Drew Dowdell

All of the rental car companies have enough "float" in their fleets that if there is a national safety recall, there should be no issue cycling these cars through to be repaired within a reasonable amount of time. That just under 50% are essentially never repaired by the rental car companies is shameful. Sorry Avis, Alamo, Enterprise, etc, you brought this on yourselves by not doing the right thing in the first place.

I think that was part of where the increase comes from.

None of them would be turbo 4s so not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

If I get an MKT 2.0T as a press car, maybe I'll make a trip to NJ :-P

I can't agree... I always felt the early square beams looked out of place, tacked on and awkward... worse, they made the rest of the cars look past their prime. You mean like the round headlights in the square holes like on the Thunderbird, Fury, Grand Prix, and Elite?

Carb rebuild kit - $35 (bought a more expensive one that was recommended by other guys who've done the project on this specific carb before) Float - $10 Fuel filter - $3 TPS - $17 Bucket of carb cleaner - $19 Total - $84 (I'm not counting some extra tools I bought here, because they're not consumables) Idle control solenoid and choke pull off had both already been replaced before the carb rebuild, but they were $110 and $13 respectively and aren't routinely replaced during a rebuild.

GM being the only one using the square sealed beams looks a whole generation ahead on the senior models.

Yes.

I actually really surprised myself with this. I'm not a patient person and I was fully prepared to admit I screwed something up and pull the thing off to send out to be rebuilt over again. It took about 4 tries of cranking before she finally kicked over, but once running, she smoothed out quickly. I had a small fuel leak at the filter that required tightening that fitting down a bit more. I let it run for a while to look for more leaks, but none appeared. I was running low on fuel, so I drove it down to the gas station a few miles away for a fill up, and checked under the hood again there. Afterwards, as I was heading back, I ended up behind a slow moving LeSabre, so I put my foot into it and passed it. Now I'm clearly not going to be burning rubber, but she stepped out without any of the hesitation that I used to get in such a maneuver. All around, running as good or better than she was before the rebuild. The TPS is throwing a new code now, "Voltage high", but that is an on car adjustment that I need to make and I simply ran out of daylight today. All in all, I'm satisfied.

Carb is back on and everything went smoothly. The mixture is computer controlled. You tighten down the control screw and count the number of turns till bottom. Reverse the turns when putting it back together.

I previously mentioned, the turbo 4 has the same output as the outgoing V8. And quietly and smoothly..two qualities 4 cyls aren't known for. Merely a factor of sound insulation.... And you need to update your sampling.

That is the front. In the other window is a vintage Camaro, but no new cars to be seen. This is in the very heart of Paris. Drive that Olds through the plate glass and the Eiffel Tower is almost directly in front of you.

There is still the Armada and xTerra. No harm in moving this to FWD. Sales should go up.

That's not dead yet?

As long as Rolls can get around any NHV issues, I would think any Rolls buyer would love 700 ft-lb of thrust at 900 rpm.

"To GM:" has been removed and the 18 threads within have been moved into the Editorials folder. "Saab" has been moved to "Heritage Marques" and the description updated.

It isn't for general consumer consumption. It is 98% fleet.

What has Ed Whitacre actually done at GM? What Ed did was let each person work with his gifts and then stand back and let the people who knew their stuff do their thing let the car guy be car guys and the accountants be accountants. Dan Ackerson is an accountant and is why the Malibu is the way it is today. He's not a car guy, he should not have made that call...... and they really need to keep the guy away from a microphone.

I doubt it... The 3.6 engines have a bore center spacing of 103 mm and a bore diameter of 94mm. This means that the cylinder walls are 9 mm thick. Getting to 4.0 liters by enlarging the bore will require enlarging the bore to 99 mm. This leaves 4mm of metal between the cylinders which is ridiculously thin. To put the numbers into context, the 2.5 liter four has has 8mm of wall thickness, the 2.0T has 10mm, the 3.0 V6 has 14 mm and the 6.2 V8 has 8.5 mm. Enlarging the bore also entails a lot more additional changes than simply using thinner tron sleeves. Putting bigger slugs in there doesn't do any good unless you also put bigger valves in there. Putting bigger valves means a head with bigger intake and exhaust passages. These in turn require a new intake manifold and exhaust collector. If GM is looking for more than 323 hp, the answer is already in the works. It's called the LF3. A Bi-turbo version of the 3.0 V6. This can make between 300 and 400 hp using reasonably levels of boost, with about 360 being what I'll expect for applications like the Silverado, Acadia or XTS. Well ok, couldn't some of the increase in displacement come from stroke? I am certain that the max displacement on the block is 4.0 somehow.

Well it's not like it isn't reversible. If we don't like it or it becomes too much of a bear to moderate, we can shut it back off.