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Before anyone graduates with a degree, they must put in a one-year apprenticeship servicing that which they plan to design.
I got a call at 5:30 this morning from The Redhead, whose car won't start. Of course, she lives a half hour away and the sun's not even up yet. So I shower and get over there and long story short it was a dead battery, wouldn't jump start, so got a new one and made it to work on time. No biggie, right? Here's the kicker...
She has a 90-something Chevy Lumina. To change the battery, you must first remove a frame brace. That's right - a FRAME BRACE, fer chrissakes (three bolts). You must then disconnect another bolt and two press-in fasteners to disconnect the washer fluid reservoir from the frame, and disconnect the hoses, etc., and remove the reservoir, BECAUSE IT SITS OVER AND IS MOLDED to go around the battery. Then, there is a bracket with one bolt into the fender, another holding the air box (mounted to the same bracket that goes over the battery), and finally, another bolt way down below, where there is not enough room to get a wrench, and which can only be reached with a 10" socket extension.
All this to change a freakin' BATTERY?
Y'know, I regularly curse the Germans while working on the ol' airhead, but I have NEVER seen such a simple task made so Monty Pythonesque-ly absurd. If I was the CEO of GM, I'd find the "genius" who decided a battery should go below a frame brace, beneath a water reservoir, and be held in by a contraption Rube Goldberg would be proud of, and have him brought to the assembly floor and flogged, after which he would be sentenced to a lifetime of working in the battery department of a Goodwrench repair shop somewhere in Alaska.
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"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
— HST
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