Drew Dowdell

That looks really close to Oldsmobile blue. When did they stop using green on the Buick engines?

I'm sure I could find one... I just want something a bit better. This is what I am aiming for. https://amzn.to/2OhVU9M

I could understand a worn belt making the record play slower or inconsistently, but I'm not sure how it would make it play faster. Anyway, it's a 30ish year old el'cheapo unit from Bradlies (anyone remember that chain?) and it is connected to an oversized stereo. I'm going to get something that hooks up to my surround sound either via USB or Bluetooth and downsize substantially.

Somehow, even with partial WFH, I'm already at 10,000 miles on the truck since August. I don't even know where I'm driving to be doing that. But I also noticed this week that I've put only 1,000 miles on the Toronado since June. So since Sunday the truck has been parked and I've been taking the Toronado when I need to go places and I'm moving back to WFH a lot more. And of course taking the bike on every nice day I can.

Yes, those visitors are what is keeping the site alive via their ad revenue. We do fairly well on search results for niche automotive things. We get a huge number of hits for the 4.3 V8 Baby LT1 and for some reason no one knows how to pronounce Impala as those two threads still get a huge number of hits.

I don’t know the album, but it reminded me that I need to get a new turntable. Mine is malfunctioning. Even though the speed is set correctly it seems to be playing faster than 33 but not quite 45. It’s just enough off for you to think “something is not right here “ but not fast enough to be the Chipmunks.

With how little you're driving lately, it will probably take 8 years to get another 25k miles.

You're absolutely correct. I pretty much stopped writing after Jan 2020 because I lost all my heart for it because of the flame wars. Before that I was writing 4 - 6 news clips a day during the week and one or two vehicle reviews a month. Plus William was writing regularly too. William got a new job and could no longer devote time to the site, so that's why he doesn't post much anymore. The thing is, I want to get back into it. I keep telling myself I'm going to start writing again.... but every time I log in here there is some flame war going on. Don't get me wrong, I love to debate stuff and I encourage it. But having a spirited debate and having a flame war are two very different things.... one person got himself suspended for 5 days because he was losing the debate and turned it into a flame war and added bigotry to the mix as well. And after I pulled the trigger on his suspension, I just logged off and left the site for a while out of frustration until I started getting e-mail notices that another flame war was going on. Can you see why it would get exhausting?

We get enough traffic that the ads pay about 90% of the costs. If I have to throw $10 - $20 a month at it, it's no big deal, however, I haven't had to add money to the site checking account for a while now, so if I went and looked at the reports, it is probably self-sustaining since at least September. It was not at all profitable when I was still traveling to all 4 of the car shows and 4 ride-and-drive media events each year. I did those because I enjoyed them and yes that money came from my own pocket. What I'm struggling with lately is not financial. In the past 4 years every. single. discussion. turns into a fight.... not just here... but Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, whatever. I don't want this site to become a place where it's just flame wars all the time. I want to come here to discuss cars. Unfortunately, a number of people have done their part to kill my passion for this site with their near constant negativity about cars and/or people they don't like. This site will be 20 years old in August. I'd like to see it continue into its 20s, but damn if some people aren't doing their best to kill it before then. I'm just not sure how much fight I have left. Where will my passion to write reviews come from if every article comment section turns into yet another flame war? Is a flame war site some place you'd want to visit? (not just you, everyone) If you guys just want to flame each other over stupid shit, I'll just leave the site running as long as it is financially self-sustaining, turn off notifications, and go ride my motorcycle and you won't hear from me again... when something breaks, oh well. Give me a reason to want to write again and run this place again...

No. I’ve had to suspend premium members in the past.

Well, a second person got themselves put into a 5 day timeout. This is not Reddit or 4chan. This is a place for respectful discussion about cars. I don't care if I have to ban everyone except Balth, Horse, Robert, and Dave. After the year we just had the very least we can do is just be nice to each other. But if you want to keep acting up.....

I did... I pulled yours for the next 5 days. Edit: Because you are still doing it... I made it 7.

oh look, the server bill just came in.... I guess I’ll have to decide if I want to pay it anymore if fucking adults can’t act like adults.

Up until about 30 second ago, we had been keeping it civil and philosophical, and then @dwightlooi ruined it again.... he is now under moderation watch... anything he posts will have to be approved by me until his points start expiring.

Silly. Just bury the problems in the desert instead of dealing with them and actually using it to our advantage.

hmmm..... except.... it's a problem.... Nuclear Waste Costs Americans Billions Every Year | by FSI Stanford | Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies | Medium "We’re spending $6 billion a year trying to deal with the problem, and we’ll continue to spend $4.5 to $5 billion a year without solving the problem." So, spend $12 billion... two years of maintenance on the problem and build a few breeder reactors to break down the waste and eliminate the problem and generate a few gigawatts of power at the same time.

That's an awfully convoluted way to get grift. There are far easier ways to get it than creating a global lie and getting 96% of scientists to agree with it.

And that's why none of us can take you seriously when you're not talking about engines or transmissions.

@dwightlooi - I have to ask... what is the motivation of the Global Climate Change cabal? What ends are they trying to reach? Why commit a fraud on a global scale for no reason... there's gotta be a reason.... how will climate scientists and NOAA profit from this?

1) I said large organizations I do not trust. The federal government is a large organization. Right wing wants just as much control over the individual, if not more. 2) You're only counting air temps right? Did you just ignore the whole thing about water temps and water acidity going up? If so, Go buy property on the Miami coast then.... or oceanfront in Virgina Beach.... or any other beach. My parents live on property 9ft above sea level.... I know I'm not inheriting anything.

Oh yea, I was talking about the pebble bed reactors that are self regulating. Breeder reactors are an unfortunate necessity to deal with the waste from traditional reactors. Breeder reactors are extremely expensive, so I would figure out what ratio of traditional reactor to breeder reactor we needed to deal with the waste and only build enough of those to cope with the waste. I do think that hydrogen fusion has potential, but at this point they have only been able to power a single light bulb because it takes almost as much energy to run the thing as it generates.

1# I trust no large organization... not companies, not governments, not non-profits, not churches, none. Small groups of committed people can do good works, but when they get too large, the mission gets blurred. I think the only way to protect the individual is to have the large groups hold each other accountable and for smaller groups to take shots at the large groups when possible... so government must regulate industry, and industry must report on government largess or corruption. Companies do put profits over people and over people's lives. It is the job of the government to reign that in. On Global climate change, it's been years since they made the realization that it was the oceans that were warming faster than expected and more proof came out in 2019. All of you climate change deniers waving your hands about air temperatures love to ignore the temperature of the water which is taking 90% of the increases and also increasing in acidity, killing ocean life. This is changing weather patterns and causing sea levels to rise. Many coastal cities are already experiencing the effects. So deny it all you want and wave your hands in the air.... that way we'll be able to see you when you slowly slide beneath the water.

I had a hard time following what the point you were trying to make here was, but I'll address the points here that I do understand. There is a difference between the Electric company that services your house and the electric company that generates the electricity and the electric company that operates the grid. The grids are often non-profit entities regulated by the state and fed. The local power utilities are the ones who bill you... they are private companies and they are regulated by the states. The generation companies aren't really regulated by anyone except in terms of pollution control. I am all in favor of nuke power... I think a national program of Nuke, rooftop solar, and wind would make the national grid as green as can be. Use modern breeder reactors and pebble bed reactors that are self regulating and nuke power would be super safe with nearly no waste. The problem is the NIMBYs.... no one wants a reactor in their back yard because of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. It is the sad truth about the future of nuke power in the US. It's like how the Olds V8 diesel killed the passenger diesel market in the US. The purpose is to ensure the general welfare. Grids cross state lines (out of necessity, see also: Texas and what happens when you don't), so under the commerce clause, the grids are covered under the federal powers. The Feds were basically powerless during the Texas power outage for that exact reason... the best they could do is send generators and blankets. If it were any other state, there would be federal action at the grid level.

No, the difference between you and I is that you think your beliefs are fact and should be treated as such. So far for you, facts are whatever you want them to be to support your position. Also, as you've consistently misrepresented what I've said, I also have better reading comprehension skills (#1, #2, and #3 are vastly incorrect appraisals of my stance). #4 is disproven by science.... yes climate change can be natural, it can also be man-made, and the more we learn about the climate system the more apparent the irreversible damage is happening. Wow! You DO understand. There has been no mention of a particular political candidate. There is no slurs being used. The closest things to politics we've really discussed are the need for election reform (which while the methods may differ, I think both sides agree on the need for), and even then I balanced both sides. We can make anything political if we want to... conversely, we can take the politics out of philosophical discussions as we have for the past few pages and have genuinely good arguments. But even with that, I will not hesitate to call out falsehoods, lies, and propaganda especially when used to support an agenda.

I think the reason that people who follow your agenda are so angry all the time is that none of the fact ever support your narrative. You want something to be true, you write these long screeds to support your agenda, but when someone starts looking at facts, you get angry because your whole argument falls apart. A recap on "facts" you've gotten wrong so far: 1. The reason behind the high cost of California energy prices - Plenty of other states have green energy, Pennsylvania included. My power rates are actually below the national average and I use green power at my house. The green energy requirement is not the reason for high California energy costs, a fail experiment with unbridled capitalism is. 2. Passenger usage of High Speed or Medium Speed rail - Where Amtrak has fast and regular service, it generally operates at or near capacity. Passenger rail is good for most trips up to 500 miles. The Europeans and Japan use 400 miles as their standard, but given the horrid hub-and-spoke system we have here in the US, 500 miles is more appropriate. You cannot locate a major metro area anywhere in this country that is not within 500 miles of another major metro. NO ONE is suggesting HSR for transcontinental trips. HSR is for short to medium haul trips where the train can beat an airplane in door to door time. Even on relatively slow routes like Portland - Seattle, Amtrak takes around 40% of all passengers up against ALL THE OTHER AIRLINES THAT HAVE SERVICE. Amtrak moves 811 thousand passengers and all airlines combined move 1.3 million between those two city pairs... the difference is that Amtrak also serves stops in between that the airlines do not. You complain about Amtrak's subsidy, but Airlines get their airports subsidized and we also pay airlines to run nearly empty flights through the Essential Air Services program. For example, we pay Boutique Airlines to run 4 flights daily out of Altoona PA because there is no major airport within a 2 hour drive. Amtrak runs 2 trains daily through Altoona and moves 18,848 riders a year.... Boutique only moves 10,010. In nearby Johnstown, which also has Amtrak service, the Federal government is paying $866 - $966 per passenger to subsidize flights out of Johnstown. The EAS cost $300m in 2013 (the last year I can find data) to move far fewer people than Amtrak does with its $1.9B. 3. Healthcare - Your entire cause and effect is false. You blame it on the government when in fact it is entirely caused by the system the private insurance companies set up for negotiating rates. You're so blinded by your agenda that you can't even see that is not what I even suggested. I said that companies that provide a public utility, like electricity, should be heavily regulated. Furthermore, you've got the socialism boogieman on the brain so much that you don't even know the definition of socialism!!! You just call anything you don't like or don't understand socialism. It's like Joe McCarthy reincarnate. Socialism - a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or by the community as a whole. I suggested that if the grid is not government owned, that it needs to have heavy oversight by the government to make sure reliability standards are met. For something as critical to the health and wellbeing of the general citizenry, it is exactly the governments job to make sure the grid runs well. It wasn't a once in 100 year event! They had a similar event in 2011 and were warned back then about the measures they should have taken to avoid a repeat. I have excess capacity (no one does excess generation, that would be wasteful, generation is kept on standby) AND I'm using green energy AND I'm only paying 13.9c/KwH... more than 50% of that is in grid charges NOT GENERATION CHARGES. And I just got my bill today, so you can see what my rates are: My generation rate is 6.7c/kWh... so lets go to Houston and find a green energy contract... Oh look! It's basically the SAME EXACT PRICE. So, if the generation rates are the same, we can see that the difference between the two rates is entirely in the grid charges... that difference is 2c/kWh... or... $20 a month to not die from the cold during an ice storm. And that is assuming you are correct on the total charges in Texas... considering your track record for getting basic facts correct, even that is suspect. You're sooooo close to the point. We need major election reform to abolish the winner take all system and even better, the electoral college so that third parties can spring up and be competitive. You'll hate this idea because the country is far more liberal than our recent elections would show because of the finger on the scale that the Electoral College and Winner Take All system bring. If those two systems were abolished, suddenly the 40-whatever percent of Republican voters in California would matter, and they would be balanced by the 40-whatever percent of Democratic voters in Texas+Oklahoma+Nebraska (roughly the same population, combined, as California). But you'll fight that push towards fairness because you know in the end that your agenda will lose. TL:DR: Stick to engines and transmissions because on everything else you're