GM wont make a trap door. They would never grace technicians (I am one at a chevy dealership) with such pleasures. If they were to make a trap door, they should have on the c5 vettes. With those you have to drop the exhaust just to get to the tanks. I sometimes wonder with the designs if Chevy engineers ever even think of a technician having to work on a car/truck when designing something. (Ie 6.6L diesel vans )

 

That's exactly how my friend who used to be a GM service manager feels as well...

 

I think about that on a good number of the foreign cars when doing a simple thing.. an oil change. There's some model Infinity where I've never been able to even GET the to filter. And I have very small hands. Suzuki has some terrible designs...

It's ridiculous. Sometimes I burn the **** out of my arms on the exhaust just trying to change the filter. Sometimes I wonder why I bother

 

I'm a natural cynic, so take the following for what it's worth.

Do you really think that GM would waste extra design or manufacturing money/time/effort to create something that would enable the fuel pump to be changed in less than an hour? GM could care less.

I'm sure some Chevy dealer mechs know the real numbers, but being that I don't, I'll go ahead and GUESS that labor is $60 an hour and the standard time to change the pump (to include removing the exhaust, suspension, and tank) is 6 hours.

I can see an engineer talking to someone up top now: "Hey guys, here's a GREAT idea, lets design an access panel so you can change the fuel pump from inside the trunk. Wouldn't it be swell if our customers only had to pay our service departments $60 in labor instead of $360 to have a fuel pump changed?" I think the silence would be deafening.

......like I said though, I'm a cynic!

 

As well as GM not being able to justify charging ONE MEEELIIEEEEOOOON DOLLARSSSSS to change out a pump.

 

I think that there is a really good possability that they will put one in there. I had to replace the fuel pump in my 2002 Grand Prix this morning and I found (to my surprise) that there was an access panel in the trunk for it. Took me about an hour to do it.