I once spent about 9 hours helping an experienced mechanic change an alternator belt on one of those mid 1980s "sporty" little cars - name not recalled. We knew the "book" said pull the engine, but we didn't have an engine jack to do that. His daughter called me to see if I had a slightly unique tool, which I had; but we ended up fabricating several other "very special purpose" tools before we got the job done. Fortunately he had some scrap iron and a welder...

I once considered buying a very conservative Fiat family sedan (124?)until I learned that an oil filter change (every 600 miles?) required removing 38 screws to drop the full belly pan before you could get to the filter. The pan was about 6 feet long, and heavy enough that the service book recommended "an assistant" to help put it back on.

Several fairly recent model trucks had front "ball-joints" that can be safely lubricated only if you jack the vehicle up to remove the weight from the suspension. If you had enough pressure (about 125 psi) to force grease into one with the weight on it, it would split the housing and destroy the joint. GM finally got smart after a couple of years and put a small shield over the grease fitting. When you jacked it up, the rotation of the lower control arm moved the shield out of the way so you could get a grease gun onto the fitting. Ten years later mechanics were still cursing that "hard to reach" fitting, and still trying to "grease without jacking" because GM never explained why they did it that way in the service manuals.

Horror stories abound in the auto trades. It only really gets scary when you talk about airplanes.

Home electronics usually are just annoying.

John