My ’95 Impala’s accessory serpentine belt can be changed in a couple of minutes with a simple 1/2″ socket on a breaker bar.  In fact, the car is still on its original belt (it only as about 12k miles on it and is garaged), and I keep a spare belt and the minimal tools to change it in the car.  I’m lucky, it’s a RWD sedan whose engine bay was designed for a belt-driven water pump and a belt-driven cooling fan, that later saw the engine revised (with the introduction of the LT1) to using a cam-driven water pump and an electric cooling fan, so there’s almost nothing in the way for changing the belt.  The routing is not that hard, but there’s enough to make it not a five second job, but it’s simple enough that just about anyone able-bodied in physically good enough shape to drive (ie, not someone paralyzed with a modified vehicle or the like) could change it.

Plus…I really think I was motivated to learn to read, at least in part, to be able to read the book that my dad used to fix our cars, and also because I was curious about the process that caused my dad’s mouth to go full-on sailor…seriously, his dad, who, after 35 years, was still in the Navy, told him to tone it down. And maybe get a trim.

Still my favorite car, honestly.  Although I love my new plug-in Prius, it just isn’t as elegant as Herr Porsche’s mechanicals stuffed into a Ghia designed tin can.

Anyway, I was at a get-together and mentioned this to a friend who is a old-school BMW bike enthusiast. He pretty much said what you said, plus a lot of other technical stuff that convinced me. Simplicity…fcukn’A…

“What Happens in Bartertown, Stays in Bartertown.”

Anyway — I know you’re kidding, but people often do procedures like this while moving very, very fast. Ideally, the procedure is SOP and part of the job — these peeps don’t have (noteworthy) accidents ’cause they’re well trained and know what they’re doing…fcuk-ups might kill people, or at least them or their careers. 

The cautionary tales are spawned by, well, you know…

Another source of fires is the lack of another grommet, the one that the metal fuel line passes through from the underside of the vehicle into the engine compartment, through the aforementioned tin. Missing grommet, metal fuel line eventually wears a hole, spewing fuel all over the place.  That one’s scarier, but luckily, I haven’t experienced it, only heard about often.

BTW, does anyone remember RAMVA? rec.auto.makers.vw.aircooled on usenet. Probably just a spam ghost town these days.

Who uses a focus as outdated as a blasting rod anyway? 

I think servicing a car all the time and trying to write a disseration at the same time are probably not really compatible activies, but I’ll finish the dissertation sometime, I’m sure.  It can’t consume my whole life for the rest of my life, right?

If you have a VW (or are just idly considering getting one), I urgently recommend picking up John Muir’s How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual Of Step-By-Step Procedures For The Compleat Idiot.  Muir was an aerospace engineer for Lockheed in the 50s, and a tie-dyed-in-the-wool hippie in the 60s, and his manual is written for VW owners with no mechanical repair experience whatsoever.  It’s full of gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations by Peter Aschwanden rather than photographs, and the language is expressive, informative, hilarious, groovy, and accessible.  For example, he tells you that you don’t need to run out and buy a complete set of all the tools you’ll ever need, since he reasonably assumes you “don’t have the bread.”  Instead, you start with a few basic hand tools, and add to your collection as you need more specialized ones.

I haven’t owned a VW in 15 years, but I still have (and occasionally re-read) this book.  It’s practically a graphic novel, it’s so entertaining.

Now my BMW R75/6? That engine is simplicity in itself.