hell it would fit out between the frame and exhaust manifold but aside from that there was maybe 15 minutes of work. That was kind of a new one work-to-puzzle solving ratio for me.
There was also physically removing the engine from the frame on my 2005 CRF450 dirt bike. A buddy and I spend the better part of an afternoon trying to find some orientation to get the engine out of the frame and had to resort to grinding a significant amount of material from the coil bracket (only holds the coil, completely non-structural). I had a funny conversation about that with one of the HRC (factory Honda) mechanics at an outdoor national that summer. They couldn’t figure out just how the hell the factory fit engines into those frames either without altering them.
Can attest to the 5.4 plugs. The problem is compounded by the fact that they are prone to blowing the plugs out of the hole just for funsies. With that said, they *do* make a tool for this job, and you can fabricate a tool yourself. It’s still a PITA job though
I had an Econoline with a 5.4 and it was actually the easiest spark plug change of any van I’ve had. Did all of them from inside the van in the rain. I hadn’t thought about how it would go in the pickup. On the Chevy Express you have to jack up the front and remove the wheels but I’ll gladly take that over jacking up the engine. That 5.4 spit plugs and eventually jumped time like so many of it’s brothers.
Any vehicle that enables you to be seated in a plush captain’s chair while performing necessary work is the antithesis of nightmare serviceability engineering.
Well sitting in between the front seats with one leg poking into the engine compartment thought the doghouse hole. But still, inside. The front plugs I probably could have got to faster by lying on the ground but wobble extensions and universal joints did the trick from in the cab. Also I won’t get into since I commented on the main article about it but changing the sway bar bushings in an Econoline with a twin I-beam front end is way, way harder than it has any right to be.
The CRF450 one is bizarre.I’d love to know if anyone ever solved it but i guess it’s too long ago now.Not many people would remember
The funny thing is, there are still quite a few of that era CRFs in the sand dunes. Those engines were absolutely bulletproof and their power deliver made them incredibly easy to ride compared to newer bikes. Fortunately, you don’t really need to pull the engine for much of anything (short of powdercoating, but that’s not exactly mandatory). I think I was replacing the valves, replacing the rings while I had the head off, and was servicing the swingarm pivots so it seemed easier to just pull the engine and doing it on my bench.
I can’t remember the mechanic’s name, he was Ivan Tedesco’s mechanic and I think he ended up with KTM the last I remember seeing him. I miss the days of the multi-day nationals where things weren’t so hectic and you could actually watch the mechanics do their thing (and sometimes learn a few tricks).
I owned a 2003 Mini Cooper S, which was an absolute nightmare. When I bought it, it needed a supercharger oil change. $20 of oil – $1000 of labor. The front bumper and crash bar come off, the radiator, condenser, fan, and shroud come off, the intercooler and all the intake piping comes off, the AC compressor comes off, then finally you can remove the supercharger and change the oil. By the time you get to the supercharger you have stripped the entire front of the car off. Mine was completely out of oil and had fried itself and I had to buy another one.
It also needed ball joints – which requires dropping the subframe. The inner ball joint mounting bolt goes straight into the front CV axle. If it was 1/4 in to the right, no need to drop the subframe. The ball joints also broke 2 different harbor freight separators.
I always wanted one of those, and my cousin was a tech at BMW when they were new.
He told me that some techs were designated to work on minis, and they hated working on them so much that they all swore they would never ever buy one.
I still persisted, until my insurance company quoted me more than double the rate of something like an M3. This was because of the tight packaging. Even a small fender bender would cost a fortune in repairs.
I’ve never messed around with anything supercharged so I was kind of surprised to hear they have a self-contained oil supply. Is there a pump as well or does it just splash? I assumed they were plumbed into the engine oil system like turbos. Do they need a higher viscosity or maybe some type of special additives?
Hahaha….yup! R53s are great cars, but they make you earn it. On the flip side, learning to wrench on one made fixing everything else hilariously easy!
I did the oil service at 170k – still running the original supercharger & clutch at 195k…better to be lucky than good, I guess!
Replacing the front ball joints on my 2000 Dakota (2wd 4.7). Rivets. Why rivets? Are they that much more secure, or cheaper, than bolts?
In a professional shop with a massive air hammer, shouldn’t be a problem. In my driveway with a dinky air hammer? No thank you. The top ones aren’t so bad. Grind the top of the rivet off and hammer a chisel in between the ball joint and the upper control arm. The bottom ones, where the ball joint is sandwiched betwixt two pieces of steel? Forget about it.
Outside of that, just about any heater core. Or resetting the CEL on the 93 (or 92, I forget) Geo Tracker I had that involved pulling apart the dash to get at a hard reset button.
Oh, or replacing CV axles on the 96 Honda Passport (Isuzu Rodeo) I had, which technically should have required dropping and pulling apart the 4wd transfer case.
Also see, any heater core or in dash HVAC part. Shit, even the blend door actuator gear on my DD (2011 Jeep GC) that even after replaced tries to situate itself a little too far and makes the occasional creaking noise in the fatigued plastic.
Agree with hearer cores. They are designed by the devil.
Or heaters. Depends what your phone’s autocorrect feels like doing.
Rock Auto, buy the entire Upper and Lower Control Arm is what I did on my Dodge Ram when I saw those rivets
I drive a Miata, so every job takes less than a half day and the only required tools are a hammer and some curse words. Thanks, Mazda!
Except Miata’s hardly ever need work. Conversely my old Triumph Spitfire needed pretty much just a hammer and screwdriver. With the added bonus that you can stand in the engine bay. And yes, it required frequent wrenching…
So what happened that led to needing to cut the bolt out? Bolt head rounded out?
Here are my two solutions to working with undercarriage bolts subject to corrosion:
1.) First tighten with impact wrench, then loosen. This sounds really dumb and doesn’t always work, but I’ve had far fewer stuck bolts since adopting this method. Basically just hit it with the impact for a second or two in the righty-tighty direction and then reverse it. This helps break the corrosion a bit and gives the bolt threads a little “ramp” to gain momentum.
2.) Failing that, weld a socket to it and muscle it off with the biggest breaker bar or pipe you have on hand. Back when Sears Hardware stores were still a thing I actually had a few sockets replaced under warranty *with the bolts still welded to them*. We used to be a proper country.
no.2 is freaking hilarious
For basic maintenance, my worst job has to be the 3 rear plugs on a 2003 3.0V6 Mazda MPV. Even after removing the intake manifold and related parts it was a blind job at arms length calling for tiny hands, long fingers, and lots of cursing.
For a non-maintenance repair, I would like to call out every car with an internal fuel tank mounted fuel pump. Getting to them always seems to require disassembling the entire rear half of the car, then you have to drain and lower what is inevitably a full tank of gas. Often using a grinder to cut a hole in the trunk or rear deck lid is actually the safer easier way to make the repair!
When I’ve done this on Nissans, there was an access port over the fuel sender. Great feature.
Subaru likewise had an access panel in early 2000s cars, haven’t done that job on their later models
“I consider GM the company with the greatest automotive engineering capability of any company ever, for reasons that I don’t have time to explain.”
I’ll counter that with this:
“Honda tried licensing the CVCC technology to Detroit’s titans, including Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. Ford and Chrysler adopted it with open arms, while GM was having none of this “toy motorcycle engine” nonsense. From GM’s CEO Richard C. Gerstenberg, “I see no potential for it in one of our GM car engines”. The retaliation bug bit Soichiro Honda. He bought a V8-equipped 1973 Chevrolet Impala and sent it to Japan where it got a set of CVCC heads. After testing in Japan, Honda flew the car back to Ann Arbor, where the EPA tested it against the 1975 emissions requirements, and passed.”
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/what-needs-catalytic-converter-not-this-1973-chevrolet-impala-cvcc/
Thus Honda engineering > GM engineering. Or so you’d think.
My worst wrenching story is with Honda’s bread and butter car – a 6th gen 4cyl Accord. I foolishly took the advice of a Honda dealership mechanic whom, on a recall job, pointed out cracks in the front control arm rubber and recommended replacement for $$$$. I then tried to replace the front lower control arms myself for $$. The youtube videos made it look SOOO easy!
Nope!
It turned out the ball joints were *just* too large to fit a standard ball joint separator, the job absolutely NEEDED a $$$ dealer only separator. The difference was maybe half a millimeter, there is no reason for this other than to give a big middle finger F.U! to DIY.
That’s not incompetent engineering, that’s malicious engineering!
To make things even worse once I discovered this there was no going back. There are hidden C clips on the half shafts that prevent them from going back into the transaxle, even when pounded with a sledgehammer. There was no way forward, no way back.
IT’S A TRAP!! Goddamn you Honda engineers!
The only way out – aside from a fire – was to bite the bullet and call Mom. She provided the number of her independent Honda mechanic (who HAD the right separator), then I called for a tow to the shop.
To add insult to injury the mechanic said the control arm rubber was just fine : (
Goddamn you Honda stealership!
Oh man,that one hurts
You have, like 16 vehicles… why is this POS critical to leaving on your trip? I understand you want to pass it on, but there are bigger issues here!
I guess…I am still glad this all makes people happy.
If I understand it correctly, the idea was to drive it to NY to deliver the vehicle to its new owner. That’s not happening for a bit…
SOHC version of Ford’s Cologne V6 in 2001 and later Rangers (amogst others). Poorly designed plastic timing chain guides and tensioners on early versions break easily and require replacement. Problem is, there are two sets of timing chains, including one at the back of the engine that requires pulling the engine to replace.
Also, changing spark plugs are a pain and require removing a front wheel and going through the wheel well.
My worst wrenching was due to a poor quality replacement part. I was putting a new clutch in my dad’s 1960 MGA. The kit came with a new clutch, pressure plate, and the MG’s version of a throw-out bearing (really just a carbon ring on a steel backing plate). We spent a day pulling the engine out of the car, replacing the clutch, pressure plate, oil pump and oil pan gasket (since it seemed like a good idea while the engine was out) and re-installed the engine. When we started up the car at the end of day 2, and there was a horrible grinding noise in the clutch area. I went to bed not having a clue what
When we pulled the engine out again the next day, we found that the new pressure plate design had some extra material that protruded from the housing. It had been grinding on the inside of the bell housing. I ended up just using the old pressure plate with the new clutch. I found out there were a brief batch of pressure plates with this issue. Moss Motors (the main source for MG parts), to their credit, were great and fully refunded me the cost of the whole kit, but it still took an extra day of wrenching to remove and reinstall the engine a second time. Therefore, I give myself credit for having done 3 engine removals and clutch installs rather just the 2 cars that I’ve done them on.
I did wrong. All I could think is that maybe I installed the clutch backwards (but I was positive that I had it right).
In many ways, it was also a great wrenching experience, because I got to have 3 generations (Dad, me, and my 18 year old son) working together to fix my dad’s MGA that he has owned for over 30 years. We also did many other repairs over a total of about 4 days, and put in a new carpet kit to really spruce up the interior. I would have been happier without the extra day of work, and the stressful night, thinking what I did wrong.
Well, that lack of an edit button strikes again, and I see I have a line of text after my second paragraph that belongs at the end of my first paragraph. Doh!
Power steering pump in a Lexus es300 V6. It’s behind the engine. I can’t remember now if I removed the passenger axle, but it was an all-day ordeal. I did think it was kinda neat that the fan ran off the ps pump for nvh, though.
Replacing the distributor in a V6 Stratus is downright miserable, too, as it’s between the rear bank & firewall.
I’ve rather soured on transverse V6s
That sounds a bit like the starter motor in the 4.7L V8 100 Series Landcruisers – hidden in the valley between the heads. You’ve got to remove the entire intake manifold and everything attached to it.
Makes me glad my 105 Series has the 4.5L straight 6, the starter is so easy to reach, 2 bolts and a connector – 5 mins and you’re done!