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Detroit, 5:49 PM
Fri Dec 11
29 posts in the last 24 hours
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/I better go call my friend in San Diego to make sure she survived that storm that blanketed Chicago.
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eh?
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My wife and I moved to the Colorado front-range, SW of Evergreen, @ 9K feet of elevation, in January 1998.
We're both D/FW natives. This was going to be adventurous on a grand scale, but we both embrace adventure.
October of '97 had a truly nasty storm in which people died on the road to/from the airport because they got buried, and nobody could get to them.
Our first really heavy snowfall experience was about 44". This is after we'd been prepped by a couple of 15"-20" storms.
On my way home from work, in downtown Denver, 'bout three hours after people started urgently telling me to leave...there's a storm coming...I came across a couple of guys who'd abandoned their CRX w/Florida plates, roadside.
I stopped and asked what was up. They said they tried to get to their folks' house, but couldn't make it up any of the hills.
I said, "hop in, I'm going mostly that way, anyway." It was all of ten minutes out-of-the-way, if that, and I hadn't seen any other vehicles in a good while.
I'm driving a '94 Grand Cherokee Ltd., V-8 w/QuadraTrac and new BFG A/T tires...I'm unstoppable.
I take 'em home, and wish them well.
Two days later, when we could actually get out of the "neighborhood", we were going down the sole paved in/out road, and I said to my wife, "hey, those guys I gave a ride to the other day...they're walking back to their car..."
She suggested we stop and give them a ride back. I said, "nah, it's only about a 1/2 mile more, and you'll see why we don't want to get involved in a minute."
When we reached the wide spot in the road where the CRX was abandoned, she said, "did their car get towed?!"
I said, "oh, it's there...you see that three inches of radio antenna sticking out of the snow? That's it. Now you understand why I wasn't going to give them a ride back...they've got a solid two hours of digging to get it out, and I didn't see shovels in-hand."
Snowplows + Mother Nature = pain
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Also, all that snow in the interior will only be a problem if it ever gets warm enough in Canada to melt it.
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But the snow, the snow is awesome. Six feet in a weekend. Great! I love when the state shuts down the roads. Doesn't happen often in CT though.
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The streets were like canyons, and violating the driving ban was awesome. Lose it in a corner? That's ok, the banks are soft, and no one else is out!
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A licky boom boom down.
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The torque range on the ecoBoost blows me away.
(Project lead) "I want 350 ft-lbs of torque. Can you do that?"
(Engineer) "Sure. Where on the rev range do you want it?"
(Waves indistinctly) "Anywhere."
(Engineer shrugs) "Okey-dokey."
Also: +1 for timing chains.
The VW 2.0 Turbo is a fun engine. I drove it. It drives bigger than it is. Yowzah.
A Chevy getting 32mpg used to be impressive. Now it's Chevy's sport-cute delivering 32mpg, and it's not as small as the sport-cutes used to be. Frankly, I'm damned impressed. My car won't do that, not even close, and it doesn't make nearly as much power, either.
Damned impressed.
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DEATH TO ENGINE HATS!
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but then again, was the last time you saw an engine that looked like this one.....
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Manufacturer: Yamaha Motor Corporation
Production: 1989–1995
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Or is there some reason that manufacturers want it to seem like a total mystery as to what is powering the car? "Hey, what's under there? DONT LOOK! It's a genie and he is f*cking angry."
Dear car makers: I (we) think engines look cool and we would like to see them. Nobody likes your stupid plastic covers, so stop putting them on. What, is this the victorian era of underhood design? Next thing you know there will just be another hood under the hood when you open the hood.