Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

AiR said:
Haha rear passenger visibility FAIL! That's one messed up rear door! :D
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It's not bad at all in person. I didn't notice any visibility problems from the rear seat or looking over the shoulder as a driver.

Of course, it most certainly is not rear wheel drive...
 
good news everybody, the dacia sandero is pretty tail happy, as i've found out on an interchange's loop today.

sadly some unexpected driving skills on my behalf kept me from writing "good news everybody, there is one less dacia sandero on the road." :D
 
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I saw a 59 caddie hardtop and a 72 mustang for sale at the same lot today........security is nonexistant, logistical its a breeze, but the damn place is on one off the most travelled roads in the country in plain sight :think:
 
It's worth the risk for the Caddie.

Maybe save your skin for a more desirable mustang.
 
Cowboy said:
I saw a 59 caddie hardtop and a 72 mustang for sale at the same lot today........security is nonexistant, logistical its a breeze, but the damn place is on one off the most travelled roads in the country in plain sight :think:
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Pics?

JipJopJones said:
It's worth the risk for the Caddie.

Maybe save your skin for a more desirable mustang.
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That depends on just which 59 Caddy he's looking at.

hbriz said:
It was apparently to make the car look like it was rear-wheel drive. Quite how they can do that by having stupid rear doors is beyond me, but that was the point.
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Actually, it was done to make the car look like a specific rear wheel drive car - the current Dodge Charger. It was an attempt to make Dodge have a 'family look' to the sedans and it was pretty much a miserable failure as the look does not scale well.
 
 
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Nice! I mean, it's still ugly, but I definitely wouldn't mind being driven in it from a pub. Can't imagine the driver makes a lot of money, though. Then again, it's most likely a Porsche promo thing as the S-GO plates are often used on Porsche factory cars.
 
In a given year I figure I probably drive 250-300 individual cars. Between test driving a customer's car for appraisal, dropping cars off or picking up cars for service, testing new cars that we get in, driving my official demo or others cars it all adds up. I mean just so far today I have driven three different cars and will probably drive two more before the end of the day. Yeah some of them it is just around the block for a few miles but it is still another separate car.

I have never been stranded by a Land Rover, Volvo or SAAB. Most of my early demos were Land Rovers and some others were Volvos.

You figure if you are going to have a break down on the road and get stranded it would happen in the Land Rover right? I mean especially the Freelander demo that I had for my first demo or the old Disco that I had for the second. In fact of all the people I work with only one has ever had Land Rover strand them and that wasn't really the cars fault he ran over a random bit of jagged metal in the road which blew out the back passenger tire.

So what breaks down on my Monday? The Subaru Outback I started driving a couple of months ago.

I hear this kind of ringing noise sounds like a lose chain on a motorcycle but I don't see a motorcycle around and I probably couldn't hear a noise that soft anyway. I turn the radio off and try to listen but now the sound is gone. I wait a could more minutes turn radio back on keep driving.

Just a little while later I start smelling a burning rubber smell and now I know something is wrong. About this time I notice the battery light is on and I hit the first real turn on this road and oops no power steering. Grrr most have thrown the serpentine belt. I drive for another mile or so till I get to a place I can turn off safely and shut the engine off.

Pop the hood and one of the idler pulleys has worked its way lose making the belt get thrown.

What are the odds? That is the third time a Subaru has broken down on me and left me stuck. Granted the other two times were on a Subaru with over 150,000 miles but still if anything was going to break don't you think it would be the 85,000 mile Discovery?
 
So the anti-roll bar on the ass-end of my ZX2 had the bolts at both ends shear off around a corner today. It's a corner with some real fucked up suspension articulation required to get around it.

Imagine this: an intersection between two roads- one going up a hill going N/S, one going up a hill E/W, with a giant hump directly on the threshold, so what happens is that your front wheels are on the N/S hill plane, at different articulations because you're at an angle to it, the right rear is on the E/W hill plane, and the left rear is all the way up on the hump .

It was dangling by its hanger brackets and smacking the road - so I zip-tied it up in place on one end so it can't do so (and the zip ties won't break because the other end is just hanging)

Fuck Pennsylvania.

I should be able to just buy new bushings and bolts, and re-bolt the existing bar in place, right?
 
EyeMWing said:
In related news, the actual bar is cheaper than the fucking bushings.

Fuuuuuuuuu.
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Not that unusual. It's relatively common for one bar to fit multiple applications - but the part that differs is the end links and bushings, especially with import applications (and yes, your ZX is an import application, having started out life as a Mazda 323.)
 
EyeMWing said:
Started life as a Mazda 323 and got resized to fit only 12 year old girls.
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Wait! What are you putting in your car's trunk?
 
Saw this out the other day

https://pic.armedcats.net/c/cr/crazyrussian540/2010/04/22/IMG_0077.JPG

And I can't tell if its carbage or not. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the front but he had really dumb cutouts on the hood, although some might actually think its tasteful. Also I had a small suspicion that it wasn't a real M3 (in which case it would absolutely be carbage). But just from a cosmetic point of view from this angle?
 
If it isn't a real one, then someone has gone to a lot of effort widening the rear track and adding the central exhausts.
 
^ You'd be surprised.
When I was in Germany a few summers ago, I was talking to the receptionist at my hotel (just started a convo after I noticed he had a W203 C32 AMG), and the topic of fake Ms and AMGs came up. He told me that people that initially can't afford an M or AMG will buy a regular spec car, and then over the course of a couple years mod it up to look like the proper car. People will spend more money over the course of a few years to get their 335s to cosmetically look identical to M3s than if they had waited and bought an M3 straight up. Only once the car cosmetically looks identical to the real thing will they start worrying about performance.

He told me of his friend who bought a E46 328 coupe for ?6000, and then spent ?35000 over the course of 4 years to make it look like an M3. Left the engine/suspension stock. I just looked on ebay.de, and you can get an E46 M3 for ?20000.
 
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