SAmadei

Quite. 80% of the performance and 80% of the quality for 40% of the price. Affordable alternative, not a exact match. Drop the height a bit, stiffen the suspension and drop in a LS4 or L76 and 6 speed manual. I happen to like the Torrent better than the Equinox and the Chevy split horizontal grill.

When the belt is removed, double check that all the pulleys/accessories don't move or wobble. Also double check that you have the correct belt. My '89 GMC van from my father has a belt eating habit, and I've been damned to find it... the belt is VERY tight and it destroys the belt roughly every 10K.

Its funny, as I always felt my '81 Bonneville Coupe was spritely enough with the Buick 3.8 V6. My 307 is in my Buick station wagon... and always was a dog accelerating... but once it got a head of steam, it worked great... regardless of load... but you would cringe if you had to hit the brakes and then reaccelerate. Obviously, while both B-bods, there is a significant weight difference.

Well, there IS an alternator/ALT idiot light on some cars, though it seems to be a well deserved endangered species on new cars, with information centers and volt gauges. Of course, ALT lights are virtually useless. They only come on if the alternator fails in a particular way... which doesn't seem to happen in this age (post 1975ish) of reliable internal regulators.

That sounds like a more serious problem than XLR-V was posting about. ;-) Seriously, I get what you are saying, though. You mean like the radio and interior lights... my '99 Bonne does the same... but this doesn't kill all the juice. For example, the radio memory and remote responder are still hot. Granted, these are not large loads, but if one was shorted, it could be an issue. I'm not familiar with the circuit that controls the 10 minute electric kill on newer cars... on older cars it was an add-on... likely part of the chime/lighting. On newer cars, where this is standard, I would imagine it is more integral, and less likely to fail since it would be on a chip and/or solid state. But of course, everything fails. ;-)

They supposedly were... but then again, GM should have made them (and made them competitive) in the first place. With the brands divided among dealerships as Chevy and BPG, BPG needs the G3 and G5 to fill the niche below the G6... its absurd to not have Pontiac, the affordable brand of BPG to have models in the subcompact range. As for the Torrent, I feel that if it was given some Pontiac swagger, it could have been an affordable alternative to the Cayenne. Of course, now Buick-GMC dealers will pressure GM to make a G3 and G5 for Buick... once they recover from the dealership-closing-phobias Old GM inflicted.

Actually, most alternator failures I've ever dealt with never lit the warning light. Only by watching the habits of the volt gauge would you see it coming... and nobody but my mother watches the volt gauge with paranoia. Check the battery cables for overheating. I've had a lot of problems with them on late model cars, and the constant heat cycling seems to cause the cables to degrade to the point where the alternator can't push juice back into the battery anymore, yet they look pretty good externally. The one car eventually melted the battery terminal.

BMW saw the smuggled W-body plans and threw him out? Being back at GM is better than UI? ;-)

FTW. You will submit or the sheeple will laugh at you!

Apparently sleepy and distracted by my throbbing knee. The first part of that post was missing about 15 words. It sounded good in my head (at the time) but didn't get translated to the fingers. I meant that GM has ceded the luxury coupe (and coupe market for the most part) to the imports. Don't worry, when awake, I am well aware of who is still BOF today.

BOF GM car? No. GM ceded that market to the imports. But, quite frankly Mercedes and BMW have some nice CPO personal luxury coupes.

They'll be plenty of Pontiacs for years which I can buy without giving money to GM, just as I can find Oldsmobiles today. Quite frankly, I'm glad that you aren't at BMW anymore, as they may get my voting dollar... and I'd hate to think that my money ended up in your paycheck. You're return to GM is just another reason not to buy GM... the idea that GM has people on payroll actively trying to help snuff out any enthusiasm for their business is just mind-boggling. Is this supposed to hurt you? No. I don't expect anything spineless to feel pain.

Pretty much as I would expect. In my experience, traditional Poncho fans only give modern Pontiacs a small consideration before buying a Mazda, Maxima or 3 series for a daily driver. The few diehards that would buy ONLY Pontiacs (like me) are few and far between. I feel that the idea that one is not thrilled by the loss is that Pontiac was the last chance that GM could build a decent, affordable sports sedan/coupe... like the G8... because its obvious that GM feels Chevy is fine with 20 year old W-bodies and Cadillac is a good excuse to charge an arm and leg for the same thing (CTS-V, STS-V).

I thought that, too... but now I have to disagree... I have had a series of Snapper push mowers (for the other house's _much_ smaller yard)... heavy, basic, 20+ year old mowers and each one has been doomed. I currently have a Craftsman push mower that a neighbor gave me for free after watching me beat the Snappers into parts. It is cheap and plasticy, but starts on the first pull every season. I keep 'em lubed... cleaned... sharp blades... but the carbs and rotating assembly were not surviving. I refused to buy a new mower when I could conceivably cut the lawn with a weedwacker. I get tired of cutting grass.

If I buy cheap shoes, I end up walking off the sole because they're just not wide enough... then the material quickly wears out. It then hurts my arches. Of course, when I work in the yard, I destroy shoes left and right, so I still buy cheapies at times.

I bought a Craftsman lawnmower about 3 years ago, and while its not as robust as the old '75 Craftsman mower I had as a child, it really has held up well. I have to cut about 5 acres of quickly growing weeds every three weeks, and many areas of the yard only get occasional cutting, and are full of debris (that I am slowly cleaning up)... so this mower REGULARLY has to run down 3-4 foot tall brush and it spits out old 2x4 pieces and chunks of asphalt or concrete when I hit them... if I'm not getting the deck snagged on a tree, fence or tree & fence at high speed. Of course, I did not buy the cheapest mower... if fact, at the time, the mower was the second most expensive vehicle I had bought at the time (now its the third). Before I bought the mower, I was having real problems getting all that grass cut reliably. I had a hot rodded Zero turn mower, but it had too many problems... then I had a used Noma (Chinese for "Piece of S#it)... that never wanted to start and had a deck so flimsy that the blades would cut it when it flexed... and I piece of concrete ripped through it... before one of the pulleys broke up. I still have the old Craftsman, and I would like to restore it one day, as it looks (and ran) like a musclecar compared to the new mower. I buy only NB for that and the wide sizes. NB rocks.

In case any Jersey local folks were interested, I recently tripped over the new plate format... after we use up the current ZZZ 99Z ( currently at ZBx 99x and counting), we are reversing it to Z99 ZZZ. No seven digit general purpose plates!

Thats good to hear that Cali has specifically addressed the issue, but I have heard its more of a problem in Arizona and the midwest. Luckily, our governor declared photo violations illegal about a decade ago... that the people of NJ had the right to "confront their accuser". Of course, with more government inefficiency, a crappy economy and less freedom, I'm sure that this will issue will resurface.

I think most people don't care what plates they have and most dealers just figure that people want shiny new plates for their new cars. I've had a couple friends keep their old plates on a new car. Since I have a very old plate, I'd refuse a sale if the dealer tried to put new plates on... but its one of those things where if you don't bring it up, the dealer will have new plates in your name faster than lightning to keep the sale proceeding.

Hate to inform you of this so late, but (unfortunately) Pontiacs won't be sold much longer. By the time the G8 would have been converted to a Chevy, the G8 will have been long gone from the new car lots.

The problem is the company that partners with the city to install the units usually gets half the revenue. So they program the equipment to be aggressive and push the city to cut yellows to meet revenue requirements. In the end, red light photo cameras translate a minor annoyance ( beating a red light) for serious rear-end accidents... which are hidden from the public using statistics. I don't feel that red light running is a real problem. Here in NJ, we have _all_ the bad driving habits in bulk. Yet, I see few people actually running red lights... but my friends do... until I remind them that it is perfectly legal to be IN the intersection when the light is red... it is illegal to ENTER the intersection once the light is red. And the places where red light running is worst are intersections which need traffic engineering fixes... either an updated, sensor-light instead of a hard programmed timed light or more lanes for the crossing road, so that there is a shorter red. Actually, in my area, a lot of lights now have cameras... not for photo enforcement, but just for traffic surveillance. However, it seems that people are less likely to break the law in the presence of any camera.

Either way... *Yawn*

In NJ, we don't have these... but I was exposed to them in NYC... and they do seem to be very aggressively programmed. Luckily, its only a fine, not points... It does seem that the system could cite you if you were creeping up in a turn lane, but the photo evidence in NYC includes how long the light was red and your speed, so I figure there is some cutoff... in NYC, being trapped "in the box", while illegal itself, is going to happen... and the photo enforcement seems to not cite for that. In my time in NYC, I never got a photo ticket... of course, I was aware of the intersections that were photo-equipped, I don't usually run red lights and since I knew the intersections were being watched, I would hammer the throttle on yellow... plus I had NJ plates... so I'm not sure NYC is trying to fleece the out-of-staters on this scam. OTOH, my girlfriend got about two a year... usually in Staten Island. Looking at the photo evidence, I have to admit its pretty compelling... here's your car in the middle of a intersection with a red light... and your speed/time. Makes you want to cut a check and put it quietly behind you. I also noticed that some photo intersections (Houston and West Side Highway, for example), do seem to flash an awful lot, when nobody seems to be breaking the law... so I figure there are lots of falses.

According to a C&D article from about 8 years ago, even the WORST polluting POS would have to be run, non-stop for 50 years to equal the amount of pollution created by the building and shipping of a new car. Granted, some of that is hyperbole, but knowing how much effort it takes to bend sheetmetal and the NASTY chemicals left over from the painting and molding processes and the various circuit board creations, it does not surprise me one bit.

If its whining (not wheezing), then the PS pump could be suspect... however, I'd check the fluid level and bleed the system before declaring it a problem. You can bleed the PS by topping it off and turning the wheels lock to lock a few times. Of course, low fluid would likely mean a leak and a stain that you would have noticed.