Alan L.
Elite Member
I have a 2006 Honda Accord. It is my commuter car and has given no trouble in 218,000 miles so far. I noticed the surpentine belt (original) looks cracked and needs replacing. I picked up a Gates replacement at O'Reilly's. Got home and thought I could do this in maybe 30 minutes tops. There is a tensioner that, all I should have to do is put a wrench on it and move it to release tension on the belt. It has a 14mm bolt head to grab ahold of to accomplish this.
Problem is, there is not enough clearance between this bolt head, and a motor mount to get a ratched/socket on it. The only thing I could get on it was a box end offset wrench, but with that I couldn't get enough travel to loosen the belt. So, I gave up.
I also had a head light bulb. I have replaced all the headlights at least once and I remembered this one on the driver's side you can't get to without taking the battery off. So I get the battery off and after an hour I almost gave up. I could neither get the cable disconnected from the bulb, nor get the bulb out of the socket. I just about gave up on that, but then gave the bulb a hard enough twist to break it (hard to get any leverage on it though, in a tight spot) and it finally came loose. I was then able to disconnect the cable. Putting it back was easy. But then I couldn't get the battery cable tight on the battery post. I finally figured out that the post is tapered - bigger at the bottom than at the top. Until I pushed the battery clamp all the was down onto the bigger part of the post it just wouldn't tighten down on it.
Are cars really hard to work on anymore or have I just lost the skills to work on them? In the old days I have pulled engines and transmissions and whatnot, now I have trouble with a headlight.
Problem is, there is not enough clearance between this bolt head, and a motor mount to get a ratched/socket on it. The only thing I could get on it was a box end offset wrench, but with that I couldn't get enough travel to loosen the belt. So, I gave up.
I also had a head light bulb. I have replaced all the headlights at least once and I remembered this one on the driver's side you can't get to without taking the battery off. So I get the battery off and after an hour I almost gave up. I could neither get the cable disconnected from the bulb, nor get the bulb out of the socket. I just about gave up on that, but then gave the bulb a hard enough twist to break it (hard to get any leverage on it though, in a tight spot) and it finally came loose. I was then able to disconnect the cable. Putting it back was easy. But then I couldn't get the battery cable tight on the battery post. I finally figured out that the post is tapered - bigger at the bottom than at the top. Until I pushed the battery clamp all the was down onto the bigger part of the post it just wouldn't tighten down on it.
Are cars really hard to work on anymore or have I just lost the skills to work on them? In the old days I have pulled engines and transmissions and whatnot, now I have trouble with a headlight.