Quote from Kalev EST :

Mileage doesn't mean much. A car with high mileage that's been properly looked after can be in much better condition than a car with low mileage that has been treated like crap.

+1

My car has 233,000 MILES on it. Our family puts a lot of miles on our cars, but we also take good care of them. The end result is that my car, compared to the [surprisingly high number of] same cars of my year roaming around town here, always looks to be in much better shape despite the fact that most of those cars have literally HALF the mileage (100k miles less).

Quote from three_jump :

Problem with that system is that you'd need to keep track of the drivers eyes to get a proper highlighting / 3D-Projection. And it would drive all other passengers in the car crazy with a constantly shifting front screen I think. It could work with some kind of 3D-glasses, so you could even do some proper highlighting. Good idea though

It's possible, and in use on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The pilot uses a crazy, alien looking helmet which projects data onto his helmet visor. It allows him to identify friendly/enemy aircraft ala robot-vision and enables him to look through the aircraft (not just through the canopy) as the system tracks his head and overlays data on the screen accordingly.

Still too high-tech for the average Joe to afford, but we're getting there!

Quote from Forbin :

Onboard computer determines gross weight (trailer gross weight gets entered manually) then determines stopping distance based upon current conditions. Transmitter (infrared?) at the rear sends this info to the vehicle behind. Vehicle behind does its own calculations for stopping distance and determines a safe following distance.

It wouldn't be so easy. Varying road conditions, and tread wear would have an effect on the stopping distance too. You can't have a 100-car train do a panic stop simultaneously. One of the cars will be on black ice, or a piece of plastic on the road, or a wet/oily spot. You'd really need a controlled environment for cars to follow each other by a few feet at 100 mph. Perhaps a staggered setup would allow for some increase in efficiency while still allowing for at least some cushion of space between the vehicles.

[OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO] = Ultimate efficiency & minimum safety

[OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO] = Optimal efficiency & safety
[OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO][OO]

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:17.

You realize you're a Top Gear mark when you type 'f' into the Firefox address bar and www.finalgear.com/shows/topgear shows up near the top.

Quote from Forbin :

though they do use a LOT of salt.

Amen to that. Lol, they go a bit overboard sometimes.

So, looked out the window just now and noticed a car stopped on the moderate hill outside. Then realized they couldn't make it up. I was like WTF. Went out with my car to discover that for some reason the road had solidified into ice. First hill I came too we were moving two miles an hour while all the FWD cars zig-zagged up the hill looking for grip. First intersection I get to a car was being pulled out of a snow bank. I could give the car 50% throttle and all the tires would spin and the car would just move sideways, lol. Some intersections literally had NO grip. Watched a giant city bus slide right through an intersection with the wheels locked. It's insane. The roads are all ice-glazed. SO MUCH FUN!!!

A little fun this past weekend:





And a little fun with photoshop, lol, lame:



EDIT: Yay! 1000th post, lol.

Lol, gotta love incompetent landlords. In our case, we discovered that our kitchen outlets and living room outlets are on the same circuit - which is stupid. It also meant that if we had our entertainment system on and tried to use the microwave, it would trip the fuse. We told them this was unacceptable, so their maintenance guy came and the solution was he took out the 20-Amp breaker in the fuse panel and replaced it with a 30-Amp breaker. These are old apartments.

Lol, so now instead of the fuse tripping, we're just waiting for the walls to catch fire.

My first, and still current car, lol, that I inherited, and learned to love :lovies3d:

232,000 miles and still going strong!

I've only perused this thread, but I'll paste my response in another forum to someone who was arguing that ABS is bad and they wanted to disable it.

Quote :

Sorry dude, but I agree with DriverX on this one. When I'm driving in snow, I frequently slam on the brakes when nobody is behind me to test the road surface and know how much grip I have. The reason I do that is so that I know where the limits are, and as a result I NEVER deal with the ABS in the snow. Anyone who has trouble with the ABS on a regular basis in the winter and considers it a serious problem or trouble point is not driving correctly. You should know how much grip you have, and you should be able to brake without entering the "ABS zone." There is no such thing, unless the ABS system in a particular car is defective, of the ABS activating BEFORE a wheel slips. I generally have a good feel for how much grip the road surface has, and I know how much brake pressure I can apply without locking the wheels. In essence, I'm doing threshold braking but not QUITE reaching the limit, which is how you SHOULD be driving in snow to begin with. There's no such thing as being a good driver, and pumping the brakes in the snow. I get the impression some people on here think "that's the way any really good driver would do it", but it's not. In the real world, with other cars around you, you shouldn't be crossing that threshold at all. Ever. Same goes for locking the tires and letting the car dig in. You should never have to do that at ALL if you're driving intelligently.

And I don't buy the whole "someone cutting you off" argument because, first off, the way that argument was used makes it sound like it happens to you every 5 minutes. If you're at all a good defensive driver, it shouldn't happen to you very much at all, if ever. I leave PLENTY of space in the winter, and I can anticipate someone "cutting me off" long enough before it happens that I can gently slow down a bit. Even if someone really DOES completely cut you off in a way that is likely to lead to a collision, 9 times out of 10 it makes much more sense to go around them (as in the winter, I make a point of avoiding having cars directly next to me whenever possible) rather than applying your skilled threshold braking to stop in time, because odds are if you do that, you'll just be rear-ended by the ABS-equipped car behind you anyway.

I think the best option is a red button on the steering wheel. So that in that 1/10 situation where you decide you just want to STOP, you can press that button to disable the ABS for 10 seconds.

Quote from speed1 :

Actually, I was just thinking, my CRV doesnt have ESP or ABS, but somehow It's made it to 100k miles.

That would be an interesting statistic. Compare the total mileage on average of cars with/without ESP, ABS, AWD, etc, and see if there is any noticeable trend.

Quote from 5haz :

People should just learn car control and to drive according to the conditions/limits.

This is America. Pretty sure that's impossible.

Thanks for that info. I will definitely look into it! I appreciate your taking the time to help me out.

I'd love more information if someone has it on where exactly I could go on the east coast for that kind of price. I've done some internet research in the past, but all I ever come up with are those $2-3K "weekend track day" specials with classroom instruction and all that crap.

If anyone around this area (Virginia) or even up north (I'm from New Jersey) knows of local places where I could do this, I would LOVE some input. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help me out.

Quote from runeman :

Stang, always remember what I said. You wont die in an accident.

Kev, I know alot of drivers like B. They haven't had an accident yet, so therefore they're a good driver. But it'll catch up to them one day.

Vehicular manslaughter is a big deal over here.

If it makes any difference, I have been in an accident, and no I don't think I'm invincible. But I do think I know my car well enough to take an on-ramp that I am also familiar with with a bit of speed with no other cars in sight.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Well that's sort-of my point: Not wanting to sound too patronising there's always a possibility for someone else to get hurt when you're in charge of a big, heavy, fast thing, and any time you decide to have a bit of fun with it that possibility goes up.

Well, yes, but let's be reasonable though. As soon as you back your car out of the driveway the risk goes up of you injuring someone else. Every time you back up in general, it's statistically proven that the risk of injuring someone goes up significantly.

As for the track day stuff, I'd absolutely, positively love to, but I wouldn't be able to do it with my car. The only reason it's still running today is because I've babied it ever since I inherited it at 185k. Even now anything over 3500 RPM throws up a bit of white smoke - head gaskets are leaking again. Not to mention it drips oil, so I'd assume that would automatically nullify any chance of my taking it on a track?
$250 is doable though, I didn't realize that was how cheap it was. Does that give you the right to just take a car out and go? Or are there all kinds of strings attached? I know overseas you guys have all sorts of track days for cheap, but America is so full of lawyers they simply can't seem to do it.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Despite your tooling around in the sports car you sound like a fairly reasonable driver. Just be careful that when you're behaving like a dick on public roads you're not endangering anyone else. Like, when you decide to drift onto the highway is there a chance you might lose control and end up sideways into a telegraph pole, killing your dad. Or might you hit a barrier and bounce back into the road with your car disabled, leaving a big, heavy, stationary object for a passer-by to drive into.

It's that sort of thing that bothers me. Think a little bit beyond the immediate here-and-now, and be aware that someone might get seriously hurt because you wanted a little thrill in a car that day. It sounds like you're alright at judging risks but be aware that often situations that you haven't accounted for might start to play out. That's why I don't piss around when I'm driving on public roads. At all.

Completely understood, and I agree with everything you say. Like I said, it was my 21st birthday, I was in a good mood, i understood what I was doing and considering the drift happened in first gear only (since I wasn't proficient enough to try shifting mid drift, lol) I wasn't traveling very fast at all, so I thought the risk was worth it. I wouldn't dare try to drift or slide a car on public roads period at anything faster than EXTREMELY SLOW (read: under 30 mph) with no prior experience. Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to be able to take even my old 232k mile Subaru Outback out onto a real track - probably my #1 dream at the moment. I have, however, done a fairly good job in all my driving years so far of containing the need for speed that's built up since I got my license. It just creeps out every few months in some form or another

But I can guarantee you even in those cases there is never any possibility for anyone else to get hurt. Like I said, I'd be way too terrified to try something with others around.

And again, the point of this thread is not to SHOW OFF MY AWESOME DRIVING SKILLZ or MAKE A POINT OF HOW AWESOME I AM, it was just to share an awesome experience I had with people who share my passion for cars and can understand how I felt the first time I got a RWD car sideways. Definitely something I will remember for the rest of my life.

Of course, now I need a faster car, lol, depressed.

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:18.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

He'll do 40+ down a one-way residential street with parked cars either side of him without thinking that someone might wander out from behind something into the path of his car. It's that sort of thing that makes me wonder how many drivers on the roads continue to chance stuff like that because they've got away with it before.

That's something that irks me. The same goes for people who tailgate. I couldn't do that because it scares the living daylights out of me. I don't know how people do it without even seeming frightened. It boggles my mind. I can't even drive close behind someone in a race in LFS without freaking out that I'm gonna ram them, lol.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You're just 21, it's your dad who's the ****ing idiot.

"Hey son let's go bogus test-drive us some racin' cars!" :rolleyes:

Lol, it's something we used to have fun doing. We've test driven many, many cars. Everything from the BMW 7-series, to a Chrysler Pacifica, to the Crossfire, to the RX-8... it's a fun weekend waster. Up until now, though, it's always been him who drove the cars.

Quote from 5haz :

Don't worry I'm not talking to you, I meant Shawdoww, who seems to think driving safely is for 'pussies'.

Gotcha. Driving safely is not for 'pussies.' It's for 'intelligent people.' I pride myself in driving safely. I've avoided more than one accident by driving defensively (not going when the light turns green before looking right-left, and avoiding the car that sped through the intersection, or flooring it when I watched a car behind me not stop and almost rear end me.)

I also drive transit busses, so driving safely and defensively is my #1 concern. I went through some defensive and safe driving classes before getting certified and realized that I learned absolutely nothing new in the class that I didn't already do in my own car. It surprised me when they sat me in the simulator to teach me to "steer to the rear" of an object crossing the road (e.g. don't steer in front of something, steer the opposite way in which it is traveling). I see this to be common sense, and I would hope it would be a normal reaction, but apparently it isn't for some people.

This is not to say I don't have fun myself. When it snows, I go NUTS with my Subaru. And there is the rare occasion when it's pleasurable to see how fast you can take the loop-around exit ramp before the tires start squealing, but you cannot possibly consider yourself an automotive enthusiast if you don't have fun at least once a month.

Yeah, I'm pretty bored today.

Quote from 5haz :

Pulling off drifts, powerslides and handbrake turns does not make you (or even look slightly) macho by the way, the first thing the average person thinks when they see someone pulling off a stunt on public roads is "what a wanker".

Agreed. However I didn't do it to show off, I did it for my own personal enjoyment. I'm not like those ****s with their Corvettes who feel the need to do a burnout at every light.

Also, Jakg, you can't deny Hyundai is a pretty competent manufacturer. There's a reason they were on the cover of Forbes magazine a few days ago.

And speaking of Centrafuse, don't install 3.0 if you haven't already. What a pain in the ass the new version is.

Quote from 5haz :

Because we are from the developed world, you wouldn't understand.

Top Gear has it all wrong...

Quote from BlakjeKaas :

Those cars are sold most of the time as second hand or test drive model.

The car will be cheaper, driven in and it's normal for a dealership to have a car to try out.

Exactly. People who buy those cars know what they've been through, and the dealership also knows. Those cars are driven hard even before the engine is warmed up because test drives often don't even last that long. Anyone who is serious about purchasing a vehicle is going to want to drive it aggressively. Normally, though, they limit you because they don't want their test car to end up in a mangled wreck on the side of the road.

That said, I am actually considering that car as my next car. The only issue is that I'm not getting a car for probably another 6 months at best. But it's definitely something in the near future, and I was actually interested in the car. It is a fantastic little car for the price. I'm just more leaning towards something with AWD, as much fun as RWD is...

It's understandable. I fully expected some people to call me an idiot. It's hard to gauge over the internet the situation, and I would probably yell at someone if they posted this too. I'll just explain that I wouldn't do anything I felt entirely uncomfortable doing, I also wouldn't do that in the viscinity of any other vehicles (I was the only one at the u-turn) and I am also against people completely tearing a car to shreds, but to be honest, if I'm buying a new car, I'm most certainly not going to buy one that's been out for test drives because there's only one way to really gauge how much you like a car, and it doesn't involve puttering around at 20 mph.

That said, I just felt like sharing the experience, whether you appreciate it or not, I don't really care, but it was absolutely worth it for me, and the most fun I've ever had in a car in my life.

And sinbad makes an excellent point. Everyone enjoys doing something "stupid." I don't consider what I did to be any more stupid than those people who like to really speed on roads, or who tailgate people by 1/2 carlength at 80 mph. It's all relative. What I did SOUNDS ridiculous because of what it was, but when you think about it, you probably do more dangerous stuff every day.

N900 is awesome. I've got one. I love it.

Wish it sent picture messages, though, lol. They're still adding features to it. It was rushed out before they got everything done, lol.