Indeed. It is painful walking down the street and hearing a symphony of depressing tractor noises coming from cars that are mostly worth no more than 600 euros, and seeing the sheer soul crushing boredom in every driver's face. The only time I've ever seen someone look genuinely excited driving a car was an old man driving a Citroen 2cv, it made me happy to see the child-like glee in his eyes as he gave that 600-something cubic centimeter tin can on wheels the beans and pulled away down the street, creating a noise and smell from the exhaust that put a smile on my face also despite the fact that I have never even touched such a car with my own hands. That got off topic because I like to ramble, but I guess my point is that when you are stuck in a place with no proper cars or engines, you make do with what you have. Pic below is what the old man was driving, except it was white and probably in worse condition.
we did had v6 engines and 5 cylinders in europe allot in the 90 until mid 2000 but they went away if you want a v8 in europe you have to pay bmw, Mercedes, audi or all the other cars above 100k unless you buy a 50k ford f150 a 40k dodge ram but people think those are two big in europe its sad
I drove me mothers 2014 Holden Barina RS 1.4T since my car wasn't home and my bloody father had the van keys on him! Van has alarm and only 1 working button after I water damaged the other one...
Hopefully. Not really. Retired police cars are a hell of a deal for the price. They're really a gamble though. Depends on the department. I went and looked at a group of 15ish 06-09 Vics being sold by a City police department, with the average mileage of the group being 110k. They were total junk. Beat to hell. The agency both of my cars are from, Knox County Sherriff, takes very good care of them. Knoxville Police, however, beats their cars to shit. Mileage varies and really doesn't mean much. Most of them don't have "very high miles though". You'll find Highway Patrol cars with 150k that look brand new and city units with 100k that are total junk.
See, there's one of those things that honks me right off from across the sea. Displacement-based road taxes. Even Japan's way of doing it (by size) makes some sense, but taxing by engine displacement is just beyond the pale. One thing that's become pretty obvious is that people really don't like those wimpy little cars and will only buy them if the government makes them artificially attractive (Japan) or makes real car artificially unattractive (where you live, somewhere in Europe I'm guessing). Some people in Japan do like them now, but in the beginning they were the brainchild of government.
That's a little better, but it's still nature-cultist garbage. Possibly the fairest way to do it would be by straight-up curb weight, since that directly affects how much wear & tear a car causes to the roads it drives on. If I were designing a system of road taxes, I'd do it by how badly the vehicle obstructs other motorists, via a dimensional formula with height, ride height, and height as a percentage of width as the most heavily weighted components. Thus, small, low-slung sports cars and compacts that can (at least in theory) accelerate and corner quickly will get the lowest tax, whereas the big clumsy SUVs that clog up winding roads at ludicrously slow speeds and obstruct other drivers' views ahead and at intersections will get taxed to the point where it's not really practical to have one as a personal-use daily driver. Under my plan, bicycles would be regulated much more heavily than they are now, and would require lights and a plate to be street-legal and a test before you'd be allowed to ride one unsupervised on an open street, but instead of getting a lower tax due to their small size, they'd be taxed to the moon because they're annoying and don't belong on the road anyway. Well, some of them would be; "utility" bicycles could be registered for city use only and would then be taxed at the same level as a motorcycle (a fairly decent one, to encourage people to go motorized as soon as they can afford it). More expensive bicycles and those clearly intended for recreational or sporting use, however, would get the maximum theoretical tax level to discourage their use on the road. Another way to handle the problem of bicycles would be to straight-up ban them from any road where the speed limit is greater than 25-30 MPH (or 10-15, if it has steep hills), or from non-urban areas in general.
I couldn't agree more. Displacement based tax is dumb especially considering the huge variety of cars that can carry the same size engine. You can have a miata an LS1 swap that gets the same ammount of tax as an H1 Hummer, because they're both bigger than 3.5L and therefore they are evil things that must be killed with taxes. (The truth is that the government just loves to tax everything so politicians can afford their brand new mercedes. We don't even have proper welfare like most other socialist shitholes) I think this is a pretty fair system, but I still have to agree with Shotgun Chuck's idea. Still, emission based taxing makes more sense than displacement based, as some engines produce less toxic emissions despite being bigger. Say, a 2L lean running diesel vs a 1.3L petrol engine running rich enough to feed a scooter off the exhaust. Well, for a car registered after 2007 (tax goes down on older cars, and classic cars don't pay it at all most of the time) you pay a yearly tax of 28,29€ if your vehicle has a displacement of under 1250cc, 56,78€ for 1750cc, and the rape starts when you pay 113,45€ for up to 2500cc and 388,27€ a year for anything over 2.5 liters. On older vehicles (registered before July 2007) the tax varies based on fuel, diesels pay less tax because envoirment, same thing with electric cars, but gasoline gets the most heavily taxed and goes up to 460 euros/year if your car has over 3.5L of displacement. So the truth is yes, most people just drive around in tiny french cars like pic below.
That's a cool truck. for 2200 I'd get it. You can make plenty of power and have plenty of fun with a sub 1.7 engine. I manage to every day.
Peeking out with a friend's EVO X. Reverse peeking out with my Scrapebaru. T tops off! Parking lot friend, This car certainly makes a lot of these; I always park far away to avoid door dings, but any Japanese car fan, and occasionally Euro/Japanese fans (I assume by car choice?) will come and park next to me.
Swapped out the crappy bent up junkyard condenser for a really nice one from an '89 that a guy let me rob parts from. Pulled a vacuum, added some oil, and filled it up with Envirosafe crap. Haven't driven it yet, but it seems to work better now.
I picked my car up on Thursday but I've been too lazy to type anything about it. Took this after I washed it yesterday. On Thursday I took the seats and "carpet" out. Washed the vinyl "carpet" off real good in the driveway with the hose and some soap. These pictures were taken right after I got home, hadn't done anything to it. Floorpan is 100% rust free, unlike the '06. Gotta deal with a few broken trim pieces from the heavy handed decommissioning. They get the inmates to tear the police equipment out of these things. No shit.
I tested the acceleration https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6I-ecsP7FVoRkpQdkZzYmkzREE/view?usp=sharing 0-100 with my 2003 Opel Astra G 1.7 DTI
Been messing with the blower fan since yesterday. It makes a noise like its hitting the housing. If I set it to recirc and put my head in the passengers side floorboard, I can see it through the recirc door. It wobbles back and forth almost like the shaft is bent. I took the blower motor and fan out of the housing, which is a 5 minute job, and everything looked fine on immediate inspection. No debris caught in the fan or housing. I put 12v to it and it spun true and straight. Couldn't find anything off with it so I put it back in and it's still doing it. Took another peek at it through the recirc door and it still looks like it's spinning on a bent shaft. I'm somewhat stumped. Doesn't make sense.
Have you checked to see if the motor itself is mounted good? Has the blower fan become imbalanced somehow? Even if it's mounting isn't sturdy, it should still spin straight from gyroscopic effect if the fan is balanced... I've been knee deep in a full engine rebuild on the truck in my profile pic for a while now. It spun three rod bearing due to steel grit that was gouged from the cylinder wall after a ring failure. I just short blocked it last weekend, and finished scrubbing the heads down with drain gas last Sunday. Now I'm waiting to get a master gasket set to slap it all back together.
I took the fan and motor out and put 12v to it, holding the motor in my hand. It spun perfectly. No imbalances or anything. Everything is mounted sturdily as well. But for some reason, when it's bolted into the housing it doesn't spin true. Like I said, look's like it's spinning on a bent shaft. I'll probly take it out again and have another look at it. Good luck on your rebuild.
