this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
207 points (99.5% liked)
Asklemmy
45236 readers
899 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
Why stop there?
Cars are designed by people who don't do maintenance themselves.
About cars, and not necessarily designed poorly, but definitely designed by a man for men: cars that, by default, automatically, immediately unlock all doors when the engine is turned off. A man might be car jacked or robbed, a woman might be car jacked, robbed, or raped.
(Of course men can be raped too, but it's not as likely to happen by a strange woman threatening violence than a woman is to be raped by a strange man threatening the same.)
Wat?
designed without thought to abnomal situations, when designing ot to handle them better would require almost no extra effort.
I learned long ago when something like this bothers me that it is irrational to get angry at objects, then I connected I am not angry at the object, I am angry at the dumb ass turd who designed it.
btw, I drill a hole in my oil filter before I remove it to drain it so it doesn't spill all over the front of my engine.
Maybe all engineers should have to sign their work. Like have their license number or something embossed on it. That way we can find them and inform them of their idiocy.
I will often drive a screwdriver into the bottom a filter, but this one is impossible to get to and even if I did, it would dribble on the exhaust pipe.
If we're also talking about vehicles... I'm about average height (~180 cm) but have long-ish legs, and this means that I simply don't fit well into the driver's seat of most cars. Even with the steering wheel adjusted all the way up, seat slid all the way back and reclined all the way forward, my legs are hitting the steering wheel and yet I can barely reach it with my hands. Because of this, I sometimes have to take my shoes off while driving.
Also, almost every car has some annoying things like your oil plug; simply because a modern combustion engine is really quite complicated and there's not enough space under the hood to give every component a convenient place. E.g. my Delica has the starter located below the engine and quite far back, so it's mostly covered by the engine protection plate. Good luck banging on that starter relay if it sticks in the off position and refuses to start, while you're stuck in the mud! However I do agree that making periodic maintenance painful, like in your case, is way worse.
Oh, there's a few engines like the Northstar and the Toyota 5.7 where the starter is actually under the intake manifold, effectively inside the engine. The amount of stuff you need to take off to even see the starter would make your eyes water.
Had an old Isuzu truck that to start, I sat in the drivers seat with the passengers seat up exposing the engine. Had a long steel rod that I would feed down thru the motor and bang on the starter motor while cranking the keys.
Sometimes it started straight away, sometimes it took 5 minutes of banging to get the pig to fire. Good Times.
Woke one morning to start work, went to hop in and saw someone smashed the drivers quarter window. Reckon they tried to start it but must have assumed it had a kill switch.
Pity they didn't steal it, as the insurance payout would have been way more bucks that it was worth.