balthazar

Sorry to hear it, BV. Any leads on something else, or too soon yet? -- -- -- -- -- >>"We need somehow to regain the ideas of personal responsibility that made our nation great in the first place."<< We're all too stupid to accomplish that- the Gov knows best & will provide for all of us. >>"Perhaps Cubical/Moltar and Oldsmoboi will be the last two guys at cheers and gears to be employed?"<< Hey, can I get on that short list? I got work pouring out both ears. 6 days/wk... sometimes 7... sometimes + evenings.

7 years seems to be the average long-side expectation for modern batteries. But while we're on batteries here, can anyone explain the OMG so much better modern car battery ?? Used to be a battery toward the sunset of it's life would crank slower, giving you a tidy nudge it was going. But now you drive somewhere, get back in & pfft; nothing, and you are stranded. Is this a result of lobbying by the towing industry, or what ??

^ That's the wife's car, not mine. Only the 'clunker' was mine. Where you'd find the irony is that I drive a Silverado 2500HD. Certainly not my first choice, hemmed & hawed over it quite a bit, bought it (an '04) in '06. The original owner only wanted wholesale, not retail value, and the spread there was $5K. Hard to pass up, esp with my F-150 at 146K and with only a regular cab. 37K miles later... it's a great truck, suits every one of my needs, but I'm not in love with it as I've been with most of my other daily drivers. -- -- -- -- -- BTW- this is the only Chevy I've had (are we really going to count the shell of a '63 Nova convert I owned for 2 weeks??), and I've owned 7 Pontiacs.

Very sorry to hear your state of the union, Camino. I have short-term work for you right outside of Princeton if you want it- finishing off a monster deck. Having driven it; commuting is out, but it you could swing staying closer, I could use the help.

1. Pontiac 2. Cadillac 3. Buick 4. 5. 6. GMC 7. 8. 9. Olds 10. Chevy 11. Saturn

Never mind that; where's Nikki ??

What's with the profile shot of a DynaFlow transmission in the middle ??

I don't see the problem... -- -- -- -- -- >>A jury has convicted an 80-year-old Wilmington, Del. woman of abusing her 82-year-old husband by forcing him to live at the family junkyard with a pot for bathing and couch to sleep on. Shirley M. Wilson told jurors she pulled her husband, who was a stroke victim, out of nursing home and set him up in a backroom of their office at the junkyard so he could "come home and get to work," according to The News Journal. Wilson represented herself. Last week's trial lasted three days and then jurors convicted Wilson of elderly abuse. Don Wilson was found lying on the couch in a soiled diaper and pajama top in late March when a Delaware State Police trooper went to the scrapyard to investigate a theft report. The victim had bed sores, was dirty, malnourished, dehydrated and suffering from dementia, according to court testimony. He was supposed to be getting around-the-clock care. Shirley Wilson said her husband was as bad off as everyone made it seem and that she had expected to see him in court for the trial. "I don't know about this mental capacity stuff. You people should see my husband," she told jurors. Prosecutors said Wilson had plenty of assets, but refused to pay for her ailing husband's care. Shirley Wilson faces up to 10 years in prison. She'll be sentenced in January.<< First Published: Nov 2, 2009

Yikes: 3 ! You are a man among men, IMO. I always said '2 kids is really like having 3'... my buddy has 3 and to my eye/ear it seems like 5. 2 was enough for me; I built a 3-bedroom house as a sort of mental birth control to boot. Good luck to you & your new, to-be-larger family !

Worked last Saturday. Worked all last week. Worked yesterday, and today (10:30-5:30). Will split tomm (9am-2ish on Job 1, then 3-ish until I drop on Job 2, hopefully around 10). Hoping beyond hope to get maybe 10 hrs in Tuesday on Job 2. Back to Job 1 for at least 2 weeks starting Wednesday. Meanwhile, Job 3 & Job 4 from this past weekend still need finishing touches. They're both outside & dependant on decent weather. Weekday evenings are out because of daylight constrictions. Weekends are getting increasingly colder. 2500HD serpentine belt tensioner started squealing yesterday. What's a 'B-59' ??

^ My self-dubbed handle when I was in the same office for 11 years. -- -- -- -- -- Is it possible to simultaneously be stressed/ harried, yet also be increasingly bored ?? I should go work on an old car or something....

Add me to the 'can't listen to a whole Dylan song' list. I get the influence, but not the execution. Same with Hendrix- great guitar playing for his genre, but stay away from the mic.

>>"...I feel the high trunks are still a product of styling and functionality, and then aerodynamics... I'm not saying the high trunks aren't aerodynamic, but are definitely not on par with a perfect teardrop."<< I don't disagree with this... but I would also believe that the on-paper start for modern cars assums certain things, like cowl height, windshield angle... and quite possibly 'rear cowl' / trunk height WRT the substructure/platform. 'Givens', if you will. How those points you mention above rank... IF they rank, I don't know. But I'm with Camino; want to get me to sit up out of my chair ? Debut something with the 3-box proportions of a '64 Catalina : all 4 corners visible to the driver, hood & decklid on the same plane. We haven't seen that since (for the most part) the 1970s. In fact, when I first noticed the break away from the 'same plane' 3-box car was on Cadillacs starting in '77- the rear fender peak rose noticably to the backlight, there was a lower, horizontal character line that ran thru the beltline, then carried thru to the hood bow, while the front fender peak was lower still. You can see it here well enough : Eldos did the same technical thing '71-78, but there was a lot more going on with the peaked fenders, etc. Is there an earlier example of this ?

You DO realize that was all facetious, or did I get 'Ed' and the piano right ? C'mon DF, untwist a bit, the weekend's here.

"Now, DF, this is your grandpop! Grandpop Ed ... you remember, don't you?" "N-not really; did I see him earlier today, mom?" "No, but you've seen him a good 2 dozen times.... and there's the pictures on the piano....." "Pffft! I don't waste my time lookin' at those old things when I can daydream about the World of Tomorrow! I wanna soar!" "That's quite enough of that, young man! Go wash your face for dinner!" "But mom, surely I washed my face... at some point recently.... {I just can't remember when...}." Trudges off, but reappears momentarily. "Mom! Which way to the bathroom, and why am I headed there?" The end. :wink:

^ I guess it's not, but it's close. It's also not a typical wagon rear end. Not my cup of moonshine, but smo-ooooooth.

Ahh: I gaffed on the grille. '63-64: same, '65-66: same, '67-68: same. My bad. -- -- -- -- -- >>"I don't like living in the past. What's done is done, and I'd rather look toward the future than let the past bog me down."<< So do you have to be re-introduced to your relatives each time you meet them ?

'dat you, Camino ?? Dig the '67 Travelall !! Hell yes, life was more simple then. Doesn't unilaterally make it 'better', but it was simpler. My son is in the basement hammering on something that started with a flattened aluminum Coke can he cut apart. I love that he's not glued to a screen (at the moment) and is actually accomplishing something..... I should go check on what it may be....

SAmadei - >>"One of the most aerodynamic cars of all time is the 3rd gen Firebirds... granted, they aren't a 3-box, but they don't have a high decklid."<< But they're 'fastbacks' via the backlight... I believe the wind tunnel 'sees' them very much the same as a high trunklid with a more vertical backlight. When the T/A came out in '82, Pontiac advertised it as having a cd of .29 (or was it .32??) ... and those awful 'bowling ball' wheelcovers were part of that. A few years later, with deep cast rims & more aggressive details and that number was no longer met. >>"Anyway, if high decklids improve aerodynamics, wouldn't stawags be good for aerodynamics? Though that doesn't seem to be the case, unless its a Kammback."<< No, because the typical 'abrupt' ends of them creates too much turbulence. Teardrop / fastbacks are the best general shape- the longer the better. Kammbacks tend to be smaller and have more angled rear fascias than traditional wagons. But it's hard to look at a given car and judge it's number.... but anyone can see the trends since wind tunel testing became SOP.

>>"Alyssa is attractive, but her chest is purchased. "<< Was it? (Not that I care in the least; my motto: 'As long as there's no duct tape or pop rivets, I'm in'.) She's been topless in the past- they aren't overdone at all... a LOT of what you see on a woman is enabled by understructure. Elizabeth Hurley is a good case study here. Alyssa is very attractive, tho she had so many different looks. Catherine Bell is too, but there's something off-putting about her face, an underlying dourness, to my eye. She's sure is racked, tho. -- -- -- -- -- (with all these '70s sitcom references... Wanna feel old ??

Modern stuff is definately narrow in general. High decklids are byproducts of aerodynamics - don't expect a return to a -say- '65 Corvair 3-box profile anytime soon.... I would agree with the assessment of the Malibu; looks 'normal' from the front but somehow narrower from the rear. Doesn't really bother me. Rear fascia is rather tall & flat & the plate is in the bumper - must be some of it. BTW- Malibus are at this point all over the place by me....

OK; looked it up. "An industry first", Buick offered turn signals integrated with the trunk emblem, standard across the line, for the '39 MY... but interestingly there were no front turn signals.

Good question. Without looking this up, I recall Buick offering turn signals in the rear circa '47. I believe this is the first, but undoubtedly there was someone doing it earlier at some point (an independant/ obscure make). (Now referencing...) they were still optional on '55 Chevys & '56 Plymouths. '56 Studes had them optional, but they aren't listed as being so for '58. This has to be the heart of the end of optional directionals. Industry-standardization would vary by Corp / make until federally mandated, I believe (and that didn't start until '66). But I would be hard-pressed to believe a '59 anything still had optional signals (cars; trucks were a different story. To that end: my '57 F-250 had only 1 factory taillight (2 lenses, but only wired/bulbed on the one side)). Parking lights were common/ standard much earlier. This is a '30s thing - lots of late '30s cars with running/parking lights, and we can go back at least to Model As ('28) w/ cowl lights in addition to headlights. Everything from the '40s on had parking lights.

Local dealer had a silver LaCrosse, but it went quick. A black one replaced it- I think it's been there about a week or 2 now. I've seen at least 1 LaC on the road so far, but I really don't notice new cars. Same dealer has a silver Terrain up on a rack- I find it repulsive... but maybe it's primairily the near 'worm's eye view'. I have not noticed a '10 SRX out on the road yet. CTS sales drop was far less than the 3-series drop...

What's up with the 1-series ??? Down 57% ?? X-3 down 87% ??? New model buzz all gone? 6-series should be gone by next year- it's hardly worth the plant space. BMW really is a 3-model line (3-, 5-, X5) - the rest is fluff.