Amateur auto engineering

[Lyle Seaman]

I don't think that a water pump would have very much of an idle cycle.  The
cylinder walls get awfully hot, awfully fast.  Of course, one might use the
oil for cooling instead, since that pump needs to run anyway.  But I guess
oil doesn't have the heat-carrying capacity of water?  

What I would like to see, is a crankcase that can be drained without
crawling underneath and removing a nut four times per year.  Can't they just
run a steel line to some convenient location and put a ball valve on the end
of it?  I guess the engine moves around, so there might be problems with
fatigue over time :(  I had a couple of ball valves that replaced the
crankcase drain nuts on a couple of older cars, but the company that made
them seems to have gone bust.   Likewise for the oil filter.  Seems that
only a very rare minority of the cars I've seen could be serviced without
frustration.  The filter on my Prelude was this "" far from some structural
member or other, and you couldn't get more than about 10 degrees of rotation
with a strap wrench, which wasn't enough to get the wrench to tighten
without slipping.  I'm not even going to say anything about the A8.  Why
can't they put the oil filter right up near the oil cooler?