SAmadei

I didn't realize there was a repro available... I just figured a reasonably rust free hood would be much harder to find, especially considering shipping if it has to come to the east coast from the desert. Thats a pricy repro, though... $660... a far cry from the repros for the '73-'90 trucks. Hopefully for that money, its a quality piece. Its pretty sweet how many parts are available for these now. Including the $9000 cab, you can basically build one of these from scratch. Now I'm getting interested in a '50s GM pickup.

I like it. However, I think the execution was outright stupid. For a few grand they could have gotten the car wrapped for a similar look. And when it comes time that they decide to buy another, the wrap could have been removed to reveal a perfectly painted car.

I don't want to belabor the point, but in certain markets they sell reasonably well. Certain markets being those with high fuel prices and limited parking. I'm guessing they do OK in NYC as well, yea? Not really. I see about as many Smarts in South Jersey as I saw in NYC. The Smarts had crazy pent-up demand and it took forever for Smart to get units here. But by the time cars were here, word of mouth about the iffy transmission and the economy diving into the crapper just killed it. The people on the waiting list cancelled and the demand was gone. I'm really surprised Mercedes didn't fix the transmission immediately... after all, the European version has a decent transmission. I still want one... assuming I'm back in NYC in the future... as I'm a street parker. But I think one of the reasons that it didn't catch on in NYC is that many Manhattan residents are well off enough that they pay for parking wherever they go. And some initial PR deals for cheaper Smart parking ended, the fact is that parking a Smart is just as expensive as parking a normal car. Also, the Smart really needs start-stop for sitting in traffic. At this point, the Smart is a flop in the US. As for the GTO... it was not a flop in sales... remember the GTO had a 18K ceiling for yearly sales... and it sold at 75% of that... not bad considering there was no marketing. If the GTO was a flop, then so was the Solstice. The GTO averaged 13K a year, the Solstice 11K... but the Solstice required a lot more design and engineering. If the GTO was a flop in outward appearance and execution... well, then everything GM built since 2010 is a flop. I'd agree the Blackwood was a flop... as was the Marauder. I think the MKZ and MKT are bigger flops than the Mark LT... at least the Mark LT uses F-150 parts.

Looks like tree fell on it. The roofline looks kinda of how the U shaped dent in the silver van looked after a tree fell on it. Luckily, that van is just storage... and later for scrap. Actually, I wonder if a good body person could massage that hood out? Ocn? Hard to tell from the photo how stretched out the metal is, or how damaged the inner supports are but it looks like a simple dent... just a big one. I suppose if the cab is solid enough, it might be worth putting a new roof on it... finding good roofs is likely easier than finding good cabs. Plus you could then adjust the roof height if you want.

Have you ever shlepped home 200 pounds of groceries that 3 blocks? Commuting is easy in some cities, but anything else isn't. Of course, the high price of city living space keeps a lot of people from owning much to shlep. Some people in NYC get around like they are backpacking in the wilderness. My bag usually weighed 40~50 pounds... to go data center to data center. Try flagging down a cab when you need a something large moved. Yeah, thats going to happen. If you are in the other boroughs, you get a gypsy cab, but then you are negotiating the entire trip. "Want to go next block? $5 more dollar." Getting stuff moved through the public transit infrastructure in NYC (arguably one of the best in the US) was a constant nightmare. Hell, walking the 2 long blocks to the subway and 3/4 long blocks from the subway of my Manhattan commute twice a day was a nightmare most days... thats a 4 mile a day walk... in the heat... in the rain. And this was a relatively GOOD commute. It was a 1 mile round trip walk under the FDR to get groceries. Ugh... I'm getting annoyed just remembering it. In theory, not in practice. That dumptruck is doing more than 6~7 times the damage your friends' CR-V is doing. Look at the graph (IIRC) posted earlier in the thread, for example... at least a 10x difference in damage and thats not taking into account how cars usually vastly outnumber big trucks.

Because of automotive costs... whats gas in the EU now? $11 a gallon? How much to park, insure, etc. Sure, the London congestion charge helps the people willing to pay, but it is still a sign of general car unfriendliness. If the US implemented a road levy so steep only 1% of the population could afford to drive, all Americas cities would be easy to drive... but that is hardly CAR FRIENDLY. NYC is perfectly driveable for me. You simply go where the traffic isn't. I can get around NYC pretty quickly when I need to... but that is not making NYC car friendly. I've lived there first without a car... then with. Not surprisingly, I prefer the car life. Only thing I'd so to improve my car life in NYC is get a Smart... so I could park it in a parking spot fragment. Good for the Garden State Parkway... but bad for US route 9... where those 5000 people have pummeled a bridge into closure... and now US route 9 is piped over the GSP bridge for free. Of course, those 5000 cars do the same road wear as what.... 12 large trucks? This is part of why I'd surprisingly support a mileage/vehicle weight based tax in place of a gas tax... assuming I don't need weights and measures certifying my odometer every year.

Well, since the LS is long gone, I'd say a Lincoln Falcon (MKF?) would start kicking ass and taking names. It would be almost like a Lincoln version of the CTS. Personally, I think it could just replace the MKZ... at 195 inches, the Falcon is far enough away from the 204 inch MKS. I'm really surprised the MKS was that long... they look shorter in person. Shame the Falcon doesn't have AWD, but I'm sure Ford engineers could figure out a way to eventually add it. Its not like the MKZ set the world on fire... like the early days of the LS, at least. Lincoln could then bring the XR8 Styleside Ute as the Blackwood or Lincoln Mark LT. I'm surprised nobody mentioned this here before.

Lately, it seems like I'm seeing a lot of Buick Rendezvous. Technically cited as a success by GM, but still somewhat uncommon, at least in my car spotting. Saw 6 in the space of 10 minutes at one point last week.

Well, I'm not sure Autostick will affect the engine braking situation too much... obviously, you have an extra gear to downshift into, but at least on the GP GTP (with paddle shifters), simply down shifting only gives you so much engine braking... not enough to stop the car from speed quick enough, IMHO. The trick I find with getting the car to a stop with an automatic... you need to downshift some gears twice to get enough engine braking from it to get into a lower gear. Lets say you are doing 60... shift into 3... as soon as the tranny stops engine braking, shift back into D for a split second... then downshift again... and you get enough engine braking that you can now go for the next gear... in your case, you might need to use 3rd 3 times... before you can use L a couple times. Once below 5 mph... use Reverse to stop the car enough to get into Park. Sounds like a lot of work... but it works pretty fast when you need to. More or less. Fate hasn't killed me yet. *Knock on wood*. I still worry that I'm losing my edge as I get older, though... I still hate needing a tow for something stupid. Well, yeah... assuming you don't have to completely disassemble the whole car to get them in place. Granted, you aren't doing the work, but you still are paying for it. Unfortunately, brake lines usually get installed before everything else. Most repro lines for the old cars are actually cut in half otherwise they are virtually impossible to get on without doing a body-off resto. Hopefully they are reasonably priced. I've historically just grabbed 2 6' pieces of straight tube and went at it with a bender. Cheap and I'm a glutton for punishment. Even then, I've had some... er... puzzles to get them into place.

Most of the interstates are paid for with federal money. Roads are not the most subsidized form of transit... because road taxes are lifted for other transit methods. Yeah, but that 0.001% of linear mileage is responsible for a big chunk of traffic... vehicular miles. Not only that, they spill traffic that are not able to pay the toll onto other, usually overburdened, routes.

I'm not trying to doubt your mechanical abilities with this reply... just trying to post something a bit pedantic that others can learn from... There is pumping... then there is pumping. When you do it just right, you'd be surprised how effective it can be even on really bad brakes. Only times I've had no brakes on any car was when I had nearly no fluid in either system. Its hard to explain, because every system is slightly different... but you have to catch the pedal at the right point coming back up. Catch it just right and the pedal just magically comes back. Unfortunately, I have WAY too much experience with this. Years ago, I bled a friends car to find later that it had a diagonal system... not Front-Rear... RR and LF on one half... LR and RF on the other... we bled the rears... he then tested it and nearly killed himself. I got in... pumped it up and stopped it normally back where we could work on it.. Then we bled the fronts and all was good. Oops. Ugh... sounds like fun. Try to get you guy to flare and use a union to patch things up. I really have never felt good using compression fittings on older steel line. Well, normally when you push the pedal, you are pressurizing the rear section inside the piston, which pushes the front section. Which section controls which half of the system depends on the manufacturer... but the bottom line is that if you lose the pressure in the rear section, the pedal is going to drop a lot... but then hit the internal stop and then push the front section physically. If something is odd about the front section, its going to manifest itself a lot worse after losing the rear section. The whole point of a dual reservoir system is that half the system should work regardless of how badly the other half fails. I would give the other half of the system a look over. If you ever do have such a dramatic loss of the system in the future, while driving... don't forget to use the tranny to stop. Sure, its not going to make the tranny happy... but its might save a life or at least a lot of body work. But since automatics don't engine brake the same way, you really almost need to practice the technique ahead of time. It causes the tranny to warm up, but it doesn't actually break anything unless you do something bad... like 75 mph into 1st gear. Another tip... if you are far from home and need to get home... if you can see the bad section, smash it closed with a hammer, or crimp it. Top off the master cylinder and crawl home. No brake fluid? In the wilderness and going to die? Use water. But be prepared for a nasty flushing process. The 4x4 handbooks have a millions ways to get a busted vehicle home. ;-) Speaking of brakes, I imagine I'm overdue for a braking surprise. :-( Last braking issue was in 2002. I bet it will be the Caprice that bites me in the ass.

The worst offenders I see are usually European or high end Asian makes... so I doubt the issue is #1 and I can recognize #2 easily...its not #2. The only area that fog lights illuminate that regular headlights don't is where objects are moving that you cannot avoid over 30 mph.

European/Japanese cities have been notoriously car unfriendly since the beginning.

I've seen this a long time ago in a video... but without using the stabilizers. I don't recall Dad doing anything like that with our track loader... but it was a much heaver unit.

Yeah, that damp spot on the exhaust threw me for a loop, as well. I'm not seeing where the leak is... I assume its rusty steel line tucked up in the body. Every brake leak I've ever fixed was rusty steel line and usually tucked up along the frame. Knowing that these lines see really high PSI, I can't understand how they hold up until I brush them lightly and they suddenly fall apart. I've had cars with 35 year old original rubber lines... torn up, flaking rubber, etc... and never a leak. some of those rubber lines are built to last. As for no braking power... losing your rear brakes really shouldn't affect the system that dramatically. I would check into that a bit more. In any case, you need to learn the fine art of pumping the brakes. ;-)

Yeah, I need to visit you with a hammer. ;-) Say that again when you've blinded someone who ends up swerving into your lane. Wait... then why would you go running with only fogs and parking lights in the first place? I find the difference fogs on (without fog) or off to be so minimal, its not worth wearing the filaments out. In fog, I see some improvement due to the angle... but then again, I see pretty darn well in the complete dark if I don't have someone blinding me... so I've never seen fog lights to be much worth the hassle. I'm sure some fog/driving lights are quite effective... but many times at a cost of blinding oncoming drivers.

Remember, I grew up in the immediate Philly area. While I don't visit Philly much since 2007 or so, there have been points in my life where driving to Phila was a daily event. Detroit is rotten for 10s of miles and pretty rotten in the core, too. I can think of a few desolate areas in Phila, southwest/west of the Schuylkill or the northeast... but I don't consider them to be that big... and there is thriving suburbia pushed up pretty close to some of those areas. I wouldn't want to walk the nasty areas, but thats for other reasons. Same reason I don't walk around Camden. I'd only recommend bulldozing the northeast. I see worse in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. I think your Pittsburgh bias is showing. ;-) So we'll have to agree to disagree.

They are out there... not too hard to find... most will only add 3/4 to an inch or so. Chevy to BOP is probably more common due to all the BOP people adding non-dual Chevy-only adaptor 700R4s. But I suppose they will work in either direction, reversed, depending on which side you need the starter on, if the starter was too even interfere. A stock LT1 is probably as crazy as you could get on that tranny... beyond that I'd imagine torque steer, traction and reliability would be an issue. Of course, I'd look into TH-425 fitment... and a big Olds 455 mill... but thats getting pricy... and likely would still be a serious traction problem. I guess I would look into converting to RWD if I really was going to go nuts with one of these. I can't imagine its so impossible.

I wouldn't compare Philly to Detroit... Philly is hardly desolate. You could have rail, bus... and limos for free in Philly and Detroit and people would continue to flee... the taxes are too high, the winters are too cold, too many jobs have fled and much of the available, affordable properties are albatrosses.

Ah, yeah... which is what I was thinking... then the trouble is digging up a Northstar to BOP adaptor... I never paid attention to the Northstar/Shortstar pattern. I thought they were thinking of swapping a whole drivetrain. BOP to Chevy adaptors are pretty easy to do. Shame the TH-325/TH-425 don't have the dual patterns the 200-4Rs have. Its been eons since I looked over an E-bod... but as I remember it the axles were fairly far forward compared to the modern FWDs... like between the 1/2 and 3/4 cylinders. Of course, I suppose you could move the radiator forward... but then I'm sure the original E-bod drivetrain is better weighted behind the front axle. Interesting... TH-325-4L. The Toro I nearly got for free about 10 years ago I thought had a 4-speed... but I couldn't remember for sure. At the time, I didn't think it was odd, as I was used to the 307/200-4R combos in all the B-bods. I was also more concerned about the other problems with the car (why it was free)... which included an unrecoverable title. So that one probably got scrapped. Ended up with the $200 '81 Bonneville coupe instead. Ah... the good 'old days when you could get a decent car for dirt cheap.

All fine and dandy... but they aren't going to ever plant all that rail in a place like Jersey without pissing off everybody (NIMBY)... It takes NYC 40 years to get a new subway line put in... and its buried 20-50+ feet below the street. In South Jersey there are two kinds of people... normal driving ones and unfortunate ones that spend 1/4 of their day waiting for bus transfers to travel the 20 minutes the normal people drive.

I'm not so sure that the older FWD drivetrain would lineup with a modern FWD drivetrain. I'd keep the original tranny and put any engine (long. Northstar, transverse Northstar, LT1, LS1, LS4) on the original transaxle with an adaptor and a custom oil pan... keeping the engine longitudinal would give you more working space. Not that space is a big problem on the old E-bods. Granted, this won't get you a modern 4 speed... but a modern 4-speed would need more computer stuff to run it anyway. Is your current tranny a 3 speed? I don't recall the E-bods having an overdrive.

I don't recall my GM cars being able to do that... in fact, IIUC, its against the law to drive here in NJ with parking lights and fogs only. Keep in mind, I only use the fog lamps in... surprise... fog. And fog is fairly rare here. The best fog light related feature... on the '04 GP GTP, you have to turn the fogs on EVERY time you start the car... so its less likely that you are driving with the fogs on all the time. A pet peeve of mine.

What they are trying to avoid is having to slap $9,000 in rebates on the trucks to move them. Demand is likely to drop due to current gas prices. They need to match supply to that demand as best as possible. Or is it? Gas speculation is down since Osama Bin Laden died... and some people are claiming prices could be headed back down for a stretch.

Without going into too much detail... Montego Cream (T) Burgundy (originally Mayfair Maize (Y)) Mayfair Maize (Y) Verdoro Green (47) Castillian Bronze (67) Pepper Green (48) Silver (64) Black (19) Cameo Tan (0K) Dark Autumn Maple (78) Light Blue (22) Light Sapphire (22) Flat Black (originally White (11), I think) Dark Adriatic Blue (39) Black (41) Light Blue (21) White (10) White (10) Sport Red (63) White/Light Blue Dark Green (46) Silver White (12) Hertz Yellow Glacier White Solid (9J) Tan Darkish Blue... previously was a '70s chunky metallic blue. Code on this car is odd, either Black or Antique Gold. Bright Red (81) Bright White (16) Silvermist (17) That was a bit of work.