Working On A Modern(ish) Car For The First Time Was An Utterly Infuriating Experience

My MkV VW Golf GTI may not be that new, but it’s the most modern car I’ve ever worked on. And my, does it make DIY mechanics tricky…
Working On A Modern(ish) Car For The First Time Was An Utterly Infuriating Experience

I’ve never been much of a home mechanic, but I’ve always tried to do simple jobs like oil changes and general servicing myself. It’s always been on older cars, though, like a 1986 Mercedes 190E 2.3-16, a 1992 VW Corrado and a 1990 BMW E30 318iS; 80s and 90s legends that are all easy peasy to spanner yourself. So, although my current car - a 2005 MkV VW Golf GTI - isn’t exactly a new motor, it’s by far the most modern I’ve worked on. And my god, was it a ridiculous faff to service.

Let’s start with the oil change. When shopping for all the necessary bits online, I was overjoyed to see the oil filter was an internal one. “Ah,” I thought; “it’ll take just a couple of minutes to change that, like the internal filter on my old Merc”. But no. The filter lives in a housing right underneath the engine, and you have to take off the sump guard just to get to it.

Then, you have to remove a drain plug cover - which was as good as seized after being overtightened, by the way - find that the drain plug is hopeless without the special VW tool you’re supposed to use, at which point you’ll probably just accept there’s going to be a slight mess as the remaining undrained oil in the filter housing splashes out. Drain plug cover out of the way, and you have to whip out a 36mm socket to remove the filter housing. Who has a 36mm socket? I certainly don’t, and had to buy one especially for the job.

Everything you have to take off to get to the air filter. And yes, I know my front offside wheel is in dire need of a refurb...
Everything you have to take off to get to the air filter. And yes, I know…

Traumatised by what was one of the most needlessly tricky oil changes I’ve ever had to do, I put off changing the air filter for another few weeks. The last time I changed an air filter it took about two minutes and involved popping open a little box, swapping the filter to a nice fresh one, and sticking the lid back on. Not so here. The filter is sealed within the engine cover, so you have to take the whole damn thing off, removing various plugs and pipes and carefully lift the assembly off a quartet of rubber grommets.

Then, you have to undo something like 12 screws and remove a heat shield thing to take the engine cover apart. When I reached this stage, I realised two things: one, the new air filter I’d been sent was the wrong shape, and two, the half-wit who’d last taken the engine cover off had broken it in several places, stripped several screw threads and tried to glue it all back together. The only way there would have been more swearing at that point is if Gordon Ramsey was walking past on a carpet made entirely of Lego bricks, while eating a disappointing soufflé.

Working On A Modern(ish) Car For The First Time Was An Utterly Infuriating Experience

Removing the engine cover is not easy, so I can see why it had been broken, but bodging it together and sticking it back in the engine bay rather than replacing it makes he or she a cretin of the highest order. Wherever you are, I hate you. Very much.

The engine cover being removed at least meant I could do something productive and change the spark plugs, but I’m now faced with doing the whole job again with a replacement airbox and the right filter.

I (mostly) enjoyed working on my older cars, but there was nothing fun about the work I had to do on my Golf. I’m sure not all modern-ish cars are as painful for the home mechanic, but with the amount of plastic tat you see under the bonnets of cars these days, they just aren’t going to be as easy to spanner as older motors.

What hellishly tricky modern-ish cars have you had the displeasure of working on?

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Comments

Anonymous

As a mechanic who works on new cars regularly I can see both sides of the argument. I work for a Renault dealer. Yes, they are a pain, there’s always something covering something else. But think about it, if that little bit of plastic cost £1 and they sold one million cars, have they wasted £1million? No. Everything is there for a reason. There is a reason that modern cars are A LOT more reliable than older cars. So yes, we hate all of the bits that get in the way and the awful positioning of basic filters, but we get on with it.

We also see what happens when people attempt DIY. Wow. Just wow.

Basically, whoever said “The customer is always right” must have been clinically insane.

04/22/2017 - 13:51 |
12 | 0
Robi

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

More reliable? Renault cars yes,but i don’t know could ‘90s cars (Honda,Toyota….) be more bulletproof than they were. Not only them of course,Germans had that kind of cars too.

04/22/2017 - 14:20 |
8 | 2
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Finally a person who knows what ge talks about!

04/22/2017 - 21:02 |
0 | 0
Skyline73

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

I worked in a Renault garage too, and it was a real pain in the ass. Bad engineered.

04/23/2017 - 17:24 |
2 | 0
Anonymous

And here I am, thinking that a 7mm hex key is infuriating.

04/22/2017 - 14:08 |
2 | 0
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Why?

04/22/2017 - 14:16 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

screaming internally when I saw that dirty engine bay…

04/22/2017 - 14:15 |
4 | 0
Carl

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

If it didnt have any covers youd spot it being dirty and clean it.

04/22/2017 - 14:17 |
8 | 0
Patric Fehring

I know the problem, came from an Audi A4 b5 to a VW Golf MkV GT. Working on it is more like rocketscience.

04/22/2017 - 14:33 |
6 | 0
Cristi Cretu

I’ve been working as a mechanic in a Mercedes-Benz dealership for almost a year now. At first, I was infuriated by the sea of plastic too. But after a while I got used to it, and basic maintenance work is quite easy now. Having gotten used to it, I can actually do a complete service on a Merc pretty much twice as fast as I first did it on my 02 Focus ST.

04/22/2017 - 14:44 |
4 | 0

Just don’t get me started on bulb replacements on some Mercs… They’re a pain.

04/22/2017 - 14:44 |
2 | 0
Anonymous

I had the same car for 4yrs. Agreed, i hated the seemingly unnecessary complicated processes to do just about anything.

04/22/2017 - 14:46 |
6 | 0
Ben Conover

Luckily my 2009 370Z is just normal nuts and bolts. It’s because yours is a modern German car. They like to overcomplicate everything.

04/22/2017 - 14:57 |
14 | 0

Is the plastic engine cover easy to remove on the VQ?

04/23/2017 - 06:11 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

My son as an ‘06 GTI. The engine cover is one of the dumbest designs I’ve ever seen. It is different on newer ones. Also not sure why they insist on using a filter element instead of a spin on filter like normal. The damn DSG transmission is like this too.

04/22/2017 - 15:03 |
4 | 0
The_Stoker

Most decent socket sets like Bacho comes with a 36 mm socket.

04/22/2017 - 15:14 |
0 | 0

*Bahco

04/22/2017 - 15:15 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

Plastic everyhere, man. Next will be cardboadrs everywhere on car components 😂😂

04/22/2017 - 15:20 |
2 | 0