I once owned a Saturn, which was notoriously hard on alternators. Changing an alternator is typically not a difficult task, except on that POS you had to remove the passenger side tire, remove the wheel liner, take off one bolt from the top, one bolt from underneath, then carefully slide the alternator out of the wheel well. What a pain in the ass. Removing the battery on my Silverado requires removing multiple crossmembers, but at least it’s all from up top.
I do miss the days of basically propping a stool down in the engine compartment and being able to reach just about any part. My old International was great that way. You could take infield practice in that engine compartment.
Yeah the older generations of Tundra are rock solid as far as I know, it’s just the newest ones (at least as of a couple years ago) that have needed so many engine replacements. Maybe they’ve addressed those issues with the very latest ones, it’s been a year or so since I was really paying attention.
When we inherited my father-in-law’s 2014 Silverado I was so excited to have a truck for the first time. After a few months I was very happy to sell it and be rid of it. That may have been related to his years of neglect in maintenance, though.
When I first opened the hood of my '86 CJ7 (bought in '88), I couldn’t believe I could see the ground on either side of the in-line 6. I mean, you could almost pass a carry-on bag between the engine and the wall.
Biggest bunch of bullshit. My Dad asked me to help him replace the battery in his truck and I thought, what the Hell? It’s just a battery swap, mister ‘I have every tool in the book’? Stupid GM.
A lot of the issues with ours were the bells and whistles on the trim he had, which had broken over time and he’d never had them fixed. He had a similarly hands-off approach to routine maintenance, both on the truck and his own vascular system, god rest him.
I’ve never had any issues with the bells and whistles. Had to replace the battery and tires, which is routine maintenance, and recently at 150,000 miles had to replace the thermostat and temperature sensing unit. That was far easier than changing the battery. Of course, I’m a firm believer in the routine maintenance part, so I’m sure that helps.
I’m no one’s idea of a mechanical genius, but in high school I found myself driving a 1967 Chevrolet Bel Air, something we’d inherited from a grandmother who’d gone batty and could no longer drive. You could open the hood on that thing and identify everything you were looking at. I distinctly remember that car’s having a mechanical issue of some kind, don’t remember what, but it was something I would absolutely have a shop deal with now, and whatever it was I could tell what the problem was and knew how to fix it. I hauled my happy ass over to Hi-Lo Auto Parts, got what I needed and did it my own self. Zero chance of that ever happening again. I might be able to repair a go kart. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen one and maybe they’ve buggered those up, too.
My mom sold that car to some fortunate fellow for $100. It was still running perfectly, of course. If he’s had the sense to change the oil every so often I have no reason to believe it isn’t still.
That’s the grandmother, by the way, who spent her entire life believing that she lived in west Texas until Hudson was kind enough to disabuse us of that preposterous notion. Apparently west Texas is anything west of US 54 in El Paso.
There is a predilection for claiming a geographical longitude west of the fragrance counter at the Galleria Neiman Marcus as officially being “West Texas”, but I reject that assertion.
Where I grew up in northwest Texas, the locals all referred to it as West Texas. Abilene was West Texas. Lubbock was West Texas. Wichita Falls was Wichita Falls.
After I got old enough to know people not from around there, I figured out they all thought we were geographically ignernt, but I think there was a reason for it. It was the last part of Texas to be settled, it was settled by people from East Texas. They were moving west, so West Texas. It makes people from El Paso’s head spin, but it never seemed to bother people from, say, Midland.
