Ridiculous number of fasteners!

[J.F]

I have always serviced and fixed my cars along with family cars. Changing a set of rear brake discs / pads today I thought to myself if this was the first set of brakes I was changing it would put me off working on cars for life. Luckily I have built up my tool collection over years, but it's getting ridiculous what was wrong with a normal hex nut or bolt?

Torx, spline, Allen, security torx. The thing is these appear in internal and external. You need to buy them in the various drive sizes, impact short / deep/ chrome. Spanners long short flex ratchet. You need everything because there's no space.

There is no reason to fit an internal spline headed bolt most of the time they rust out and round out as they hold water like a cup. The idea that you can apply more torque to these fasteners is total rubbish. And most of the fasteners you see on cars like this appear to have no tensile strength markings on them if you want replace them.
I feel sorry for any professional mechanic starting out, the amount of tools they required to buy!
How long until they invent a new fastener???

 

[pedrobedro]

There is no reason to fit an internal spline headed bolt most of the time

They are used by manufacturers because they are better suited to the automated assembly procedures they use, not to make it awkward for us but to make it easier and cost effective for them.

 

[Parm]

I have always serviced and fixed my cars along with family cars. Changing a set of rear brake discs / pads today I thought to myself if this was the first set of brakes I was changing it would put me off working on cars for life. Luckily I have built up my tool collection over years, but it's getting ridiculous what was wrong with a normal hex nut or bolt?

Torx, spline, Allen, security torx. The thing is these appear in internal and external. You need to buy them in the various drive sizes, impact short / deep/ chrome. Spanners long short flex ratchet. You need everything because there's no space.

There is no reason to fit an internal spline headed bolt most of the time they rust out and round out as they hold water like a cup. The idea that you can apply more torque to these fasteners is total rubbish. And most of the fasteners you see on cars like this appear to have no tensile strength markings on them if you want replace them.
I feel sorry for any professional mechanic starting out, the amount of tools they required to buy!
How long until they invent a new fastener???

Ahh, it you can apply precise amounts of torque in the factory. They don’t really care when it’s yours

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

but to make it easier and cost effective for them.

Summed up every thing wrong with the car industry in one sentence.

 

[Reman]

I read a report on this a few years back. Car manufacturers don't WANT you to fix your own cars anymore, They don't even want independant garages being confident to take on doing work to their brand of cars. They want you to take it to one of their franchised dealerships for all your servicing and repairs. They build the cars so they require special tools to do basic maintenance tasks, Guard useful procedural documents, and make necessary tech specs impossible for the non franchised garages to gain access to. This is done to keep their dealers happy by providing them with a semi captive market of repair/servicing work. A new car dealer is more likely to give a fat discount to a customer if he know's that his garage will scrape that money back through almost guaranteed servicing charges they'll make after the sale (A bit like the whole "Give them the printers at cost, We'll make our profit on the cartridges" situation with printers these days). The healthy discount also shines a pretty favorable light on the manufacturers brand in the eyes of the customer.

OK, Some strange fasteners ARE chosen because it helps automate the original build process, But handing maintenance customers to the dealers is also a very big factor in some design choices.

There are several models of car on the road these days that require the whole front bumper to be removed to change a headlight bulb (Ones I know of for definite are MK7 Toyota Celicas, Mk3.5 Mazda MX5, Some early 2000's Volvo V70's, And the Vauxhall Corsa D). If you were the head of a car engineering design department, And one of the designers came to you with a headlight design that would require BODY PANELS to be removed to change a safety related consumable, Would you (A) Pat him on the back and say "Now, THAT'S thinking outside the box my boy. Have a pay rise", Or (B) say to him "Go empty out your f***ing desk, Moron !"? My guess is in a customer centric world we'd be seeing a lot of B's there, But we don't. The only plausible reason for this is that the manufacturers WANT their cars to be difficult to work on and need specialist knowledge/tools so they can hand the customer to the franchised dealer garages to be fleeced.

 

[Ashley Burton]

Some of the Mercedes have totally different style wheel nut/bolt head

Nissan have a 5 sided security fastener

Remember working on a Vauxhall once & randomly there was an e-torx thrown in between some torx bits

So I'm pretty convinced they are make it difficult to try & force you back to the dealerships

 

[Robbie260]

Ah this is why i like my industry, none of this special tools and fasteners rubbish just allen bolts which are our night mare as they always round out and a 120mm spanner and a sledge hammer thats all (only comes out when things really arent going well these days). No i tell a lie we now in the world of shipping for many years have hydraulic bolts. So you know that turning x size of bolt through y degrees say 90 degrees equals a almost predetermined value of stretch which puts the bolt under a certain amount of tension from the hand tight position, this can be related to torque. So instead of stretching the bolt by turning it we stretch the bolt by screwing a hydraulic jack on too it after the nut and then pull the stud tight to a certian hydraulic pressure usually between 500 and 2500 bar depending on engine manufacturer and bolt location then run the nut down hand tight and bingo release the pressure and the bolts are set too the correct value of stretch, we have big rigs usually nick named spiders which allow us too do all the bolts at ounce so we dont have to worry about uneven tightening (unless one of the hydraulic jacks isnt working properly). MAN B&W have taken away the emergency facilty to tighten the bolts by spanner and hammer but it still is provided on wartsila sulzer engines in some places like the cylinder heads.

As for cars it is getting a bit stupid these days the amount of specialist tools you have too have is rediculous, im just glad halfords exists and is relatively good quality as other wise diy people would be totally stuffed. They dont want us too work on our own cars as the car industry like every other now dosent make its money on selling the car they usually make a loss but on after sales services and spare parts. Though have you noticed a lot of moderen cars these days are being designed to have basically catistrophic syatem failures across multiple systems at the same time, this is to encourage you too by a new car at 7 years rather than 15 years, older cars fail more gradually meaning owners can keep up with the maintenance demands for longer meaning they stayed on the road longer. Some car manufacturers now even program stuff to fail after a certian number of hours, a mate had all the injectors fail on his van got the faulty ones back off the independent garage he took it too to check them all that was worng with them was there was an open circuit in each injectors control board in the same place, had to have been designed too cark it after a certian number of running hours for that too have happened.

 

[Wallace]

I have felt like the manufacturers are creating fasteners to prevent third party repair, a Mercedes threw me a curveball with TS 5 point Torx bits. Spanner sizes have changed over the years too, uncommon sizes to standard fastener such as 15,16, 18mm A/F etc are now the norm, most likely for cost and weight savings. My tool kit has grown considerably over the years to cover vehicles I have owned or worked on almost to the point it sways your thought process when replacing a vehicle! Have a look into "The Right To Repair" and the complexities involved in that. If it wasn't for legislation you would not have any access to the ECU and OBD fault codes, that was made an industry standard on all vehicles but now the manufacturers have almost circumnavigated the system with manufacturer specific codes and software.

 

[8ob]

Irrespective of assembly benefits with some of these fasteners manufacturers do like to build in a bit of buggerance to stop back street and diy mechanics having fun.I have draws full of truck/machine/car specific sockets/gizmos, Peugeot five sided sockets come to mind and what were Scania thinking of with their eight sided

Bob

 

[Seadog]

Years ago, before the rise of China, it would have been next to impossible to source the specialist tools needed. Now, they're on the market almost before the vehicle is released. No help on a Sunday afternoon when you get stuck, but now, with advanced notice you can order just about any type of special on line.

There hardly seems any point now.

 

[frank horton]

in the early days of ECU's I was working in California........GM in their wisdon (lets call it making money) put a program in it so that after 3 failure to repair lights the
engine just stopped running......this caused a few very bad acidents on the 405 outta L.A........
in the end they were sued by the equiv of the AA and customers which forced the Feds to make a law that says "All manufacturers must provid the ability to purchase all sevrvice tools and equipment to anyone that asks for it".....
The Feds didn't ask that said parts should be of reasonable price tho......!!!!!!!!!
So the big 3 got their **** in a ringer and had to comply......
THIS WAS 40 YEARS AGO>>>>
Now the Yanks, bless em have people that seem to enjoy finding ways around the auto industries blocks on repairs.......
many tools and electronic equipment is available from the aftermarket sector......

I have always said buy older cars and keep em running......the only prob with that is the cancer causing SALT that get used in Euro Land....
Here in Crete there are MANY older vehicles including trucks and vans as well as cars.......they have the "old fashioned idea" here to make things last.....
So u lot go to a warm country Spain, Portugal or S. France and buy what ya want......it's not so bad driving a left hooker.....
or if ur really keen do a body swop.......
I'm Running a 1999 VW T4 (wax oiled from new and in original paint), 1934 Commer bread van and soon to be a 1928 Citroen C4 pick up......
Stuff the Gov and live in the slow lane......hahaha......
If u need to go somewhere fast, rent a modern vehicle and drive it like u stole it.....then give it back smoking......hahaha......

have a great weekend and keep safe......

 

[owas]

I dont know this problem, I've never owned a car built in this millennia

 

[mikegolding]

It is not always a bad idea to have odd shaped tools. Had a friend ring a while back asking to borrow some allen keys as he was struggling to change the brake pads on a Clio and didn't have the right size. I went round with a selection thinking it was probably a 7mm as I know ford and vauxhall use that size. It turned out he was trying to undo the five sided bolts that held the two halves of the calliper together and not disconnecting the sliding pin , swinging up the calliper and changing the pads from bellow as you should. In that case an odd tool shape prevented someone taking something apart they shouldn’t .

 

[Alan Reynolds]

I read a report on this a few years back. Car manufacturers don't WANT you to fix your own cars anymore, They don't even want independant garages being confident to take on doing work to their brand of cars. They want you to take it to one of their franchised dealerships for all your servicing and repairs. They build the cars so they require special tools to do basic maintenance tasks, Guard useful procedural documents, and make necessary tech specs impossible for the non franchised garages to gain access to. This is done to keep their dealers happy by providing them with a semi captive market of repair/servicing work. A new car dealer is more likely to give a fat discount to a customer if he know's that his garage will scrape that money back through almost guaranteed servicing charges they'll make after the sale (A bit like the whole "Give them the printers at cost, We'll make our profit on the cartridges" situation with printers these days). The healthy discount also shines a pretty favorable light on the manufacturers brand in the eyes of the customer.

OK, Some strange fasteners ARE chosen because it helps automate the original build process, But handing maintenance customers to the dealers is also a very big factor in some design choices.

There are several models of car on the road these days that require the whole front bumper to be removed to change a headlight bulb (Ones I know of for definite are MK7 Toyota Celicas, Mk3.5 Mazda MX5, Some early 2000's Volvo V70's, And the Vauxhall Corsa D). If you were the head of a car engineering design department, And one of the designers came to you with a headlight design that would require BODY PANELS to be removed to change a safety related consumable, Would you (A) Pat him on the back and say "Now, THAT'S thinking outside the box my boy. Have a pay rise", Or (B) say to him "Go empty out your f***ing desk, Moron !"? My guess is in a customer centric world we'd be seeing a lot of B's there, But we don't. The only plausible reason for this is that the manufacturers WANT their cars to be difficult to work on and need specialist knowledge/tools so they can hand the customer to the franchised dealer garages to be fleeced.

Try owning an Aston Martin and needing a fog lamp bulb replacing. 4 £ figures!

 

[Alan Reynolds]

How about the number of different plastic fasteners on cars. I too k a door panel off and it had 5 different clips for the door card and four different types of metal screws holding parts in place. You could have easily just had one type of each. THEN, they hide one. I seem to remember you could service a Jowett with just two spanners. The range of small hex bits for some products is just as annoying. tri lobe, square, security torx, even five sided! Don't get me going on CAD designers, I'd shoot every single one if I had my way. How many times do you take something apart and utter the phrase, "what ****ing moron designed this!" More and more frequently I'll wager. The best fastener I ever used was the Bristol spline. Never sheared or rounded one in all the years i worked with them.

 

[Reman]

Try owning an Aston Martin and needing a fog lamp bulb replacing. 4 £ figures!

OK, But if you own a supercar you'd sort of expect a certain level of specialist (Read "Expensive") maintenance was going to be the norm........... But a Volvo V70 !?!?

 

[Robbie260]

How about the number of different plastic fasteners on cars. I too k a door panel off and it had 5 different clips for the door card and four different types of metal screws holding parts in place. You could have easily just had one type of each. THEN, they hide one. I seem to remember you could service a Jowett with just two spanners. The range of small hex bits for some products is just as annoying. tri lobe, square, security torx, even five sided! Don't get me going on CAD designers, I'd shoot every single one if I had my way. How many times do you take something apart and utter the phrase, "what ****ing moron designed this!" More and more frequently I'll wager. The best fastener I ever used was the Bristol spline. Never sheared or rounded one in all the years i worked with them.

Just looked them up looking at them i dont see how you could round one out.

 

[Wallace]

A laptop to replace brake pads.

 

[earthman]

I read a report on this a few years back. Car manufacturers don't WANT you to fix your own cars anymore, They don't even want independant garages being confident to take on doing work to their brand of cars. They want you to take it to one of their franchised dealerships for all your servicing and repairs. They build the cars so they require special tools to do basic maintenance tasks, Guard useful procedural documents, and make necessary tech specs impossible for the non franchised garages to gain access to. This is done to keep their dealers happy by providing them with a semi captive market of repair/servicing work. A new car dealer is more likely to give a fat discount to a customer if he know's that his garage will scrape that money back through almost guaranteed servicing charges they'll make after the sale (A bit like the whole "Give them the printers at cost, We'll make our profit on the cartridges" situation with printers these days). The healthy discount also shines a pretty favorable light on the manufacturers brand in the eyes of the customer.

OK, Some strange fasteners ARE chosen because it helps automate the original build process, But handing maintenance customers to the dealers is also a very big factor in some design choices.

There are several models of car on the road these days that require the whole front bumper to be removed to change a headlight bulb (Ones I know of for definite are MK7 Toyota Celicas, Mk3.5 Mazda MX5, Some early 2000's Volvo V70's, And the Vauxhall Corsa D). If you were the head of a car engineering design department, And one of the designers came to you with a headlight design that would require BODY PANELS to be removed to change a safety related consumable, Would you (A) Pat him on the back and say "Now, THAT'S thinking outside the box my boy. Have a pay rise", Or (B) say to him "Go empty out your f***ing desk, Moron !"? My guess is in a customer centric world we'd be seeing a lot of B's there, But we don't. The only plausible reason for this is that the manufacturers WANT their cars to be difficult to work on and need specialist knowledge/tools so they can hand the customer to the franchised dealer garages to be fleeced.

Oh yeah, I can agree with all that, think that it were Fiat? who wanted to make it law that no one else could have access to their software, forcing every owner to return to them for any diagnostic/resetting work basically.

In my opinion it should be against the law to design a vehicle with such hard to reach headlight bulbs in the first place, these are safety related items, things that you should be able to easily replace whilst at the side of the road. To think what you could do with a few basic tools in the boot of a Ford for example back in the eighties, how times have changed for the worse hey.

 

[Alan Reynolds]

Just looked them up looking at them i dont see how you could round one out.

You can't. That's why they were so good. You can get the tools easily enough but finding the screws is more difficult. I'd change all my Allen bolts if I could find a source.