Nissan NV3500 HD van with a 3/4-ton full-floating rear Dana axle? A full-floating Titan work truck would clean up in the commercial market.
(0)Archive for the 'car' Category
Page 10 of 39
Saw a 4th gen Mitsubishi Eclipse with a carbon fiber hood. Really? No matter how much money you throw at one of those, it will still be a slow, terrible car. I can’t believe someone actually manufactures a carbon hood for it! That’s even weirder than a body kit for a Hyundai Tiburon.
(2)Dang, at this Sundays auto-x I saw the potential of the car. A Subaru version running in my class, only change was race compound tires, was driven by one of the top drivers during fun runs. He turned in a awesome time of 40 seconds and change. More than six seconds faster than my best time and would have been in the top tiers of entire field, top ten and just besting the GT-R!
Now all I got to do is buy a set of tires, and a big box of skill. 6 seconds over 40 is huge, it’ll take way more than just tires to make up for that! I did spring for a day of the Evolution driving class in two weeks, too bad I can’t really afford the full weekend.
I forgot to blog about this, after months of waiting and back and forth and sending multiple old shafts, waiting for me when I got back from Thanksgiving trip was the box from The Drive Shaft Shop. They ended up manufacturing everything except the wheel hub cup. All from Chromo/300m steel. 300m is a slightly different alloy of 4340 chromo and features higher strength all around. Looks good, although missing the dust shields on the transaxle side.
Installation of the short drivers side went without a hitch. The long one gave me problems, the little spring clip retainer was not seated correctly and I ended up mangling it trying to insert into the transaxle. It took me a bunch of trips to Napa to find another. Had to find different nut also, the one they provided was made for the style where the shaft has a notch and you punch the flang of the nut into it to lock. I needed the nut with locking castle type washer and cotter pin. It’s finally in, driving around the neighborhood, they work. No race for a while though, so I don’t know how they’ll perform. Odds are these shafts won’t break. I hope so because with the single piece transaxle side cup design, it’s not as easy to change.
Wouldn’t you know it after spending entire night last friday detailing the car before the race, it rains the following week. There was a window of good weather this weekend so ended up washing the car again, which lasted until last night. Today was overcast but not raining so went for a little drive in the afternoon to look for photo ops. I guess dark weather makes for a different kind of image.
Look out with the new safety check decals if you attempt to move them. The print & adhesive layer is pretty homogenous and does that perforate with void word. I tried with heat gun (couldn’t find hair dryer) and got half of it off. So now I’m here at the 76 station getting a new check done. Didn’t want to go all the way back to dealer. Darn they only got one year tags.
Thank goodness the horn on the FR-S is decently loud! A Porsche Cayenne/vw/audi almost backed directly into my drivers side in the Koko Marina parking lot. Came extremely close. Doesnt your fancy shamancy car have backup sensors? Sheesh!
First it was weird kids putting Southeast-Asia Altis badges on their Corollas, now it’s K-boy wannabes putting YF badges on their Hyundai Sonatas. Forget the fact that the Korean-market Sonatas DON’T actually come with YF badges where the oval marque badge should be, nor at the wheel centers (the YF is red subtext to the Sonata nameplate).
(0)
OK, here by popular demand, an overall pic of the car with the PlastiDipped wheels. And to fulfill my Racer Boy image, I actually raced at today’s SCCA Solo II AutoCross. It was a learning and entertaining experience. My first run I forgot to turn off the VSC stability control. I realized as I was pulling away from start and could only manage to turn off the traction control. What a horribly frustrating excercise! Throw it into a corner and put the pedal down and the electromom kicks in and the gas goes limp. By contrast on my second run where I did turn all the techno dodads off, I was all over the place! Oh my, these Bridgestone Turanza tires featuring COCS (they need to get together with Easton with their CNT) are quite the squirrelmeisters! I dare say these might be worse than the Michellin “Prius” tires that all the reviewers got on their FR-S’. At least those were summer tires, these are all seasons. When I calmed down and tried to drive more whithin the bounds of the tires, things got better, and actually pretty fun!