Share Pics of People Hauling or Towing Something Wrong

[WinterDeere]

1998 would have been the old 1.9 TDI with either 90 or 110hp... or even the 1.9 IDI turbo with 75hp.

My buddy who was the primary driver on that car reports it was the 1.9L 4-cyl turbo diesel with 130-140 hp. I remember it did pretty well on the Autobahn, as it was the way I made a very fast run from the Czech border to the Stuttgart international airport, late one night.

 

[Engineer42]

Our Durango is only the R/T version (5.7L Hemi), as it's my wife's daily driver and I couldn't talk her into anything faster than that. But yeah, on that version there's just an open hole in the bottom cover, which I reach up thru to access the oil filter. Like you, I kinda wondered if there should be a door hatch there, but there's no provisions for attachment if there were one, so I guess that's just supposed to stay open.

I personally hate it. I like the removable pan of the SRT much better. Four 10mm screws, I can have it off in about 10 seconds, and then everything is wide open. The Durango is almost as bad as the RAM, in terms of making a mess while removing the oil filter.

On the RAM, I've actually taken to hammering an awl thru the bottom of the filter to drain it, before removing. Otherwise you end up soaking the 4wd solenoids and front axle components with motor oil, just to have it drip in the driveway for the next two days.

Not sure if this will work for you, but FYI

 

[Renze]

My buddy who was the primary driver on that car reports it was the 1.9L 4-cyl turbo diesel with 130-140 hp. I remember it did pretty well on the Autobahn, as it was the way I made a very fast run from the Czech border to the Stuttgart international airport, late one night.

Must have been brand new then

 

[Renze]

I do agree it is a PIA when metric and SAE are mixed together on the same application.

Or people put bolts they didnt use, in the wrong box and its so close that you dont notice something is off on the first few hand turns, but jams when you hit it with the impact...

 

[Renze]

At this point I just want the US system to persist forever simply as a means to pi$$ folks off.

That is indeed the sole reason i can imagine for it to still exist

 

[BleedingOrange]

Imperial forever, screw the damned metrics.

I agree. Living in Canada, it was the second biggest screwing the general population ever got, and continues to get daily !

 

[WinterDeere]

Not sure if this will work for you, but FYI

Thanks! Never seen that, although I don't think it would help this particular situation.

Ram 1500's have the oil filter mounted above the front axle and 4wd solenoids, in a location almost impossible to reach, and you have to snake the filter out by tipping it one way, then the other. It's mounted vertically, facing up like an over-filled pint glass, so it spills scalding hot oil down your arm as soon as you tilt it.

I've found the easiest way to deal with it is to just drive an awl thru the can, low along one edge, so it spouts the oil out sideways, to where you can catch it in a pan. Terrible design, which could have been resolved for under $100 by installation of a remote filter mount.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Terrible design, which could have been resolved for under $100 by installation of a remote filter mount.

Which is what I'm about to do on the M6040, with its horizontal filter being in a tight spot.

 

[mrmikey]

......so it spills scalding hot oil down your arm as soon as you tilt it.

It's a good way to remove armpit hair too.
I agree the placement of the Ram 1500 oil filter is a pia but I don't think it's as bad as the frontier 4.0L. It's behind a 4" x 6" opening that's covered with a plate that requires you to remove 4 bolts. In my case one of them broke off so I drilled it out and retapped them all 3/8" and used s/s bolts.
Working thru a small opening is bad enough but what made it worse is the opening was not directly below the filter that would only come out one way and that was on it's side aimed toward the axle. Couldn't even get a filter wrench on it nor even punch a hole in the bottom. Had a constant drip for a week after changing the oil.

 

[RandyT]

Likewise, I've dealt with both my whole life. Not a huge deal, but it would be more convenient to just have one. Especially when I was young and just building up my mechanic's tool sets, buying two of everything (long and shorts in every drive size, times two for metric & imperial!) is kind of a drag.

I design product that needs to be mounted in customer's equipment, and our internal standard is all Imperial. Our mounting holes are usually also tapped imperial, but now I have to do special metric variants for some Euro and Asian customers, with Imperial internal hardware but Metric tapped mounting holes.

My Kawasaki V-twin motor is a similar mess. Most of the hardware is metric (Iso), but several of the tapped holes on the rear crank case (muffler mounting, PTO mounting, etc.) are all 3/8" NC. Go figure.

There are a lot of fasteners that are metric thread and imperial hex. Spark plugs are a good example of this mixture of measurement units.