Drew Dowdell

2 hours ago, balthazar said:

I'm surprised your era E-Bodies are that light. I checked a '83 Riviera T-Type road test I have, 3.8LT : curb weight 3675. An '83 Eldorado TC  was 3830.

Clearly plastics are heavier than steel.

I wonder if my Toronado is slightly heavier than the Eldorado TC.... 5.0 cast iron block v. 4.1 aluminium block. Everything else is mechanically identical. 

5 minutes ago, ykX said:

How is the shift speed relevant unless you are racing?

I know GTI has excellent DSG but GTI is also a performance hatch that most people daily drive as well.  Most likely I would buy GTI with DSG as well, but would you buy for example Miata or Vette with auto?  I know plenty of people buy Miata with auto for various reasons, but I think Miata is so much more enjoyable with the manual.

A Miata automatic I've never driven, so I don't know it's capabilities. I'd most likely go with a manual since few out there get manual transmission feel as good as Mazda does. 

The Corvette with GM's 8-speed auto? Mmm... it's such a great transmission, considered one of the best of the true automatics, that I really wouldn't feel shame about selecting it. It really could go either way for me.

The GTI, I would probably take a manual over a DSG just because I don't like the DSG's slow speed feel. I don't auto-cross, but feel and NVH is important to me.  I say this never having driven a recent GTI with a manual. 

1 minute ago, A Horse With No Name said:

It is a lot of car for the money...but if I am going to spend a larger amount of coin I would personally prefer to get the new Regal...which like the Malibu is also a fantastic car.

I expect the new Riggle to go up in price and not with the same level of options at the price the Malibu is at. 

5 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

But my local Chevrolet dealer said it was only available in the top trim level, which is quite expensive for a Malibu.

Yes... Premier trim only.... but it's a lot of car for that price. Standard leather, Nav, Bose, 18" wheels... all the goodies you'd expect at that level of car.

The only real options to consider are sunroof (yes/no) and active cruise control (yes/no)

Edit: and I was wrong... not an 8-speed, a 9-speed.....this must have been an upgrade from the prior year because I swore it released with an 8.

41 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

This thing really needs at least a 2.0 Turbo. That would be the minimum GM would even ahve to do to get me in the door for a test drive.

Wish granted.

The 2.0T is available with an 8-speed auto and is quite good.

I think in the GTI's case, part of that is the DSG that VW uses.... Aside from its performance in stop-go traffic, which isn't as smooth as a regular automatic, it is faster and better than a manual in nearly all cases. No one... not even the best race car driver can out-shift a DSG. 

Just now, A Horse With No Name said:

When Buick builds better drivers cars than BMW....

I'd put the current GS as the only one that'd be in that category.   The Verano T-Type is dead already.... but man that was a fun car to whip around in for not a lot of money.  Most reviewers find the ATS to be a better drivers car than the equivalent BMW also. An ATS Turbo-4 is an incredibly well balance machine with excellent feel.  The ATS-V is a brute when you push it... it doesn't have the balance of the lighter Turbo-4, but it makes up for it with raw power and no-lift manual shifting (which is an amazing thing to do even if you have to retrain your brain to do it properly).

39 minutes ago, ykX said:

Automatics may be better, faster and more efficient than manuals.  However, IMHO any worthwhile enthusiast will enjoy driving a manual car much more than the automatic.

As an engineer, I am all for a new technology that is better than the old one. However, for an enthusiast buying a sporty car shift speed is irrelevant (unless he is a racing pro), the enjoyment from driving a sports car is what he is spending his money on.

Regretfully, today most cars are sold based on numbers and automatics will deliver better numbers.  Also, the fact that less and less people know how to drive the manual is not helping either.

The only cars that need manuals are the true sports cars like Miata, Z4, BRZ, maybe a Mini-Cooper or two, and things like Mustang and Camaro.

A 328ix is best left in automatic mode as everything has been so numbed up, that shifting yourself is the least of your concerns if you want "feel".

My '81 Toronado is 3800lbs. 

Or a different perspective, your truck is only about 100lbs less than a Buick Regal GS AWD.

I wouldn't mind a nicely loaded Passat TDI for those deals.

Bogotá Columbia - Makes the Spark, Sonic, Sail, a Cobalt that is different than what we got here, an odd looking number called the Onix, and the Isuzu cab over trucks.

Gravatai Brazil - Chevy Onix/Prisma

Quito Ecuador - Astra, Aveo GT (our Sonic hatchback), Chevy/Suzuki Vitara

Rosario Argentina - Agile, Classic (AKA Sail), Cruze (the same one as we get)

São Caetano do Sul and São José dos Campos Brazil - A bunch of Gamma platform variants plus the Chevy S-10... the overseas version of our Colorado

On 3/8/2017 at 9:21 AM, balthazar said:

Alternators are an early '60s thing. Actually, Chrysler patented it, first began offering them on taxis in '50, putting them on passenger cars beginning in '60.

Spec-wise, the COE idles at 400, but the generator doesn't produce feedback voltage until around 900 RPM, so at idle, the truck is running off the battery. That, output limitations, and increasing electrical demand made the switchover to alts a necessity.

That's something that always bothered me about generators seeing how  @HoLottaBuicks '57 Century discharges at idle.. ... if they didn't produce electric until they hit a certain RPM, why wouldn't a pulley size change help fix that?

I realize there's gotta be more to it than just spinning the generator faster.

On 2/24/2017 at 6:52 PM, balthazar said:

it's alive!

Overall went really well- I's happy!
• There's a lot going on in the cab- the process is : manually choke the carb, turn the battery switch on, turn the ignition switch on, (has electric fuel pump), hit the starter button. I had the doghouse off so I could watch things, so you have a V8 less than a foot from your knee, fan whirring.
• Shifted really easily for a non-synchro 4-spd. Everything is probably really 'broken in" inside the gearbox. I hadn't driven a manual trans in over 20 years before today.
• I expected more metal-on-metla sounds of panels rubbing or clanking but there was none of that.
• Also expected it to be bouncier, but I only ran up & down the driveway (my driveway is fairly rough) but it felt smooth to me. If you watch- the rear tires catch air- I felt the bump but wasn't aware of the hop.
• One thing that strikes you is the manual steering. You have work to do in there; the wheel is 18" diameter for a reason.

• Throttle stuck a few times, have to go thru the linkage and eliminate that.
• Need another go-round the brake fittings and make sure everything is tight. But the brakes worked just fine. It's the steering you have to plan for.

IMG_0970.MOV

You need some weight on them there back tires... a high(er) speed emergency stop could have you tip uncomfortably forward. 

I can't believe you haven't driven a manual in 20+ years.

2 hours ago, ccap41 said:

I agree that they shouldn't be able to use the bankruptcy as a way to get out of it and they're responsible for their own actions but I wish some of the rulings were more fair. I've heard of people dying in drunk driving accidents and the family goes after GM for the ignition switch when that clearly had NOTHING to do with the accident..and winning.

Both are true... but the second half of that should be handled by the lower courts and GM should not be able to hide behind the BK

Back on topic NOW. Hell, even go back to socialism if you want....at least that is relevant to the article!

Yeah, I don't get the torque comment either. It's not like we don't already have DSGs running behind engines with 250 lbft to 400 lbft. The physical size of the engine will change, but an X3i X-Drive-E Drive-Blue CrossCoupewagon will still be putting out about that same amount of power even if it's only from a 1.5 liter engine in 2045.

There is a new feature coming in the software, Clubs.  They work much in the same way that Facebook groups do.  That is, any standard member can create and run a club.  Clubs can have their own topics, galleries, blogs, and calendar.  You can literally run your own mini-forum inside of CheersandGears if you wanted.   

If you create a club, you can have control over its membership, appoint moderators, or have it be invisible to the general public (Admins can still see everything of course).  Topics from Clubs can be moved to the general forum and vice versa. 

If a bunch of you are Game of Thrones fans and want to chat together in a "Club" here on C&G, you can set it up.  Or Hockey... or fans of Oldsmobiles... whatever you want as long as it is not X-rated.

What I'm looking for is feedback on how you guys might want this to be structured or any specific rules you think should be put into place. 

I expect the feature by mid-Summer.

How about not and we move on.

Just now, ccap41 said:

Yeah and neither sales totals were significant(Mustang/Camaro).

Exactly. 

7 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

Not sure what the point of that comparison is.

Mustang outsells Camaro

-"Yeah well, Camry out sells Mustang.  " 

The main point is the perspective of the bigger picture.... inside of that, there are multiple points.  One is that Chevrolet is not as big priority for GM in China. Chevy still needs to perform, but it's not make or break.  Ford brand is literally all Ford has in China at this point... Lincoln is just barely getting started and Ford has no other brand partners like GM does. The second point is that sports cars have never been a Chinese priority, posh chauffeur driven sedans and MPVs are, so I can't really fault GM for not putting any effort there.  I can certainly fault Lincoln for only joining the market in 2014. Mustang outsold Camaro in China.... yippie.... GM sold 3.8 times as many vehicles as Ford did in China.  

Lincoln sold 32,588 cars in China in 2016.  

Cadillac (which isn't even doing that well in China compared to Benz or Audi) does that in 2 months.

Buick does that every 2.5 weeks. 

I'm sure Mary Barra is crying over the 310 units per month she's losing out to Mustang sales.  Really.... three hundred and ten vehicles per month in a country of 1.37 billion people is what @FordCosworth is tap dancing over.  Perspective.

Unfortunately, this story is a molehill that a giant mountain has been made from.

2 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

The way the system is, at this point, you only get one a day so if you disagree and give that same person the downvote but can't the other 5 people it looks like you're singled out but you just don't have 5 more to give.

Also, why? Why do you care about somebody who 1: you claim to not care about. 2: its the internet 3: you and them literally receive nothing from a +/-1 .

I think the issue is with the why and when people are getting downvoted.  If you get downvoted for something like one of Hyper's long posts that is full of opinion and such, sure, that can be valid if you're simply disagreeing with that poster. 

There is a small group of posters here who will downvote a post simply because of who posted it.  It could be something as simple as "Air contains Oxygen" and they get downvoted for it.  That is what causes the irritation. Downvoting out of pettiness and personal vindictiveness is the problem... not downvoting due to disagreement.

Most of the time, if I downvote someone, I'll also reply as to why I disagree.

I'll also point out that the people who are doing the downvoting out of vindictiveness are the ones who ruined the system and forced me to put a limit on how many downvotes they could make in a day.  Those people were going through and downvoting EVERY POST certain people made without regard for the content of the post. They either didn't realize or didn't care that I can see all of their activity on the site.  They would log in and do nothing but downvote a particular person and then leave. They are, in fact, Downvote Trolls... doing so specifically, and immaturely, to irritate other users of this website.  One of them was already found guilty of other high crimes and misdemeanors, and consequently executed. Another has seemly left the site. A third is currently on a severely restricted probation.

Just now, FordCosworth said:

When the new Mustang came out, it took the Camaro by the throat again..

The Camaro is once agian new, and getting its ass kicked here

The Mustang is getting it's ass kicked by a mommyvan. 

Again, Chevrolet is not GM's brand of choice there, Buick, Cadillac, and Wuling, and Baojun are.   Wuling and Baojun sell over 1.5m vehicles annually. Buick adds another million.

Those three brands alone are 2.5 million units annually.  That's 208,333 cars a month from just three brands... add to that GM also has Cadillac, Chevrolet, and some other China-only brands as well (Opel is/was there for some reason)

Ford isn't even in the 6 digit per month figure.

GM has 4 cars in the Top Selling Cars in China list.

Ford has zero.

But Mustang beat Camaro.... so... 

4 minutes ago, FordCosworth said:

 " Camaro was busy stomping on the Mustang here in the US during 4 of those 5 years. "

That was 99% due to the new factor for the Camaro. 

 

Does that kind of excuse work in China? You yourself said that the Camaro has been selling there since 2011.... the Mustang is new.

1 minute ago, hyperv6 said:

It is no wonder we are so F*$&. So many have no clue about the past. Puritans well I hate to tell you they were only a small part of the people who came to this country. 

As for past sins it is what is as you can not measure what they did by the same standards today. It was a different world and many thing happened from power and right of conquest. Was it right by todays standards no but that is how things were. The world and life has evolved over the years and you can not judge the past by the same standards you can only make sure you do not repeat the past sins.

 

You're the one who brought up the Puritans man..... you got your facts wrong about them escaping religious persecution.

On the point of the Quakers.. of which I am a descendant as well, I concede that yes they were being persecuted in England... but they were NOT the Mayflower pilgrims.