I'd like to give some of them a swift kick to the nutz. Actually any engineer who designs something they will never have to lay hands on to work on or remove some bolts.

It doesnt matter if it's a lawn mower, 2,000 ton chiller or 2007 tahoe. Any piece of mechanical equipment I've worked on had things that should or could be easy to get to but isnt. I spent the day cursing yesterday while changing some intake manifold gaskets, valve cover gaskets, spark plugs/wires and AFM manifold on my wifes yukon.

I'm to much of a cheap ass to pay people to do much mechanical work when I'm mechanically inclined with most things but I do end up cursing pretty good, needing a drink and at one point felt like I needed a Marlboro and I've never smoked a day in my life .

With that being said, who ever designed the ratchet wrench and wobble sockets deserves every penny they make.. unless they were designed be the same engineers just to sell more tool.
I believe hoggin when he says he pays his mechanic's top dollar because to deal with that chit everyday would require top dollar!

The best engineers never went to school

That's how I came to spend over 20 years in engineering.
I never went to engineering school and I could out engineer the best of em.

They are great

Wobble extensions . Same with the person who invented the allen wrenches with the ball on the end. As for knuckle head engineers, my wifes car the starter is on the fritz. I have to remove the manifold and catalytic converter to replace the starter. Unbelievable.

Once they design a vehicle, they should be forced to change the oil filter, all spark plugs and the battery.

I think they should be required to spend time in the field.

You should be able to build, troubleshoot and maintain anything you designed.
If you can't do that, you are not an engineer, no matter what your paper says.

The best engineers that I know were Army Engineers and never attended a college course in the field. Like myself.

I’ve always thought engineers should be on a constant rotation between office and field work. Real life can’t always be figured out behind a desk

Oh absolutely agree with that.

I went to Tyler texas 2 yrs ago to the Trane hvac Headquarters for some training. It turned into about the last 3 hours each day of a few of us experienced techs telling them what they've screwed up and how they can fix it. Jeremy and my self actually ran an idea for a fix on an inducer motor up the ladder that they implemented and it was elementary level thinking and a fix that they couldn't figure out.
When I was working in huntsville everyday I delt with a lot of engineers and I could tell real quick the ones that had a back ground of working in the field before becoming an engineer.

They design stuff to sell not work on, especially by themselves .

You missed their mission. You were supposed to take it to the dealership when you realized how hard it will be to do what should be a simple job and the manufacturer makes even more money. Stuff nowadays is not designed for you to fix it.

You know it jawbone. How much you want to bet a stud gonna snap taking the manifold nuts off. Lucky I have plenty of nuts and a welder if it snaps.

Every broken bolt is a new adventure.

I don't think you guys are looking at this from a corporation perspective. You want your engineers to design things that REQUIRE people to come back to you for repairs. You really think those engineers aren't doing these things on purpose.

If your repair and parts department is ~25% of your overall business, how long is an engineer going to keep their job if they are reducing a huge section of your business?

Combine that with tying to make things as small as possible to keep costs down while meeting every possible regulation for every state in the country, and you end up with your product.

While I agree with you somewhat... it's still a small percentage of folks that actually would still do the work if it were simplified. Those that dont get their hands dirty still likely aren't going to get their hands dirty, no matter how easy the task.

Oh I have a full understanding of this but I want life to be easier for ME!!!

At least with the Japanese engineers I worked with, engineers design things to work, not to be worked on.

I’d argue they could sell more vehicles if they advertised how easy it is to work on and maintain. If I couldn’t decide between two trucks priced the same, I’d pop the hood and pick the one that looked less complicated, less plastic shrouds, and least amount of wires in the way.

Amen. I was absolutely blown away when I first looked under the hood of my 2013 F150 (5.0), compared to my 1998 5.4.

With the 98, it was like they tried to cram 10# of potatoes into a 5# sack. No room to work at all...if something needed replacing you'd have to remove 4 other things first just to get to it. But in this 2013 5.0, you pop the hood and everything's just kinda there. So much less crowded under the hood.