The Camaro Club (UK)

With my modern car coming up for a service i found my first bit of "modern cars are hard to work on".

The rear pads need replacing and it has an electronic parking brake, which i though nothing of. Just happened to see it mentioned in an owners forum when trying to confirm the correct part number.

With EPB's you can't just use a C clamp to wind the caliper in, it will damage the mechanism, so you need to tell the ECU to wind them in. Which you can't do through the built in car controls (should be in there!). So instead you need diagnostics software and cable which costs around £300

You then need to have the software wind the caliper back in and also program in the depth of the new pads.

The reason i take issue is that a lot people and places won't get the expensive software (compared to the cost of £35 pads, you need to spend £300) and instead just damage the mechanism which can also lead to the mechanism not engaging, therefore no rear brakes. A lot of these cars have auto hill start which means you will expect it to come on and then without knowing, you end up in a position where you're not expecting the car to roll back, but it does.

When it comes to safety like this and it needing to be done meticulously, i think it's a bit irresponsible of manufacturers to not allow access to a simple feature from within the cars interface. You can already check the oil level, change the driving style etc. so a safety feature like this should have the extra option to do something simple as wind the brake system in for a pad change. Considering how many hack video's i've seen there's a safety issue out there which is done because of the omission of a simple function, which means it's far too expensive to do properly, therefore hacks being done.

*steps down from soap box*

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Unfortunately it's the way things are and likely only to get worse!!

I wish it made more sense to run a classic on a daily basis, but lack of economy usually stumps that even if it's super reliable!

Clearly you have never attempted to change the spark plugs on a 4th Gen, I think gm quote an entire days labour

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1997 30th Anniversary SS SLP
1993 GMC Typhoon

The 3rd gen was pretty tough, getting to cylinder #4 spark plug (closest to the firewall, drivers side). Took about an hour to remove and another hour to install, including sitting on and in the engine bay. I've heard 4th gens are even worse than that!

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We got mist of them from underneath with a ramp, by we I mean my friend Andy, we had to drop the starter motor out for one of them

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1997 30th Anniversary SS SLP
1993 GMC Typhoon

Wow, dropping the starter? Mental! I bet there are loads of 4th gens running on less than 8 cylinders due to the factory spark plugs still living in some cylinders. Every time I see a pic of a 4th gen engine bay close up, I always think it looks like a picture of a van because the engine is so far behind the windscreen, it looks like half of it's missing. I can imagine working on any part of them is really difficult.

I ended up changing the rear brakes out - found an App that syncs to a proprietary OBD2 connector and that allows you to get diagnostic access and open up the electromechanical brakes. Once done, it's the usual process and then close the brake with the diagnostic route. Took longer sorting out app updates, syncing phone, setting up an account etc.

The annoying part after all that is, the pads were only 25% worn! So it must be the front setting off the brake warning light. Even though, on visual inspection the rear pads had less meat than the fronts. So I wonder how worn they must be to set off the warning light, not by much it seems. I did think - with all this tech, they could at least tell you whether front or back is worn! Had to change my friends BMW's brakes as his warning light came up too and we did the fronts but it turned out to be the backs that had worn. I guess maybe for safety they want you to change them all.

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

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We found 6 had at sometime.been replaced but two of them had done the full 70,000 miles

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1997 30th Anniversary SS SLP
1993 GMC Typhoon

I bet those 2 spark plugs were happy to be changed out!!

One of the smart changes I noticed with newer cars is that with oil filter changes, it's just the actual filter part that gets changed, the canister is reused. Makes for a bit of a lower cost item plus much less rubbish being produced and thrown away.

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

How to post youtube vids: Click on the 'youtubeHD' button at the top of the message box and in the middle of the ][ brackets that just appeared, copy and paste everything from the youtube web address that appears after the = sign i.e if this is the url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0 just copy "K2cNqaPSHv0").

The saga continues.

Went to do the oil change yesterday and it took the entire day Underneath the car is a plastic board covered in fabric which has to be removed in order to access the oil drain plug (no trap door of course). Held in a more than necessary combination of 12 screws and bolts, all with different hex sizes. Genius. Not to mention the cover is slotted in so isn't going anywhere even without screws. Screws are rusted to pieces due to 1) being at the bottom of the car and 2) being in contact with fabric which holds moisture against the metal. Not stainless steel screws like they should be for that location.

Managed to get 11 out and the last one of course took 4 hours to remove :/ It was a spline head, so kind of like a torx pattern but many, many more edges. All those edges mean a thinner amount of metal to make contact with and therefore easily chewed. It's also a rounded head and is countersuck so couldn't get vice grips onto the edges. My dad came over and had an idea of using a chisel to bash into the screw head in the direction of "unscrew". After a few heavy bashes it started budging (after also braking that part off!), then more bashes to other parts and started to get loose enough to remove.

Newer cars also don't come with dipsticks, so had to buy a universal one and setup the markings. Finally changed it all (including 3 0-rings on the oil filter :/ ) and checked the internal reading of the oil level, all seemed ok. Reset the oil service interval from within the car as it's a standard menu option and then now the oil reading shows not reading but no warning either (if it is below spec, but before resetting the interval, it read 3/4 full which was inline with the dipstick reading, so....). Genius.

Also the brake pads worn notification appears every time i start the car, even though all 4 have been changed along with sensors :/ The pads didn't even need changing, i took a pic to upload later - 70% material still left Waste of time and money! Also makes it dangerous as now i'll be ignoring pad warnings.

Was going to check brake fluid level but the reservoir is hidden and you can only see the cap to top it up. But no idea what they level is.

I think the future for car people will be 1x electric car (no need for all the maintenance work) and 1x old school carb'd muscle car. Both easy to maintain!!

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

How to post youtube vids: Click on the 'youtubeHD' button at the top of the message box and in the middle of the ][ brackets that just appeared, copy and paste everything from the youtube web address that appears after the = sign i.e if this is the url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0 just copy "K2cNqaPSHv0").