These Are The Problem Car Parts You Wish Were Indestructible

You should consider yourself lucky if you've never had to deal with a broken part on a car. If you aren't performing routine maintenance on your somehow pristine vehicle, you're just playing with fire. Most of us run into problems with our cars that cost time and money to fix. Either we bought into projects fully aware of the work ahead of us, or an issue cropped up with our daily driver without warning.

We asked our readers last week which problem car parts they wished were indestructible. The top responses followed a predictable pattern. No one enjoys paying a mechanic thousands of dollars for repairs. It's even worse when it's nearly impossible to do the repair yourself. Saving money doesn't seem worth it if you have to disassemble half the car to repair a busted component. Without further ado, these are the parts that we wish could never break:

Tires: no more slow leaks, or defective valves, or unbalanced because of lots of weight or snow accumulations, or uneven wear...

Submitted by: Luc Desaulniers (minardi)

If those were indestructible, I would have never stopped hooning.

Submitted by: hoser68

Batteries, because not only that means you can keep your EV forever, but also your phone, your laptop, your power tools, and whatever else you have that uses lithium-ion batteries and their cost wouldn't be an issue since they'd last forever.

Submitted by: fabey

The blend door actuators in the Fiesta ST! They always break no matter what, no matter how many times you replace them. After the last time, I took one out and left it out. I don't have defrost, but I also don't have to listen to the little man in the dashboard tap on it all the time.

Submitted by: PlibbleDibble

Gonna go off board and say roofs. Specifically convertible tops, T-Tops, Targas and sun/sunroofs. I love having the open air feel, but pretty much a guarantee of any car of the sort that allows it is a rain risk eventually

Submitted by: JaredOfLondon

Emissions systems. As long as they are going to be required (which, ultimately, is fair enough since people want to breathe) then they should not cost thousands to repair when something goes wrong. Catalytic converters, various valves and sensors, etc. can all be so danged expensive/difficult to troubleshoot and replace.

Submitted by: SantaCruzin

Transmissions. The one major and expensive component that I've had to replace five times in my life, across various makes of cars, foreign and domestic. Never had an engine grenade itself under normal use, just one competition engine used in a time trial car. But a transmission? That is what keeps me up at night.

Submitted by: Former Autoblog

Timing belts. They ought to all just be fail-safe chains, with some sort of easily accessed tension adjustment or whatever in case any tweaking is ever needed. It's crazy that OEMs make engines that will absolutely NEED a $1000+ repair at 60, 90 or 120K miles.

Submitted by: BuddyS

Heater cores. And if they can't be made indestructible, they should be easily accessible. And by easily accessible, I mean not involving removing the steering wheel, steering column, and dash.

Submitted by: LBJsPNS

I vote for heater cores.

1. First, they dump anti-freeze on the passenger side floor and the interior stinks for the rest of all time.

2. Second, you have to disassemble the entire dash to get them out and swap them.

3. Third, for years afterward, you can turn on the defrost and have it spray the windshield with old, nasty antifreeze form film.

Ultimately, for months, even years later, you never trust the car, because of the smell and film formation. You keep smelling and seeing anti-freeze and wondering if the water pump is going south, or the radiator has a hole or if a hose is leaking. The car feels like a beater almost instantly when a heater core goes back.

Submitted by: hoser68