SAmadei

Well unfortunately, our particular Newton just crawled out of the ground and is shouting "Merrrrcedes!". *Sigh* I remember those days. We're still trying to figure out the new family rule... so far we've only gotten to the declaration that GM can suck it.

or even the gas struts I have on my Toronado. Yes they give out after about 12 - 15 years, but they are an $8 each replacement. You'll spend more than that on lightbulbs over the same time period. Wait, you NVH snobs would tolerate the Zsssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhh noise that gas struts make? Shocking. (No pun intended)

Two of the three times I've had to do a Hollywood-style chase down of my vehicle, jump in and stop it, it was because of faulty parking brakes on manual vehicles. So, I don't do that anymore, either, unless I'm on perfectly flat land or sitting in a slight depression or pothole. I'd rather restart the thing.

In my experience, you have to adjust the brakes tighter, to the point where they nearly rub. I don't know what it is with modern emergency brakes... they all work like crap. I'd hate to actually have to rely on them in an emergency. Luckily, inspection only required the brake to hold the car at idle... and I've been able to adjust them to do that, on a couple J-bodies... even after replacing nearly everything. Personally, I think it has to do with how little braking effort is done on modern cars with the rear brakes... the rears barely wear, so they don't self adjust right, leading to a barely functional emergency brake. In an braking emergency, I use the transmission.

Well, the first word in CAI, is Cold... otherwise it would be a IAI... Increased Airflow Intake. ;-) When it comes to modern non-V8 CAIs, I'm most familiar with ones for the 3800s... and they definitely are for cold air first, better flow second. GM did not design in a lot of flexibility for the CAI makers to work with... unless driving around without a headlight is acceptable to you. Wow the sucks... well, maybe you can take a little comfort in that you guys are slowly convincing me that I'm not alone in being the most cursed person on Earth. At least you found it before danger found you.

I've been on the drive from Dallas to El Paso and vice versa...11 hours of nothing.. Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa also need a higher limit for I-80..miles of empty.. I'm sure they do. For crying out loud, the de facto speed limit on most of the Garden State Parkway, NJ Turnpike and Atlantic City Expressway are 80 mph. And all are safer (deaths per 100 million miles travelled) than the surface roads at slightly less than half that speed... That must majorly P.O. the traffic engineers.

Actually, the '04-'08 W-bodies are slightly taller than the '97-'03 ones. I think GM just hiked the seats up, to give short people a more SUV-like view of the road... and didn't bother to give the seats any ability to be lowered. Plus, at least in the GP, the front seats are like 9+ inches deep, front-back. No seat needs to waste this much space. I didn't have such a good time in a W-body Impala, either. Haven't been in a LaCrosse.

Yeah, big time. Its a shame they don't make a 2 door Blazer type thing out of this... I'd be much closer to being sold. Way off on the weight estimate, IMHO. The V6 RAM 1500 is 4519lbs. V8 is barely going to add 150 lbs to that... maybe less with a stick. Challenger is 4140lbs. So we're talking a 600 lb difference.

Look out! There's a drifter in the back seat! ;-) The car looks damn good.

Well the hood scoop isn't the intake for the engine, it's the intake for the intercooler. So the intercooler would do most of the cooling of the intake air. Having a CAI might help, but not by much since the intercooler would already be doing most of the cooling work for you. I agree that a CAI will likely be of marginal value... not because of the intercooler already having a cold air source, but because you can see the intake is right behind the grill, so its already getting fairly cold air. Remember, even if the intake air is cold, compressing it heats it up... so having two scoops will keep it the coolest. Of course, it looks like that intake is severely bent and/or restricted. His "CAI" will likely resolve those problems, house a bigger/better filter and give him a small performance bump. Plus a bit more snarl.

Hmmm... I wonder how low this can be lowered?

Ah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Interesting, so there is no adjustment shims on the bolts holding the whole apparatus to the frame? Working on suspension is a lot less stressful when you know the alignment isn't very good. Usually, good parts bring things back to normal enough and I've had pretty good luck with tape measures, string and levels to put cars back into alignment. Sure, you can mark the strut mount, or in your case, the cam bolts... but I know that a little error on the mark translates into a lot of error in the alignment, and that parts have different tolerances... so my paranoia gets the best of me. After the Bonne gets a transmission, I think struts are next, so I'll be seeing how bad I can F-up a car that has been historically very well aligned. It will likely get lower balls at the same time.

Being that the Crown Vic parts are leading the car, I suppose that's more of a Crown Marquis.

So is that like a cross between a Grand Cherokee and a Crown Vic? Suppose it fits. Well, perhaps... but I think I mixed Grand Marquis and Crown Victoria.

Meh, its not REAL suspension work unless you have to get the press out or drill out giant rivets. ;-) Seriously, the modern suspension bits are pretty easy to swap in and out... is that the Intrepid or the Grand Marq? I really like that there is no strut. I don't like the idea of screwing up the alignment replacing a strut. Edit: Duh, it must be the Grand Marq... no CV joint.

I don't think anyone took it seriously, as we're all jaded enough to know that there is now effectively no real news on April 1st. That said, its still not such an outrageous idea... and I'd hope that GM considered this idea. In the end, I'm sure a Prius convertible would beat GM to the market, anyway.

Do you're interior lights come on when it makes the noise? If so, check the door jams for the little buttons/switches that detect the door being open. If they loosen up and fall into the body, or if the connector wire inside grounds out, the car will think the door is open. That and the seatbelt thing Olds mentioned are the only things off hand I can think of. Most tones are going to be accompanied by some other warning. Do your lights dim when this is happening? Perhaps clean your battery connections and check your voltage. Maybe you're browning out and its causing the chimes module to act up. It could lead into the electrical trilogy of terror... battery, cables, alternator.

Not true. Youngsters just need the right job... something involving some chemistry and Pseudoephedrine... actually, now that I think of it, probably your best time to "save up" for a Corvette that way would be before it stays on your adult record... Heh-heh...a legal way kiddies can make decent coin involves using Ruby on Rails, Groovy, or Clojure, or the old standby 3 Ps-- PHP, Perl and Python... That ain't paying that good. Perhaps a few fall into good situations, but thats the exception, not the rule.

I usually use spray on Lithium Grease... but sparingly, only on the parts that seem to need it. Otherwise it is real easy to get carried away and make a mess. In my experience, WD-40 don't stop the squeek long enough. PB Blaster works better, but I feel I've had the best luck with Lithium Grease.

Not true. Youngsters just need the right job... something involving some chemistry and Pseudoephedrine... actually, now that I think of it, probably your best time to "save up" for a Corvette that way would be before it stays on your adult record...

Grand Vic... nice typo... I meant Crown Vic.

Those malls look like a good place to film a Brues Brothers movie. ;-)

This reminds me how we all forget that once upon a time, people used to drive Model T's up crazy rutted paths and mountain pathways.

As a novelty item. I'm talking about as a real rental... One you can get without waiting 2 weeks. Camaro is not a novelty in the rental world anymore. Well, thats because certain companies stopped giving away cars for cost or less. So the rentals are going to pick up whatever has the lowest cost over the 1~2 years the rental uses them. So initial cost, maintenance and resale come into play. Unless Toyota is dumping Corollas at less than cost, this is a positive for the Corolla. My GF's Corolla is costing her very little, even with a few hiccups. I abhor the darn thing... but I can't fault its reliability or frugality. I'd love to see her get a Dodge Charger... for a bit more comfort... as she can afford it... but she's not interested in anything but the basics... reliability and cost to maintain.

The average age of a new car buyer is 45~50... so 50 is not too bad. Before lowering the demographic on the Corvette, perhaps the entire auto industry has to push its demographics down a bit.