Once again locked the keys inside of a running vehicle in the wash bay. This time it was an F150, and about 15 minutes before closing time. Got back into it in a few minutes with an air pump style lockout kit.
Welp, it happened. Had my second very scary highway incident in the Jeep. Both front CV axles exploded at 80mph. Completely destroyed themselves, shot bearings and bits of metal into the road which bounced back up into the under-carriage. One hell of a death wobble ensued. 0/10 experience. Anyway, new CV’s and brakes/rotors are on order. Christmas season means they won’t be here until end of next week, though.
Got a chance to drive a 2019 Buick Cascada 1.6l turbo automatic, which ceased production this year. Dropped the top of course. It looks retarded and it's underpowered but it handles decently. Fun to drive. Nimble through the slalom. First time I've ever done a rockford in something without a roof.
Private land, fire engine parked in garage, and my grandad's 635CSi BMW in the way, so i took that round for a little lap, and wow that is a very nice car, stock it can do nearly 100kmh in 1st gear (can't test that), very comfy and smooth.. amazing car, he doesn't use it very much at all.. Wish i was 10 years older and got 3rd party drive any car insurance, that would be amazing to drive on the road.. But now, I think he will kill me as it was really clean, but i forgot about a puddle went straight through and the bright red paintwork is now muddy, and it'll need a wash don't want any rust on it.. Fire engine was cool, it still has it's 10mph throttle cable issue, don't know if we will get it fixed, I let my friends drive it and it is a nice safety feature.. (at a show)
In 1968 my uncle bought a 1967 Pontiac Firebird 400 4 speed with 16k miles from the original owner. Shortly after buying it, he had to replace the clutch and pressure plate. A decade or so later he was selling a Fiat and a man came to look at it, saw the Firebird sitting in the garage and said "thats my old firebird." He was the man who originally sold my uncle the car a decade earlier. He talked about how he frequently took the Firebird out of state to race on drag strips. He didn't mention this when originally selling the car to my uncle.
After riding as a passenger in multiple family member's cars, I have a new appreciation for modern saftey systems and a new hatred for car radios and infotainment systems. It amazes me how some of these people survive without automatic braking and blindspot monitors etc... and amazes me how they continue to survive with those infotainment systems. My state really needs stricter laws on who is allowed to drive...
Does your state also hand out licenses in cereal boxes? I also am not a fan of infotainment systems in base models of cars, but I am ok with it being an option.
Mine does, but I suppose it could be worse. These same people could be on bicycles, and then they'd really be getting hurt - and possibly getting people other than them in trouble for their stupidity. I agree on the infotainment though. I'll take "needless complication of formerly trivial tasks" for 500 Alex.
The road tests here are a mixed bag I guess. Only one town has a route with highway driving, many don't even have main roads on the test. There's not much tested, really just parallel parking, 3 point turn, and my town's route has a really nasty intersection (many intersections here are bad due to the prevelance of dangerous drivers and the poor design and maintenance of the infastructure around here). The proctors are another story all together... Not a great bunch there. None of this really matters though since so many people don't even have a license here. As for infotainment systems... I find it absolutely unacceptable that so many modern cars have useless and/or distracting features as standard but the important saftey ones only on high end cars. The new Volvo S60 I was in today didn't even lock the infotainment screen when it already had plenty of info to know it should. The fact that there was no front seat passenger and the car was in motion alone should be enough to lock the screen. Forget about the fact that the car was going above the speed limit while the driver had zero hands on the wheel and their head too low to see since they were too busy messing with the infotainment system. My mother's 10 year old treadmill yells at you for taking your hands off the handles, why can't a new $40k Volvo?.. And then there's the fact that people have come to rely on backup cameras and blind spot monitors completely. Those systems should be a supplement to your eyes and ears, not a replacement. A lot of drivers I know won't even acknowledge a passenger warning them of a car because "the saftey features know better than you do" even though those systems have a very limited FOV in all the cars I've been in with them.
Sadly the infotainment is going to stay standard because of the mandatory rear view cameras. The car's got the screen, might as well use it. My mother's Dodge Journey is the same way. It has the most basic infotainment available (tiny screen + no navigation) and yet still, it manages to make adjustments unnecessarily complicated. Plus, since there's a small screen in the cluster, the only "extra" instruments to get physical gauges are the fuel level and coolant temp; all else is buried in a submenu and the measurements have to be cycled across the center screen one at a time. The TPMS is subject to no rhyme or reason whatsoever in terms of what tire pressure level triggers it to start its braying, the computers that control its keyless ignition don't much like cold weather but do seem to enjoy chewing through batteries, and I've written many times before about the wrist-slittingly awful DBW lag which came close to getting me hit once when my Escort was out of action and I had to go check on it at a shop. It's a sad thing really, because my driver's instincts are telling me that there's a real car hiding somewhere inside that momtank (and look up a straight piped one on Youtube; they sound just like a Z when you cut the muffler off), but the electronics do everything they possibly can to hide its presence. And people wonder why I say car engineering peaked in the 1990s...
This. The same goes for Fords pickups that back up trailers for you now. I guess that could be handy in some scenarios, but most people that I hear talking about it buy it because they can't backup a trailer at all. If you are pulling something that weighs 5000 to 10000 pounds in addition to the vehicle towing you should be smart enough to back it up IMO.
I spend a fair bit of time at the boat ramp, as one can deduce from my sig. Watching people at the boat ramp is one of the greatest modern pass times an individual can enjoy. Once a couple of years ago my dad was helping a Honda CRV back up an empty jet ski trailer. After a couple of minutes my dad got bored of trying to walk the guy through it and just picked up the trailer and walked it back by hand.
