7 ms·

And cars are driven more than worked on, but putting the oil filter inaccessibly in the middle of the engine block is still an unforgiveable sin.

wiseowise 6mo ago
But if you happen to own a repair shop, you can make a fortune from drivers who don’t know how to do it. Wink.
- Arch-TK 6mo ago
  Repair shop owners also don't enjoy work which is unnecessarily difficult. Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather be doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb. Moreover, even if a mechanic must charge you stupid amounts of labour cost to do a simple repair because it genuinely takes that much time, the customer might not come away with it thinking: "fuck, I bought a dumb car which is expensive to repair", they might instead come away with it thinking: "all these mechanics, quoting ridiculous prices to fix a light bulb, they must all be scammers".
  - a4isms 6mo ago
    Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather be doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb. ChatGPT, write me a 2010-style Hacker News front page essay about how software maintenance is just like automobile maintenance, and why nobody wants low-value maintenance work to be arduous, failure-prone, and boring.
    - pertymcpert 6mo ago
      Here: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69d96c050078819199750da28ebd2526 https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69d96c050078819199750da28ebd2526 I gagged after 2 sentences.
its_ethan 6mo ago
What if there's an efficiency in engine design by placing the filter in the middle that leads to a +2mpg improvement for the driver? Or that it fails, on average, 22k miles later into it's life? Not all hard-to-repair-yourself designs are malicious...
- 1970-01-01 6mo ago
  Except..there is never such reason. They can put the filter anywhere in the pipeline. Some even have it exactly where it should be: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/2013+Subaru+Legacy+Oil+and+Oil+Filter+Replacement/123578#s238893 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/2013+Subaru+Legacy+Oil+and+Oil+...
  - eszed 6mo ago
    Mazda has historically been very good at designing for repairability. My (latest) Mazda is ten years old, so I cannot verify any model later than that, but it's one reason I've been brand-loyal for decades. The 2015 CX-5 puts the oil filter right next to the drain plug, slightly recessed (for protection, I assume), but with ample clearance around it for tool and finger access. It's the best thought-out oil filter location I've ever seen; I cannot think of any possible improvement. The advantage of that, over Subaru's choice, is that the oil in the filter can only ever spill into your drain pan (or I guess the ground, if you're a numpty), never into your engine compartment.
- csours 6mo ago
  If it is a part with a regular maintenance schedule, it should be designed for maintainability. Most maintainability conflicts come from packaging and design for assembly. Efficiency more often comes into conflict with durability, and sometimes safety.
  - its_ethan 6mo ago
    Right but what I'm getting at is that there can be tradeoffs that might make designing for maintainability mean optimizing for something less important to the end user. Do you optimize an engine for how easy it is to replace a filter once or twice a year (most likely done by someone the average car-owner is already paying to change their oil for them), or do you optimize it for getting better gas mileage over every single mile the car is driven? We're talking about a hypothetical car and neither of us (I assume) design engines like this, I'm just trying to illustrate a point about tradeoffs existing. To your own point of efficiency being a trade with durability, that's not in a vacuum. If a part is in a different location with a different loading environment, it can be more/less durable (material changes leading to efficiency differences), more/less likely to break (maybe you service the hard-to-service part half as often when it's in a harder to service spot), etc.
andsoitis 6mo ago
The real issue is that oil filters and gears are really just legacy design. EVs don’t need them. So, similar with software design, as in other fields, often a problem goes away when you ask a different question.
- Arch-TK 6mo ago
  EVs also have consumable parts which it would be incredibly annoying to place in nonsensical locations. The obvious one is the battery, and you can argue that modern EVs have batteries so expensive that when they are dead the car becomes scrap, and - sure, whatever. But EVs still have: cabin air filters, coolant, brake fluid, lubricants in various places (although granted, these lubricants will mostly last the service life). At the end of the day, as long as you have a car which moves, and not a statue, it will have things which wear out and which should be easy to replace. Engine oil and oil filters are just an example.
- ang_cire 6mo ago
  EVs have gears and gear oil in their drive units. There is a reduction gear that needs lubrication, as well as the differential. They actually will need oil changes starting anywhere from the 50k to 100k mile mark. Here's the maintenance guide with pictures walking through changing the oil and filter for the Rear Drive Unit (RDU) in a Tesla Model S: https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelS/ServiceManual/Palladium/en-us/GUID-E6AFB3D1-EEB5-4B68-81C5-EC94D6AAF190.html https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelS/ServiceManual/Palladiu...
- carefree-bob 6mo ago
  You may not know this, but EVs also have oil filters and gears. They also having cooling systems. What they don't have is an engine (they have motors). But the motors have their own cooling system, and the gears have their own oil system with filters. Every moving part - especially gears -- needs to be oiled, and whenever you are oiling metal on metal contact such as in gears, you are going to want an oil filter to catch worn metal debris, to remove it from the oil. The difference between EVs and ICE vehicles is not that only one of them uses oil to reduce friction, but that the oil service intervals on EVs are so long that regular oil maintenance is not needed, you do it every 60,000 miles or whatever the manufacturer recommends, so it's out of mind. But that doesn't mean it doesn't require service. Once EVs have been around for a while and there is an established market for used EVs, the people who buy them are going to want to change the oil to add more life to the EV. So it's something that is dealt with in the long-life maintenance, not the monthly maintenance. But when you do the oil service, you will curse Tesla for needing to drop the battery in order to do it, and all of a sudden you will care where things are placed and how accessible they are. Here is a nice video -- I follow Sam Crac as one of my favorite automotive youtubers - and he picked up an old Tesla and did an oil service for it. It's a nice watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ZNHKjHalY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ZNHKjHalY
kerblang 6mo ago
Try replacing the battery. Seems accessible enough at first, but ingenious engineering has made batteries the modern rubik's cube of auto maintenance.
- bena 6mo ago
  Define "modern". I have a 2017 Civic and I've had to replace the battery a couple of times. There's a holding bar that needs to be removed before the battery can be taken out, but other than that the only real problem is the weight of the thing.
  - logancbrown 6mo ago
    The Ford Maverick (2022+) requires removing the air intake to remove the car battery. This is fairly common across many new car models.
    - snek_case 6mo ago
      In general it looks like these kinds of changes are trying to make it harder for people to do this kind of basic maintenance themselves. Force you to go to the dealer.
      - stronglikedan 6mo ago
        > Force you to go to the dealer. I recommend to never go to the dealer, unless you're going there for a warranty or recall repair. A local repair shop is always the better option. And if you don't know of a trustworthy local shop, take it to the dealer for an estimate, and then you know if the local shops are bullshitting you (they should come in way under dealer prices).
      - Paul_Clayton 6mo ago
        While increasing dealer revenue is a plausible goal, it also seems plausible that reducing production cost could cause awkward maintenance. It is even plausible that only the bill of materials would be considered, though the feedback loop for increasing assembly cost is much tighter and less noisy that the loop of end-user dissatisfaction with maintenance issues. Even within an organization, creating externalities from one department's perspective seems common enough. Even if a decision maker is aware of the possibility of externalities and cares about a broader constituency (temporal or "spatial"), evaluating actual costs is an expense as is justifying that investigation expense and any mitigation/avoidance expenses to others in the decision web.
xnx 6mo ago
It's all tradeoffs.

wiseowise 6mo ago

But if you happen to own a repair shop, you can make a fortune from drivers who don’t know how to do it. Wink.

Arch-TK 6mo ago
Repair shop owners also don't enjoy work which is unnecessarily difficult. Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather be doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb. Moreover, even if a mechanic must charge you stupid amounts of labour cost to do a simple repair because it genuinely takes that much time, the customer might not come away with it thinking: "fuck, I bought a dumb car which is expensive to repair", they might instead come away with it thinking: "all these mechanics, quoting ridiculous prices to fix a light bulb, they must all be scammers".
- a4isms 6mo ago
  Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather be doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb. ChatGPT, write me a 2010-style Hacker News front page essay about how software maintenance is just like automobile maintenance, and why nobody wants low-value maintenance work to be arduous, failure-prone, and boring.
  - pertymcpert 6mo ago
    Here: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69d96c050078819199750da28ebd2526 https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69d96c050078819199750da28ebd2526 I gagged after 2 sentences.

its_ethan 6mo ago

What if there's an efficiency in engine design by placing the filter in the middle that leads to a +2mpg improvement for the driver? Or that it fails, on average, 22k miles later into it's life? Not all hard-to-repair-yourself designs are malicious...

1970-01-01 6mo ago
Except..there is never such reason. They can put the filter anywhere in the pipeline. Some even have it exactly where it should be: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/2013+Subaru+Legacy+Oil+and+Oil+Filter+Replacement/123578#s238893 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/2013+Subaru+Legacy+Oil+and+Oil+...
- eszed 6mo ago
  Mazda has historically been very good at designing for repairability. My (latest) Mazda is ten years old, so I cannot verify any model later than that, but it's one reason I've been brand-loyal for decades. The 2015 CX-5 puts the oil filter right next to the drain plug, slightly recessed (for protection, I assume), but with ample clearance around it for tool and finger access. It's the best thought-out oil filter location I've ever seen; I cannot think of any possible improvement. The advantage of that, over Subaru's choice, is that the oil in the filter can only ever spill into your drain pan (or I guess the ground, if you're a numpty), never into your engine compartment.
csours 6mo ago
If it is a part with a regular maintenance schedule, it should be designed for maintainability. Most maintainability conflicts come from packaging and design for assembly. Efficiency more often comes into conflict with durability, and sometimes safety.
- its_ethan 6mo ago
  Right but what I'm getting at is that there can be tradeoffs that might make designing for maintainability mean optimizing for something less important to the end user. Do you optimize an engine for how easy it is to replace a filter once or twice a year (most likely done by someone the average car-owner is already paying to change their oil for them), or do you optimize it for getting better gas mileage over every single mile the car is driven? We're talking about a hypothetical car and neither of us (I assume) design engines like this, I'm just trying to illustrate a point about tradeoffs existing. To your own point of efficiency being a trade with durability, that's not in a vacuum. If a part is in a different location with a different loading environment, it can be more/less durable (material changes leading to efficiency differences), more/less likely to break (maybe you service the hard-to-service part half as often when it's in a harder to service spot), etc.

andsoitis 6mo ago

The real issue is that oil filters and gears are really just legacy design. EVs don’t need them. So, similar with software design, as in other fields, often a problem goes away when you ask a different question.

Arch-TK 6mo ago
EVs also have consumable parts which it would be incredibly annoying to place in nonsensical locations. The obvious one is the battery, and you can argue that modern EVs have batteries so expensive that when they are dead the car becomes scrap, and - sure, whatever. But EVs still have: cabin air filters, coolant, brake fluid, lubricants in various places (although granted, these lubricants will mostly last the service life). At the end of the day, as long as you have a car which moves, and not a statue, it will have things which wear out and which should be easy to replace. Engine oil and oil filters are just an example.
ang_cire 6mo ago
EVs have gears and gear oil in their drive units. There is a reduction gear that needs lubrication, as well as the differential. They actually will need oil changes starting anywhere from the 50k to 100k mile mark. Here's the maintenance guide with pictures walking through changing the oil and filter for the Rear Drive Unit (RDU) in a Tesla Model S: https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelS/ServiceManual/Palladium/en-us/GUID-E6AFB3D1-EEB5-4B68-81C5-EC94D6AAF190.html https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelS/ServiceManual/Palladiu...
carefree-bob 6mo ago
You may not know this, but EVs also have oil filters and gears. They also having cooling systems. What they don't have is an engine (they have motors). But the motors have their own cooling system, and the gears have their own oil system with filters. Every moving part - especially gears -- needs to be oiled, and whenever you are oiling metal on metal contact such as in gears, you are going to want an oil filter to catch worn metal debris, to remove it from the oil. The difference between EVs and ICE vehicles is not that only one of them uses oil to reduce friction, but that the oil service intervals on EVs are so long that regular oil maintenance is not needed, you do it every 60,000 miles or whatever the manufacturer recommends, so it's out of mind. But that doesn't mean it doesn't require service. Once EVs have been around for a while and there is an established market for used EVs, the people who buy them are going to want to change the oil to add more life to the EV. So it's something that is dealt with in the long-life maintenance, not the monthly maintenance. But when you do the oil service, you will curse Tesla for needing to drop the battery in order to do it, and all of a sudden you will care where things are placed and how accessible they are. Here is a nice video -- I follow Sam Crac as one of my favorite automotive youtubers - and he picked up an old Tesla and did an oil service for it. It's a nice watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ZNHKjHalY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ZNHKjHalY

kerblang 6mo ago

Try replacing the battery. Seems accessible enough at first, but ingenious engineering has made batteries the modern rubik's cube of auto maintenance.

bena 6mo ago
Define "modern". I have a 2017 Civic and I've had to replace the battery a couple of times. There's a holding bar that needs to be removed before the battery can be taken out, but other than that the only real problem is the weight of the thing.
- logancbrown 6mo ago
  The Ford Maverick (2022+) requires removing the air intake to remove the car battery. This is fairly common across many new car models.
  - snek_case 6mo ago
    In general it looks like these kinds of changes are trying to make it harder for people to do this kind of basic maintenance themselves. Force you to go to the dealer.
    - stronglikedan 6mo ago
      > Force you to go to the dealer. I recommend to never go to the dealer, unless you're going there for a warranty or recall repair. A local repair shop is always the better option. And if you don't know of a trustworthy local shop, take it to the dealer for an estimate, and then you know if the local shops are bullshitting you (they should come in way under dealer prices).
    - Paul_Clayton 6mo ago
      While increasing dealer revenue is a plausible goal, it also seems plausible that reducing production cost could cause awkward maintenance. It is even plausible that only the bill of materials would be considered, though the feedback loop for increasing assembly cost is much tighter and less noisy that the loop of end-user dissatisfaction with maintenance issues. Even within an organization, creating externalities from one department's perspective seems common enough. Even if a decision maker is aware of the possibility of externalities and cares about a broader constituency (temporal or "spatial"), evaluating actual costs is an expense as is justifying that investigation expense and any mitigation/avoidance expenses to others in the decision web.

xnx 6mo ago

It's all tradeoffs.