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Astroman posted:This will indeed become more prevalent sadly. Apparently the new generation doesn't give a poo poo about car ownership. There's study after study, article after article, and poll after poll saying Gen Y doesn't like cars, doesn't care about them, and many have no desire to ever own a car. I'm fine with it. See I got it figured you can get mad about idiots and their stupid problems, or you can find a way to monitize it and profit from them.
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Sep 7, 2013 23:12
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Bang Me Please posted:Cars are one of the biggest financial investments people will make in their lifetime so knowing a little about them couldn't hurt. I disagree with the notion that a car is an investment. Given that they rarely appreciate, it makes much more sense to think of them as an expense. However a car is usually the second largest expense in a person's monthly budget, so it does make a lot of sense to have some understanding of them, lest the expense of ownership rocket away on you.
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Sep 8, 2013 01:01
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Man, you guys make me want a dash cam so hard. Now that I've got a car with working door locks, I think I'm going to make this a reality. I've seen a few that are integrated rear-view mirrors. Basically they just replace the rear-view you already have. Anyone know if they're any good? My Sportwagen rearview mirror is nothing special, just a piece of glass, so I don't mind dumping it.
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Oct 24, 2013 03:25
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BraveUlysses posted:There's nothing special about the stock sportwagen mirror it does not have auto dimming or garage door controls. Yeah I know, that's what I was saying I think. I was actually kinda taken aback at just how plain and chintzy it seems. It's rather out of place with the rest if the interior. Its like they finished the interior and while it's not fancy or elaborate, it's made from nice, well-fitting materials. Then someone at the last minute realized it didn't have a rearview, ran out to the parts bins and all they could find was a box of 10-year old Daewoo rejects.
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Oct 24, 2013 03:45
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Ponies ate my Bagel posted:I love and hate this thread. It's kind of making me realize I'm "that" rear end in a top hat. I came to that realization when my reason for not getting a dashcam was "I don't want to catch myself doing stupid poo poo". I generally ride a good bit faster than traffic to get into the open spaces between groups of cars. I don't lane-split moving traffic, but I will lane-split cars at stop lights. I guess I should ride like less of a dong. As I've aged and subsequently become more mature, I came to the realization that I drove like a jackass precisely because it was easy. It's easy to run 10-30mph than the rest if traffic, dart between lanes, and cut into lines at the last second. If driving were dogfighting, speed would be altitude. The more you got, the easier it is to maneuver where you want to be. Far harder is driving within and negotiating inside traffic moving at more or less the same speed. My 240d was a great car for me precisely because it took away the advantage of speed. Instead it rewarded careful planning and conservation of momentum. I highly recommend trying out a dreadfully slow car for a while, it'll make a better driver out of just about any enthusiast.
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Oct 31, 2013 02:11
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xzzy posted:Yep.. well I've tried. For much of the mid-west it's not gonna buy me anything. People who have chosen to cruise in the left lane don't give a poo poo what's happening in their mirrors. You can trip these zombie drivers up if you know what you are doing. It's part of what I call "herd theory". Basically I think maybe humans have some latent herd instinct that keeps up bunched up in groups subconsciously. You see this on the roads all the time when there are a bunch of cars all blobbed together going 5mph under the speed limit when there is wide open highway in front of them. Anyway, these zombie drivers that zone out in the left lane tend to be very susceptible to a technique I've developed over the years whereby I creep up alongside them in the right lane, this is tricky because if you come up too fast, they identify you as something not of the herd and because typically they're already pacing a car to the right of them. You have to become that car they're pacing for it to work, you have to be subtle. Anyway, once you become their pace, creep a fender-length or so in front of them and then simply lift off the gas. They'll slow down right with you. Then you can goose it and take their lane in front of them. Obviously the technique requires patience and plenty of uninterrupted road in front of you, but it works frequently enough to be more than coincidence in my estimation.
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Nov 6, 2013 16:34
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Das Volk posted:Now here's a high speed pass Whoa, for those that need it, 150kph equates to just under 100mph. So the videographer's car was doing nearly a ton and got passed like it wasn't moving at all.
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Nov 11, 2013 20:09
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bandman posted:We actually turned away a car one time because the occupants were hot boxing it as they pulled up. No poo poo, the smoke came pouring out when the driver opened the door. I just replaced a radiator on a Subaru that was like that. You could smell this car with the windows closed and the doors shut. I refused to test-drive it after I was done, St. Louis city might be somewhat OK, but in the county where I live, no-way I wanted to deal with that had I got pulled over. Unfortunately this bit me in the rear end as the car slipped the lower hose clamp on the radiator just a few miles away and dumped all it's coolant. So I had to go out and fix it, refill it and whatnot. No biggie I guess, but it something I would have likely caught on a test drive.
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Nov 14, 2013 16:24
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FogHelmut posted:I mean like this I have to admit I've been doing that quite a bit here:  I get on the highway at the Olive and 270 interchange just north of this one (Ladue and 270) every evening for my commute home. The entrance lane from Olive continues all the way to Ladue where it becomes the exit lane, this is a distance of about 1.5 miles. On a typical day all the highway lanes are packed solid crawling less than 5mph except this entrance/exit lane. In order to get into the travel lanes, I have to stop somewhere in the middle of the entrance/exit lane and wait for traffic to crawl forward and someone nice enough to not completely block me from getting in. Meanwhile cars back up behind you and honk because you are blocking a completely wide open lane. So I gave up and just started getting off at the Ladue exit and getting back on. I mean if I get the opportunity I'll take a travel lane, but it doesn't regularly work out that way. Getting off at Ladue and jumping back on also works out pretty nice because the entrance lane from Ladue onto 270 southbound is also the exit lane for I-64/40 Eastbound just a little further South, which is my exit from the hell that is I-270 in St. Louis during evening rush-hour.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:28
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When I drove a tow-truck we weren't allowed to shut the trucks off anywhere but the shop itself. drat things never wanted to restart, so shutting one off might mean you're sitting a while. Also, there was the incident where the other driver of my truck shut off the truck while fueling, it wouldn't restart due to vapor lock, so he dumped fuel down it's throat from the pump, igniting a fire that burned the front half of the truck down. He was fired for that, I mean from his job although he was burnt too. The Scout was similarly a vehicle I'd never shut off at the pump. It was also hard starting when hot, and you frequently had to short the starter to get it to go. Shorting the starter produced sparks, so it was safer just to leave it run. Anything diesel I let run as well. kastein posted:
Which is why points lived on for so long as a technology. 
trouser chili fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Nov 25, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 16:50
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Beach Bum posted:... This is the real reason we all need dashcams, sweet justice.
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Nov 25, 2013 23:14
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Ringo Star Get posted:These are people you share the Tail of the Dragon with: I kept the big green monster in it's lane on the Dragon, these people have no excuse.
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Nov 26, 2013 16:20
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Jonny 290 posted:My current Kryptonite is the Acadia. You see somebody in an Acadia, you know they're late for something really important. I hate these things:    This car is it's generation's Ford Tempo. A vapid little pile of poo poo designed to sell financing plans to idiots to stupid to buy something used and actually affordable within the confines of their budget. Naturally the rear differential is missing, making the high center of gravity and approach/departure/breakover angles useless. They drive like small cars, so the owners zip between lanes like they're in a Civic, but unlike the civic their SUV-like bodies are much better at blocking the vision of the car they just cut off. I'm always getting cut off by one of them. I hate them. I think every single owner of these turdboxes would have been better served buying a car-based station wagon. Too bad they don't exist and those idiots wouldn't have bought them if they did because wagons are uncool. To me, the Escape/Tribute/Mariner is literally the uncoolest ride one regularly sees today. trouser chili fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 16:21
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BLARGHLE posted:Oh, and the guy who did it was in school to become an airplane mechanic. If you don't have the attention to detail required to change oil and rotate tires, then you have no business coming anywhere near anything that flies. Or you just work for Northwest.
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Dec 7, 2013 00:46
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I'm catching up with this thread, and a ways back we were talking about overloaded trucks. We get these guys everywhere in St. Louis. Ratty old pickups with pallets stacked to the sky. I'm assuming these guys just drive around looking for pallets behind buildings to haul back to some pallet hording palletman that's building a spaceship made of pallets or something. The heights these guys are willing to stack their pallets to is astounding. The truck pictured isn't even all that high but it's the best picture I could find of a palletman.
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Dec 30, 2013 17:28
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Crotch Fruit posted:I am prefectly OK with the lady was driving. Yeah she could have been going faster, but it did appear she was at least maintaining a consistent speed and was passing two trucks in the right hand lane. Also, according to the youtube description, she was going to be turning left soon. I agree, and after brotruck does it's brospin across four lanes into a treebro, you can see she pulls into a left turn lane, presumably to make the left she was planning on. This also doesn't appear to be a highway. It's something closer to a county road. I'm not sure if keep right except to pass applies to county roads or in my state, I presume it's different everywhere. I always keep right for the most part regardless, but if I've got a left coming up I'm keeping my lane because lord knows by the time I've got to make a move, some assbro will be blocking my lane change. Also, I really don't have too much a problem with someone holding a phone while driving. It's not really what you're holding so much as where your attention is when driving, and given her performance at keeping the subject centered in frame, I'm gonna say she was giving it little attention. trouser chili fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 01:53
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a real rear end nigga posted:whats the best use of money if I want extremely loud horn(s)? Had a girl slowly try to switch lanes into me without looking despite me holding down the horn the whole time. I put a pair of Stebel TM-80 magnums on the 250c because the stock horns were busted . They are loud and sound fantastic. A lot of people talk up the Stebel Nautilus, real popular with the motorcycle guys, they're very loud but they're also pretty high pitched. The TM-80 magnums say "I'm a big bad car and you're about to be in a big bad way", and they say that message at the same SPL (139 db @ 2 meters) as the much-loved Nautilus. trouser chili fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 05:15
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xergm posted:Until we change the mentality on how we travel, I just can't see taking cars off the road, either through inspections, enforcement, etc. actually working effectively until you can say "oh that sucks, but there's still the train/bus/metro" when your car is deemed unsafe. I just watched an interesting video about that and car culture in the US. It focuses on what it calls the "stroad". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6jFnOnjzrk They make a fairly convincing argument. Unfortunately it appears to be a difficult and expensive problem to fix at this point. I mean, we're 60 years into suburban sprawl and it's entirely criss-crossed with stroads.
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Jun 27, 2014 15:58
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Astonishing Wang posted:Look at this motherfucker parking directly in front of my driveway. I'd have drug out my 4 ton floor jack, shoved it under the rear of that thing and heaved it's rear end out into the middle of the street.
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Aug 7, 2014 22:25
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Until you go to air, you're going to be somewhat limited in your ability to generate sound. The Stebel Magnums might be the peak in so far as electrics go. It was the best I could find about a year ago. They have a nice authoritative tone and are certainly loud.
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Aug 10, 2014 20:15
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JBark posted:The "technical" red light running is the big one I never noticed before. This is entering when the light is already yellow and turns red while still in the intersection. Illegal almost everywhere, but I see if all the time, and do it myself more times than I care to admit. I suppose that's the overconfidence effect kicking it, we all think we've got plenty of time until it turns red. You are completely incorrect about the illegality of this in the state of Missouri, which given the fact isn't progressive or much of a stand-out in any way legislatively is likely to be a pretty good bellwether for the rest of the nation. The relevant statutes can be found here: http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/C300-399/3040000281.HTM More specifically, these two statutes are most important. (a) Vehicular traffic facing a steady yellow signal is thereby warned that the related green movement is being terminated or that a red indication will be exhibited immediately thereafter when vehicular traffic shall not enter the intersection; and (a) Vehicular traffic facing a steady red signal alone shall stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection at a clearly marked stop line but, if none, then before entering the intersection and shall remain standing until an indication to proceed is shown except as provided in paragraph (b); The key word in these statutes is "enter". You may not enter the intersection on red. Once entered, you command right-of-way in your direction of travel till clearing the intersection. If in the event the light turns red while you are in the intersection it is of no consequence, as you have already entered the intersection.
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Aug 29, 2014 14:58
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xzzy posted:
It sounds more like petty people given a modicum of power turn into assholes.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:12
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Here's Tuesday. Here's Wednesday.  Here's today, Thursday. 
trouser chili fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 01:53
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CharlieWhiskey posted:I think most Americans cognitively lump pay-at-the-pump with prepay because we are touching the magic money card before pumping. True pre-pay requires waddling all the way inside. Technically, swiping the card before pumping charges $1 to make sure the card works, then replaces that $1 charge with the final full charge after pumping. For some folks, it lingers as a $1 charge on their bank website for a week. That's not quite how credit card processing works. When you scan a card for an amount, any amount, the card runs though clearing house with an AUTH command, and a dollar amount. It's basically asking, "is this car authorized for this dollar amount?" and will get a yes/no answer. Typically a gas station pay-at-pump will AUTH for something between 50-100 dollars. It does this because it doesn't know how much fuel will be bought yet, so the programming just assumes a dollar amount greater than what your typical fuel purchase is. This causes problems for people with large tanks, and this problem was exacerbated by fuel prices when they reached $4 a gallon. At that point people driving minivans had to AUTH twice just to fill their tanks. All AUTHs automatically fall off the account after a set period of time. They do NOT affect account balance permanently. However the clearing houses pay attention to the AUTHs out there and won't allow you to have AUTHs totaling more than your credit amount. Settlement is the process were the actual charges are laid to the account. Settlement happens hours later, often at night. If you could disrupt the process between settlement and AUTH , it is possible to get things for free. You'd have to attack whatever device was going to complete the settlement, which is likely a server sitting in a data center somewhere where you'll never find it, but it's a fun thought project.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:16
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