Need some car suggestions for my wife

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Snidewhips
the rav or camry? not farmiliar,yet. manipulating an engine is not uncommon ground (chev 3.1-3.8) ect, iridium plugs and reliability make the fruit worth the squeez, and as far as plastic interiors go as long as it works i'm good. i agree for the price you deserve balsa wood and silver but i never buy a vehicle that isn't a steal so plasticy and hidden plugs for the price is well worth it.
ford fan i'm guessing?

The problem as i understand it is not something where you have to rock the engine, you physically have to drop the engine down a foot or two so that you can get the intake manifold off so you can get the coils out.

Of course, the thing with "long life" plugs is that by the time they need replacement, they pull the threads out of the cylinder head so you're pulling the engine, or more likely just scrapping the car because it's cheaper to just buy a new car.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

Back in the late 70's or early 80's GM made the Chevy Monza with a V8. The engine had to be raised (or lowered) to remove a spark plug in the rear.

I worked for Packard Electric Div. GM in the early 80's. In a Monday morning engineering meeting I suggested to a the big boss a 1 cent per vehicle modification that would make a wiring harness serviceable.

His response (almost word for word). "We don't care if it is servicable. All we care about is how inexpensively we can assemble it."

Cutting labor claims is a pretty good motivator nowadays. Heck, a lot of the ways the new Ford 6.7 truck engine is different from the IH 6.0/6.4 are with respect to serviceablilty. You don't have to pull the cab off to change an injector! (If you've never seen under the hood of a 6.4-engined F250, look under the hood of a 3000GT, but turn the engine sideways and make everything 50% bigger. It's wall to wall front to back side to side "stuff" under there. At least the 3000GT is easy to work on.)

That 6.7 has an idea that I really like, personally. I don't know if Ford has a name for it but I think of it as a "cooling system bus". The radiator is two units in one. The main part is the normal engine coolant radiator. The second part is a separate cooling system entirely that services the intercooler, oil cooler, and other coolers that normally would have a big thick stack of coolers in front of the radiator. Instead of all that and trans lines and oil lines and other crap all over the place, there's just the coolant lines going from here to there to there. And no giant front mounted intercooler, either, which also means no anaconda plumbing under the hood. Pete approves greatly.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2015 07:53PM by Pete.

you gotta yoink the intake manifold off to do em. no biggie. nissan 3.5s are a pia that way. anyone worked on a northstar. now theres a beauty of a transverse to do anything to. when i was starting my apprenticeship i did a starter on an sts and didn't secure the plenums before testing the starter. drag strip loudness and fire i tell ya. cuttin teeth. just did injectors on an e 350 with 6.0 a week ago
fml

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All bridges burnt, island life is beauty

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Aaron Luptak
Gene, you missed the best sanctioning-body link:
http://www.extremeamericanrally.com/

Everything says stuff like "coming soon", etc. Main video is not available due to copyright claim by Rally America.

The website says something about 2015 being all new, blah, blah...

Great start..... Worth a laugh.

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heymagic
....http://www.specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?69506-Official-Announcement-of-USRA-Partnering-with-Mad-Media

http://www.specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?70257-USRA-New-Press-Release-Details-Point-System-Classes

Linkies will get you grinning. There are a couple more threads on SS in the US section . I'll look to see if I still have your email.

Grinning? Hell, the first link had me laughing out loud with tears too. I even left a tame note on that thread.

Great stuff!

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Jens
Everything says stuff like "coming soon", etc. Main video is not available due to copyright claim by Rally America.

Ha! That's new. I'd say it strikes a blow against their vehement "This isn't a joke, we swear!" stance, but it seems like these days, everybody thinks "If it's on youtube, it's fair game"...

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KF7RWG
http://www.utahrallygroup.com

Subarus are damn good. I still have my 3rd, 4th, and 6th one .

05 sti, bought used with 7,000 miles. put 150,000 miles on it. about 95% of those pure abuse ..
its done over 100 cone racing events (won about 10 championships with this car) , 6 track days, 2 hill climbs (with an unofficial subaru record on one course) , its been on a lot of rally roads, easy 15,000 miles of snow driving, tons of dirt . I've jumped it ... A LOT .

Before i knew any better i used to do doughnuts in the dirt next to a road and with all 4 tires spinning i would slide from dirt to pavement at WOT .. never broke anything.


repairs to date: 1 passenger side half shaft. front sway bar end link 3 times (probably from jumping my car ?)
crashed into a wall with air bag deployment . stuffed those fuckers back in and drove home (drove straight) had to get a new bumper, air bags, and misc stuff.

I did try to do a coolant flush at 40k, i did it wrong, got a huge air buble and went to the track (didn't know) ran way to hot (pegged needle) car still drove home A-okay . developed a minor head gasket leak. subaru fixed it under waranty at 59,950 miles .

at 128,000 miles i got a crack in my oil pickup line (did not realize it) blew a turbo, blew the replacement turbo and siezed the heads. dissembled showed oil starvation damage , rebuild a new short block, rebuilt turbo, resuzed heads that got machined.

car runs fine.


my rally car 1993 subaru impreza has about an equally impressive resume of abuse its survived and kept going.


Don't want a subaru ? fine.
think they are dumb, its subjective
think they are ugly, its subjective

don't think its a reliable car? you're wrong.

not for you? subjective lol

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Pete
Avoid Nissan at all cost. They still have not yet figured out how to make a car that doesn't rust audibly.
.....

Okay here we are 7/12/2016. Other than servicing my and wife's car I have not looked at or driven ANY cars since I stopped rallying in 2001, so I know NOTHING about them.

The wife is seriously looking at cars right now. Her's is at 192k miles and I have finally convinced her she ***must*** get a car now! She is a teacher, so has the summer off.

I thought she had narrowed it down to one of two 2013 Toyota Camrys (both with 4 cyl engines. One with 25k and the other 35k) XLE and LE respectively. Yesterday she was at another dealer looking at cars and called me about a 2 or 3 year old Nissan Altima. Based on what some of you guys wrote here about Nissan I told her the rally people I know say these things rust like crazy and since Connecticut started using some really bad salt/shit 7 years ago that she should not get the Altima regardless how much she liked it.

I did a quick "google" and saw that 2001 - 2006 Nissans rusted like crazy, but.... are the newer Nissans still bad?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2016 01:37PM by Jens.

Factory manuals these days (in general for many makes). Are they a thing of the past? I looked at Helms yesterday and they have no service manuals for a 2013 Toyota Camry. I called a Toyota dealer parts department. They were not rude, but sounded surprised I was looking for paper manuals. The ONE guy told me nothing is on paper anymore. Is that true?

What factory quality options are there now, or nothing? I've had Alldatadiy, but they expired recently. Alldatadiy is okay, but generally not as good as a full factory paper manual I have for each of my cars.