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Grumbletron 4000 posted:There were the first anti theft stereos where the whole unit slid out of its chassis. A flip out handle would allow you to carry it around with you. Nobody could steal your stereo but you looked like a tool toting the thing around. I remember those! My dad had one for his Wrangler so he could keep the radio in the house overnight since soft-top Wranglers were comically easy to break into and stuff would go missing when the neighbors would have a party. He got a second chassis thing for the boat so when we got to the boat launch he could pull the radio out of the Jeep and put it in the boat instead of having to buy a second one.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:15
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GWBBQ posted:I am nostalgic for the purestrain '80s that was the 300ZX dashboard Ha! That was the exact dash that I had in my mind when I wrote that, but I couldn't remember if it was in the Maxima or the 300ZX.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:33
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JnnyThndrs posted:Ha! That was the exact dash that I had in my mind when I wrote that, but I couldn't remember if it was in the Maxima or the 300ZX. I love how everything is THE FUTURE. Except for the odometer tucked down at the bottom left. I'm guessing they hadn't figured out how to make a digital one tamper proof at that point.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:57
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Cat Hatter posted:I remember those! My dad had one for his Wrangler so he could keep the radio in the house overnight since soft-top Wranglers were comically easy to break into and stuff would go missing when the neighbors would have a party. He got a second chassis thing for the boat so when we got to the boat launch he could pull the radio out of the Jeep and put it in the boat instead of having to buy a second one. You reminded me that those stereos were great for Jeep and boat guys. You could just yank the thing out if things were gonna get muddy or splashy. Non boat related, but back when the pull outs were the thing I knew a guy that had an Alpine CD player and the almost identical cassette player. The chassis was identical for both so he could swap them out on the go. It was amazingly cool at the time.
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Oct 24, 2015 10:12
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When the 90s CD-Player Fairy visited me, she took my head unit and disc 2 of that bomb rear end Led Zeppelin box set with the crop circles on the front, and left my faceplate. It was fun finding a new window at a junkyard on highschool fast food pay as my present. vv well that's significantly worse. My car was a 1981 poo poo-brown civic, and I was mainly upset they broke the window because literally anything worked as a key. SLOSifl has a new favorite as of 00:09 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 24, 2015 23:23
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SLOSifl posted:When the 90s CD-Player Fairy visited me, she took my head unit and disc 2 of that bomb rear end Led Zeppelin box set with the crop circles on the front, and left my faceplate. It was fun finding a new window at a junkyard on highschool fast food pay as my present. I hate that poo poo - back in high school I had a beater 92 Sunbird, did some minor cleaning/polishing and tossed a set of super cheap K-mart special hubcaps on it. A month later, me, my friend and our girlfriends went to a late movie together in my car, and when we came out all my hubcaps were gone. Nothing else broken into, nothing else damaged or tampered with, and the new stereo I'd just installed was still neatly tucked in its place. It was in a super nice part of town too, the combination of events just had all of us like "..really?"
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Oct 24, 2015 23:56
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flosofl posted:I love how everything is THE FUTURE. That you think those old style odometers were in any way 'tamper proof' gave me a good chuckle - back in the 80s and 90s odometer tampering was completely endemic here in the land of second hand Japanese imports.
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Oct 25, 2015 00:24
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I had a crook remove my passenger side window, without breaking it, set and leaned against the car, and only stole a pack of fig newtons and some spare change. The mechanic didn't believe me when I told him what happened
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Oct 25, 2015 00:56
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I always keep my biscuits in my car. Hope no ne-er-do-well steals them!
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Oct 25, 2015 00:58
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When my car got broken into in the early 90s all they did, apart from hammering out both my door locks (driver and passenger sides!) was take my Tubular Bells double cassette album. At least they had taste, I guess?
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Oct 25, 2015 01:13
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blugu64 posted:I had a crook remove my passenger side window, without breaking it, set and leaned against the car, and only stole a pack of fig newtons and some spare change. The mechanic didn't believe me when I told him what happened One of by roommates had is car broken into - they stole a coffee cup, and the bulb out of the dome light.
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Oct 25, 2015 01:22
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dissss posted:That you think those old style odometers were in any way 'tamper proof' gave me a good chuckle - back in the 80s and 90s odometer tampering was completely endemic here in the land of second hand Japanese imports. A not to smart friend of mine spent a near eternity every evening with an RC car motor hooked up to a odometres cog trying to spin it all the way around and back to where he wanted it to match the engine he bought (something about a fancy new dash from another car that is compatible). He was that anal he fell asleep doing it and was 1000k over....so onward he went again! I've changed my digital one on my current car when I did a dash swap. It was a little convoluted and you can't for some reason cannot get it perfect, but I got within 100km and I was fine with that.
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Oct 25, 2015 01:47
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I had to break into my VW bug once with art supplies I had in my truck. So yeah. If you can open your locked door with watercolor brushes then you probably have a very easy car to break into.
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Oct 25, 2015 02:06
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Krispy Kareem posted:I had to break into my VW bug once with art supplies I had in my truck. So yeah. If you can open your locked door with watercolor brushes then you probably have a very easy car to break into. It really is amazing how easy some locks are to open. After a party I needed to move my friends motorbike so I could get my car out of the garage. As I was hungover I grabbed the closest set of keys that I didn't recognize and managed to get the bike started and moved. Only hours later we realized I had used a Suzuki 4WD key to unlock and move a Huskvana.
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Oct 25, 2015 02:42
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I worked at a place that had a car park which was a hotbed for organized theft; they would wait in stolen cars for someone to leave a laptop, bash and grab, then drive off to meet up with their mate in another stolen getaway car. The general advice was to just keep everything unlocked as your window and locks weren't worth the 20c pieces you left on the dash. Keyless entry  Once we all stood in amazement staring at a mate's car which had iffy central locking and would repeatedly lock and unlock itself as if it were possessed.
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Oct 25, 2015 02:46
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My mom had a minivan we jokingly said was haunted. The power sliding doors would open and close themselves incessantly for no apparent reason. We got diligent about making sure they were locked but they would still try sometimes, making a repetitive whine-tunk noise as it attempted to open but was thwarted by it's own lock.
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Oct 25, 2015 07:28
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Humphreys posted:It really is amazing how easy some locks are to open. After a party I needed to move my friends motorbike so I could get my car out of the garage. As I was hungover I grabbed the closest set of keys that I didn't recognize and managed to get the bike started and moved. Only hours later we realized I had used a Suzuki 4WD key to unlock and move a Huskvana. I'm sad weird 'features' like that are obsolete.
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Oct 25, 2015 08:33
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Top Gear demonstrated this perfectly with jump starting a Vauxhall Nova with it's hazard lights button. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNdygguAMQA Immobilizers tend to fix that or you pull out the unit and tweak it so it can't complete a circuit when plugged in upside down. There used to be all sorts of interesting wiring routes in old cars where they'd double up on circuits, so for instance in some cars the rear lights were on the same run as the alarm system, so just break the light before getting into the car. I have heard of people driving off in the wrong car because it was the same model and colour and the key worked.
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Oct 25, 2015 09:36
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GWBBQ posted:I am nostalgic for the purestrain '80s that was the 300ZX dashboard The Honda Civic dashboard is probably the closest modern equivalent:  Krispy Kareem posted:I had to break into my VW bug once with art supplies I had in my truck. So yeah. If you can open your locked door with watercolor brushes then you probably have a very easy car to break into. When I was a really little kid I picked the lock on my dad's Oldsmobile with the tine on a leaf rake. The tine was still attached to the rake at this time so this process also involved dragging the rest of the rake across the paint. The_Franz has a new favorite as of 15:09 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 15:01
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New Volvos are pretty funky too. The speedo and the two elements to the sides of it are just one big TFT display. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqxXnl7Os0c&t=44s
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Oct 25, 2015 15:20
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Krispy Kareem posted:I had to break into my VW bug once with art supplies I had in my truck. So yeah. If you can open your locked door with watercolor brushes then you probably have a very easy car to break into. Sure enough, it turned up in a mall parking lot on the other side of the bay a couple days later, no worse for wear. The police were dealing with another stolen-car report and saw ours sitting out in the lot way after closing time—the guys who jacked it apparently swapped it out for another Civic when ours ran low on gas.
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Oct 25, 2015 17:42
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The_Franz posted:The Honda Civic dashboard is probably the closest modern equivalent: When I was around the beginning of high school, we had a 1989 Lincoln Town Car that we got for a song after our GM Equinox was recalled due to instances of spontaneous combustion. Looked exactly like this one. We called it the Millennium Falcon and it was almost literally a land yacht, with white leather bench seats and wood paneling. The dash was digital readout, something you sure as hell didn't see coming in this late 80s grandpa car. 
chitoryu12 has a new favorite as of 18:41 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 18:37
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chitoryu12 posted:When I was around the beginning of high school, we had a 1989 Lincoln Town Car that we got for a song after our GM Equinox was recalled due to instances of spontaneous combustion. Looked exactly like this one. We called it the Millennium Falcon and it was almost literally a land yacht, with white leather bench seats and wood paneling. The dash was digital readout, something you sure as hell didn't see coming in this late 80s grandpa car. Oh I think my dad had this same car! He loved Lincolns, swore by them, and one had a digital dash. It's what started my love of digital dashboards, it looked so cool to sci-fi loving me. And yes, the thing was a tank. Also I already want a 300zx, now I want one with a digital dashboard.
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Oct 25, 2015 19:31
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chitoryu12 posted:The dash was digital readout, something you sure as hell didn't see coming in this late 80s grandpa car. Didn't these have a voice synthesiser at some point? The British motor industry tried that on the 80s Austin Maestro and Montego - the top-spec versions had VFD digital dashboard and then a voice synth which would, at the touch of a button, tell you your instant and average fuel consumption, fuel range and average speed as well as verbal warnings about fuel level, oil level, engine temperature etc. Except that not only was this 1980s digital technology; it was British 1980s digital technology. The dashboard was co-developed by Lucas and Smiths and then fitted to an Austin. So the voice synthesiser would usually nag the driver to fill up with fuel just as they pulled out off the forecourt with a full tank, would overreact to oil surge when cornering and would warn you that you'd left the lights on as you drove down the motorway at 70mph. And the quality of the synthesiser is terrible - the voice actress sounds like she's talking from the bottom of a pond. Worst of all, it wasn't even a very imaginative digital dash - where's the tachometer shaped like the engine's power curve? Where are the fighter jet motifs? 
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Oct 25, 2015 19:34
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dissss posted:That you think those old style odometers were in any way 'tamper proof' gave me a good chuckle - back in the 80s and 90s odometer tampering was completely endemic here in the land of second hand Japanese imports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pks7q2qyM-s
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Oct 25, 2015 19:46
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Code Jockey posted:Oh I think my dad had this same car! He loved Lincolns, swore by them, and one had a digital dash. It's what started my love of digital dashboards, it looked so cool to sci-fi loving me. And yes, the thing was a tank. We got it for so cheap because it had a bad radiator. We were driving from Orlando to Detroit in I think 2006 (the summer before I started high school) and we suddenly began overheating just before the Georgia border. We had a surreal adventure in a tiny town that was quite difficult to find on a map. I think it was Jennings, FL. Anyway, we got the car fixed up by Mr. Padgett, an elderly man who looked like Santa Claus and had us sitting in a barn full of very sharp implements watching Gunsmoke on his old TV while he fixed us up. He predicted we couldn't get further than Atlanta, but we made it all the way to Michigan and back with no further breakdowns and the car lasted another year or so before we finally replaced it with a newer Saturn. When you say it's a tank, it's a tank. An SUV rear-ended my mom once when she was driving it and the car didn't even get a scuff while the vehicle that hit her ended up crumpled. One especially stupid kid rode a bicycle with no brakes into my driveway and smashed straight into the side and didn't mar the paint job. Only downside was, you know, not reliably working.
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Oct 25, 2015 20:17
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BalloonFish posted:Didn't these have a voice synthesiser at some point? The British motor industry tried that on the 80s Austin Maestro and Montego - the top-spec versions had VFD digital dashboard and then a voice synth which would, at the touch of a button, tell you your instant and average fuel consumption, fuel range and average speed as well as verbal warnings about fuel level, oil level, engine temperature etc. That voice actress was Nicolette Mckenzie. Last year she took a break from her busy schedule to attend the Maestro and Montego's birthday celebrations:  quote:Nicolette herself travelled up from London to meet the owners of the cars keeping her voice alive. She entertained everyone by giving live renditions of ‘The boot is open. The boot is OPEN. THE BOOT IS OPEN’ as she had to record them. That's showbiz!
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Oct 25, 2015 22:00
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BalloonFish posted:Didn't these have a voice synthesiser at some point?  Languagehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMxdFwCU1OE
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Oct 25, 2015 22:30
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Look Mom! For only $14,999 everyone in the neighborhood can have a 4th generation copy of my super awesome fan subbed Bubblegum Crisis. How much do you love me?
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Oct 25, 2015 22:45
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Lazlo Nibble posted:When our '97 Civic got stolen a few years back, the cops said those things are so easy to break into by shaving down an old key that thieves basically use them as free public transportation. (This was downtown Oakland, but still.) The_Franz posted:The Honda Civic dashboard is probably the closest modern equivalent: In my case I used two paintbrushes to pry open the vent window and a third longer brush slid horizontally across to lift up the door lock. Tada!!! Cars without remote key fobs are very obsolete.
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Oct 25, 2015 23:41
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It's not just cars. We once got locked out of our house when everyone forgot their door key and had to ask the police to call in their locksmith. Nice gent, former B&E specialist who went to work for the law when he got out of prison because they paid him £50 per out-of-hours callout. It literally took him more time to say "Watch this" than it did to open the lock. So, two things that should be obsolete: Yale locks, and crime.
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Oct 26, 2015 00:13
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Like the Keurig coffee brewer? Like cold soda? Well have I got a doomed to fail product for you! Its called Keurig Kold(get it? K instead of C? Because Keurig? Hah!). It costs $370. Its huge, its loud, and only dispenses 8 oz servings. The reviews have been brutal: quote:"This thing is an absolute monster," one customer wrote on Keurig's website. "I already struggle with counter space. It's huge and very deep." Pods are expensive: quote:Coca-Cola soda pods are being sold in packs of four for $4.99. That means every pod is about $1.25. Meanwhile, 2-liter bottles of soda sell for under $2 in grocery stores. One reviewer received one for free to review and: quote:"I would not buy this product," he wrote. "It is far from economical and there is no convenience benefit. The pods are almost as large as buying a can of soda. The machine is also too large to keep on the countertop, taking up almost as much room as my microwave. It is also loud — hums louder than the refrigerator on standby." Coca-Cola has invested $2.4 Billion in Keurig ahead of the Kold's launch. They have lost $1billion so far. 
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Oct 26, 2015 00:16
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ThePoxBox posted:Look Mom! For only $14,999 everyone in the neighborhood can have a 4th generation copy of my super awesome fan subbed Bubblegum Crisis. How much do you love me? Thanks for the flashback to KatsuCon 1 and 2. Daisy-chaining about 6 VCRs to copy Legend of the Overfiend and other such poo poo. So glad to be out of anime.
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Oct 26, 2015 00:22
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ThePoxBox posted:Look Mom! For only $14,999 everyone in the neighborhood can have a 4th generation copy of my super awesome fan subbed Bubblegum Crisis. How much do you love me? Could be worse, you could have had it on VCD.
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Oct 26, 2015 00:25
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XYZ posted:Like the Keurig coffee brewer? Like cold soda? Well have I got a doomed to fail product for you! My first thought was "Why would I buy this over the already existing Soda Stream which is cheaper, smaller, and quieter?" My second though was "Why would I buy a Soda Stream when Kroger branded generic soda is $0.50 for 2 litters?"
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Oct 26, 2015 00:56
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BalloonFish posted:Didn't these have a voice synthesiser at some point?
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Oct 26, 2015 01:31
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Holy poo poo and I thought the Keurig 2.0's DRM thing was the worst. How loving dumb can one company be?
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Oct 26, 2015 01:32
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XYZ posted:New Keurig Keurig: An over-complicated, expensive way to make a small amount of lovely coffee. What the gently caress was Coke thinking? Will they eventually come out with Keurig Kold Klassic at some point?
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Oct 26, 2015 02:03
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Probably 'we have more money than God and more power than most countries let's give it a shot'
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Oct 26, 2015 02:04
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Lowen SoDium posted:My first thought was "Why would I buy this over the already existing Soda Stream which is cheaper, smaller, and quieter?" Some people like carrot soda, man. 
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Oct 26, 2015 02:23
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