Drew Dowdell

The V4 -> V5 upgrade has been complete. I'll be spending the next week or two cleaning up some things. If you notice a bug, you can report it here - Cheers and Gears Support

Because why would you want to take a multi port fuel injected car and turn it into a carbed car? Also, it's a ton of work (if you even can make the thing fit under the hood) for not a lot of gain, and you're still having to run it through the 4-speed 4T80-E. There are other Northstar mods out there that will get better bang for the buck.

@crvette_guy - I just thought of one if you really wanted a northstar and a larger sedan. You could get the final generation of Cadilac STS. The first gen CTS-V would work also, but they're harder to find cheap while also being in good shape. Still, the first-gen CTS-V is just a standard GM 5.7 or 6.0 liter and dead reliable. You can get it with a manual also. It might be worth spending a little more to go this route instead of going with a cheaper Northstar powered car in the long run.

There's not a lot of choices for RWD in the big family sedan space. Charger, 300C, Town Car, Crown Vic, or if you go a lot older, Impala, Roadmaster, Fleetwood. Crown Vics and Town Cars really don't have the performance to be doing sideways stuff. Charger/300 with a Hemi is your best bet for that. I wouldn't want to see you doing that with the Roadmaster / Fleetwood. They have the ability, but they're classics now and should be preserved. Outside of that you're looking at Germans (too expensive to maintain) or Lexus / Infiniti.

I'm probably going to be traveling more often for work again. I've done it in Teslas before, so I know that 250kw would be okay. The Silverado EV does still have CarPlay... if you get the W/T trim. I'm not a W/T kinda gal. RST or Trail Boss (or High Country if they made one) for me and they don't get CarPlay. The only Silverado EVs that look any good to me are the RSTs in Blue or Black. The Red Trail Boss is... okay. In white, they look like an electric company fleet vehicle. All of the Denali EVs seem to be in Military Gray Metalic that looks blah. I really don't know where I want to go. I am going to try and hang onto my Avalanche regardless. I think I'll end up regretting it if I sold it. Part of me also thinks just get something like an Ioniq 6 or GV60 for myself to put business miles on and put the Avalanche into storage. The Lyriq has really grown on me (it still has CarPlay). It might be an option once we replace the 300C. We just passed 100k miles there. His job situation is still in limbo. It could go to where he is 100% public transit or 75% travel requiring a vehicle.... so still waiting on that. We find out by July.

Nothing front wheel drive is going sideways when you floor it.

Right on both counts. The Lightning would be perfectly fine for my needs though I do wish it had faster than 150kw max charge speed. If it could have been 250kw like most of the Teslas are, that would be been a significant improvement. That's really my only complaint about it. They ride great, drive great, have amazing torque. The only "truck" stuff I ever do is haul motorcycles and that has zero noticeable impact on my Avalanche MPGs. TBH, I still don't know where I'll go next. I could end up in a Lightning, or a Scout, or a Silverado EV, or a Rivian R1T. Because of some potential coming shifts in my driving habits, I'm leaning Silverado EV for now even if I have to grit my teeth about the CarPlay issue. Range and charge speed will take priority.

The Super would have the Northstar V8 and while the engine was mostly sorted out by then they are higher maintenance and are a Premium Fuel recommended car, so you have to be willing to be spending $5+ per gallon. The 3900 V6 isn’t as exciting but it’s dependable and reasonably fuel efficient for such a large car

I mean, you'll probably pull from the grid since the EVs charge at night, but your NET will be adding to the grid daily rather than taking.

just by going up lol. I use to be able to get a solar/wind contract for 8c/kWh as recently as 2 years ago. I get the rates e-mailed to me once a week and they range from 12.5c - 14c. That's really close to my house. I can often hear them.

In many states you can sign 1 or 2 year rate contracts. That only covers the cost of the generation and not the delivery, but even delivery is set by the state and is usually once a year rate change at most. I've had green energy contracts for my house for years. It's nice to know my rate is fixed.

$4.65/g here in Pittsburgh. Trump accidentally promoting EVs again. Even if prices go back down, it is the instability that is the problem.

Darn. if it was 5/18/2026, I might have actually been in town. no firm plans yet but...

View File CMS Canonical App for IPS V5 Fixes a common SEO problem for sites using CMS articles with linked forum discussions. When a forum topic is associated with a Pages article for comment storage, search engines see two URLs with similar content, diluting your rankings. This app automatically sets the canonical URL on the forum topic to point back to the Pages article, consolidating SEO authority where it belongs. Configure which CMS databases should have canonical handling enabled from the ACP — everything else is automatic. Works with multiple databases and requires no template edits or manual intervention. This app could become redundant in future if IPS fixes this issue. Submitter Drew Dowdell Submitted 04/13/2026 Category Files  

View File News Sitemap for IPS5 Automatically generates a Google News compliant XML sitemap from your CMS articles. Recent articles (published within the last 48 hours) are pulled from your chosen CMS databases and output as a standards-compliant sitemap at yoursite.com/newssitemap.xml, ready to submit to Google Search Console. Choose which CMS databases to include and set your publication name from the ACP. The sitemap respects Google's 1,000-article limit, includes proper publication dates, and is sorted newest-first; no cron jobs or manual steps required. NOTE: Per Google News sitemap specifications, only articles published within the last 48 hours are included. If no articles are published within that window, Google Search Console may report sitemap errors — this is expected behavior and not an issue with the application. Submitter Drew Dowdell Submitted 04/13/2026 Category Files  

Bounce Detector for IPS V5 View File For IPS V5: Automatically processes email bounce notifications and spam complaints from Amazon SES and Sendgrid, keeping your member list deliverable without manual effort. When a hard bounce or spam complaint is received via webhook, the member's email delivery is disabled and their account is flagged as validating — preventing future sends until an admin intervenes. Soft bounces are tracked and escalate to a hard block after repeated failures. Admins can review all blocked members, filter by status or domain, and manually re-enable delivery with a single click. Includes a one-time migration tool to import existing bounce data from the legacy Mail Bouncer plugin. Submitter Drew Dowdell Submitted 04/15/2026 Category Files  

Wasabi S3 Workbench View File A service status and storage management companion for communities using Wasabi S3 object storage. Adds live status monitoring for Wasabi S3 directly to your ACP dashboard, pulling from Wasabi's status API on a scheduled basis so you know about outages before your members do. Requires IPS v5 Submitter Drew Dowdell Submitted 04/15/2026 Category Files  

I think that platform is do or die for Ford. If anything, everything not named F-150 or Explorer is likely on hold until that project is done.

lol that use to be a joke when i was traveling for work with the energy company. I have friends in germany and there are certain stereotypes about german men's fashion that are proven true far too often and I can pick the german guy out of a lineup every time. eh, it didn't make sense to run it as a separate division. I don't see a problem with this. It's not the end of EVs, just the end of the division. It never really made sense except for ford to do battle with their dealers. This is a paper move only.

While you are lucky with your energy prices where you are, the rest of the country is seeing steep increases in energy costs. I used to be able to get eight cents a kilowatt hour for the commodity charge, now the cheapest I can find is 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour. There’s a delivery charge on top of that and that has also been increasing.

Birthday Greeter for IPS V5 Sends personalized birthday greetings to your members automatically on their birthday. Supports three delivery methods — email, private message, and forum topic — each independently configurable with rich text messages and template tags for the member's name, age, and site name. A configurable send time, timezone, and buffer window prevent duplicate sends if your task scheduler runs more than once. Members can be excluded by group, age range, or inactivity period, keeping greetings relevant and your sending volume under control. This App can be useful when combined with the Bounce Detector app to keep your e-mail lists clean of stale addresses. When combined with Bounce Detector, a yearly birthday message can check if the e-mail address of the user is valid. Bounce Detector File Information Submitter Drew Dowdell Submitted 04/15/2026 Category Files View File