There is nothing worse than a mechanic who complains. There are plenty of wise sayings, such as “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools…” or other such nonsense to put a mechanic in his place. However, modern cars are getting to be a real pain, and thank God I will be retiring soon…. not!

One thing you notice upon looking under the hood of almost anything with a longitudinally placed engine, you see that at least a third of it is under the windshield. It is pretty obvious that engineers today are being beaten with iron bars to package everything in a tidy small space, and that they believe that their engine is never going to break. Ford is worse with their Super Duty line of trucks, the cab has to come off before you can do almost anything to the motor.

That being said, I guess the positive things to consider are weight distribution, packaging, how hard it is to manufacture, and last but not least, trying to keep the truck’s length under 40 feet. I, for one at least, would like to be able to actually touch the last two spark plugs. (Note: spark plugs are one of those things that GM says you will never have to change. Good luck with that.)