What the hell GM?

Helping a friend with repairs to his 2007 Trailblazer. He needed a new thermostat.
The thermostat is part of the pipe?!

 

Better pic of the base?

 

Not as bad as the Vega and Chevette where you throw away the whole metal air cleaner assembly to replace the engine air filter.

 

4.0 Taco is the same way.

 

What website is that?

 

It's a Toyota parts catalog that the dealer I work at uses.

 

I helped a friend replace the thermostat assembly on the Ecotec engine in his Chevy Sonic. I've never seen such a convoluted and unnecessarily over-engineered design in my life, and we ended up breaking several components during disassembly. For example, it had a friction-fit coupling where a hard line connected to the unit, which was corroded and broke while we were working on it. The entire hose (leading back to the throttle body) had to be replaced. Something as simple as a tried-and-true hose clamp type connection would have been perfectly fine in this application, but they had this bizarre and unneeded design on the coupling, which was subject to being compromised by corrosion and heat cycling. Absolutely stupid.

It was a disaster and only reminded me of why I stick with Toyota and Ford.

 

I had no idea.
It must cost more to do it this way.
Maybe too many people were installing thermostats backwards?

 

This seems to be a trend. When Nissan introduced the new Xterra in 2005 (I think) replacement of a u joint required a new driveshaft. The aftermarket apparently jumped in and fixed that.

 

There was two things I've noticed while doing my lift.

Why the hell do we need a foot long control arm bolt?
The sway bar end link is just a bad design and the nut never comes off with out the whole thing spinning.

We joke at work that the Toyota engineers were so smart that the vehicles would never break so nothing has to be removed/disassembled/fixed.

 

My guess a lot has to do with assembly (savings) of the original vehicle. Less parts to put together or source?