SAmadei

Not really. The amount of energy used to create a new vehicle will offset any mileage gains unless you drive nonstop around the clock.

Buzzy noises make me think alternator. Perhaps the battery is a little undercharged and the alternator is working harder to get it back up to snuff. If you live in a area with lots of moisture, its amazing how fast corrosion can build up... causing all sorts of noises... If things are running OK, I'd give it some time to decide if its going to quiet itself or get worse.

My '99 Bonne had Aquatreds when I bought it and then replaced them with two sets of TripleTreds... over 140K miles... I should have about 30~40K left on the second set. I had one pair of tires that lasted about 110K. Awesome tire that handles well and really works well in the wet or snow. I don't consider them to be noisy at all. My girlfriend ditched her OEM tires on her '04 Corolla after a scary hydroplaning event, and got the Tripletreds... its like night and day, the car sticks to the road so much better now.

Funny. I just drove past it today while rounding up some Optima batteries. The Vineland one is kinda campy, IMHO. I've never watched a movie there. It's playing "Harry Potter 6" and "Ice Age 3" right now, but I think it only runs certain nights. I don't think I could enjoy a movie in my car... the car is too small, and I'd have to run the car the whole time to enjoy the A/C. Plus, I'd feel like I was stuck in traffic the whole time. Hate to have 'road rage' if the people in the next car won't shut up. I guess I see why the drive-in is an endangered species.

I don't care much for the G6, but I give it credit that it was available as a coupe or convert... OTOH, I hate the Malibu. That's not why I'm replying... that is a sweet truck and I'm STUNNED that the gas tank is in the passenger compartment. I always saw the gas tank filler near the door, but I thought the tank was under the cab on those models. If I was an over-reactionist, I'd scream how unsafe the gas tank in the cab is, but I guess its not too bad... gotta put it somewhere. It must suck if the tank leaks, though... of course, I guess it doesn't rust that much being in the cab.

I always laugh when I see something hideous like this and later I recognize it in the junkyard... especially if something REALLY stupid happened to it. Hmmm... I haven't seen the late '90s LeSabre with sports stripes and "RUSH 2112" across the windshield lately. Originally it was "Judas Priest". Hey, I like both of them, just not written across the top of my windshield.

Thats my question... as the truck was in an odd position... I'd venture to say he was a piler. Of course, I also wonder what the white stuff on the driver's seat is... I would be expecting a different color. ;-) Accidents like this give me the most chills.

Check the brake pedal. Yeah, the rubber brake pedal... for wear. Its a part people _HAVE_ to use (and wear), yet, nobody replaces it unless it falls completely apart (and even then they don't). If it has a lightly worn original looking pedal, you can add that to the evidence pile.

I want to guess '87 Monte Carlo Aerocoupe... but you posted a link to one of those. Unless you simply bought a DIFFERENT '87 Aerocoupe. So, the only other car I can think of is a '75 Laguna S-3.

I have seriously considered building a "Mad Max" style car with fake weaponry... guns turrets and a swiveling rocket launcher array on the roof... but I can't find any info on the legal ramifications. "Honest, officer, it's an Art car! Don't shoot!"

Some of my favorite cars have a fairly short space between the front wheel and the door... and are RWD... such as the Monte posted earlier. Being tall, I agree that I dislike it when the wheel well is intruding into the passenger area... and I fear how things will shrink in a frontal impact. Of course, my '89 GMC 3500 van has a huge intrusion from the wheel well, and I never know what to do with my left foot. See, I love this... (along with trunks that are 7 foot long)... because its decadent. I can stretch out my legs. Or course, even in the longest footwell/door setups, I still hate it when can't easily swivel my legs out of the car. In a FWD car or 4-door car, I usually can't easily get the legs out... it always makes me think that car companies only test their cars with midgets.

I don't mind the overhangs at all. But the '80s G-bodies did have a pretty big one. I felt it was a combination of them being designed to be shorter originally, then lengthened over the years with add-ons. Plus, cars were getting lower... by design, wear and customization... which makes the overhang ever so much more pronounced. The new nearly-no-overhang look does nothing for me unless the car is _very_ short overall (Mini, 500, Smart).

Then he should have gotten a ticket for failure to keep right, or whatever Maryland has codified this nearly universal piece of basic traffic law. While I agree that going too slow is as dangerous if not more dangerous than going fast, this is just another case of traffic law being vaguely written or incompatible with the real world which leads to people being fleeced or pulled over for no good reason. Crazy dream idea... there have been several attempts to monitor traffic through the use of cell phone movement after it has been made anonymous. Knowing that a certain block of roadway is averaging, say, 75 mph, we could have digital, interactive speed limits signs that update the speed limit (and minimum speed) based on the 85th percentile of the people currently using the roadway. I know this will never actually happen, however.

Agreed. It's too intense and hides the burl. IMHO, if you have real wood, show the burl, its what gives it personality and character.

Well, the '99 Bonne hit 200K the other day. Tried to upload appropriately geeky before and after photos, but the site won't let me.

Speedo? Does GM even use Speedo cables on anything anymore? I thought everything since the mid-90s would be VSS by now. Of course, the Prizm is from a different manufacturer and era, so its tough to say. If it does have a traditional cable, a fraying or semi-detacted cable can cause interesting results... but in my experience, its a noisy process. Turn off your blower fan and see if the changes in pitch still occur... perhaps they are the cable, not the blower. Checking this is pretty easy... disconnect the cable housing and watch the little nub on the cable inside as you drive... if you can stop it with your fingers, its broken somewhere. Assuming the jacket isn't damaged or kinked, this can be a easy fix... just leave the cable housing in place and get a junkyard cable... take the cable out from one end and thread the junkyard one in... the inner cable will have a little shaped piece crimped on it... in GM's it was a square... and you can get that to line up by just twisting the other end while gently pushing it in. Then drop some oil in and button it up. If you have an electronic speedo, it could be a connector... most likely on the unshiny side of the car, but also possible on the back of the speedo gauge itself. If you have ABS, some electronic speedos are hooked into the ABS and/or tranny shifting, so a broken speedo can cause alot of trouble and even set a CEL (causing one with tough emission inspections big trouble). I like PCS's idea of low voltage, but I think you would see this with your headlights more than the speedo and/or blower. As for the blower, see if your car has a replacable blower resistor pack. They actually list them at a lot of auto parts stores. A dying resistor pack could cause some speeds to not work, so I suppose they could also cause undesireable speed changes, as well. Finally, a dying motor is a possibility. While it seems like a minor thing, I've found that those frigging blower motors are REAL important... like in humid weather or the winter when you need to get moving and the damn windshield won't clear. My Caprice had a motor die... and I was stuck using a dirty towel on the windshield a few times, so I fixed it... then my sister, who, in her defense, has long legs, accidentally yanked one of the vacuum lines out... rendering the entire HVAC system useless until I got the chance, months later, to completely tear the dashboard apart to figure out where the line went. Ugh.

If you think you live in a civilized world, you're out of your mind. We live in a mostly content world. Wait until a disaster happens and the "civilized" little old lady next door cuts your throat to steal your {boat|car|food|gun|money}. There was nothing wrong with eye for an eye. Hammurabi's caste system was out of line, but not the basic eye-for-an-eye. So, since you are against stoning and crucifixion, I guess you think everybody is worth "rehabilitating"? Just get your future serial killers in a nice intervention program, right? Or we can build more jails, because having room for 2% of the population isn't enough. And don't get me started on the billions of dollars we waste on people on death row. Stoning and crucifixion were cheap, provided entertainment and struck FEAR in the hearts of potential criminals. There is (outwardly) nothing to fear about our current justice system. Hence, why this kitten killer is unremorseful and spiteful towards the media... she beat the system and is free to kill again. The only thing I fear about our justice system is the taxpayer's bill. Go crucifixion.

I'm going to go like the guy at the end of the Monte Python's "Meaning of Life"... chased to death by a group of topless women.

Only for late 2001-2002. Also, the Prowler was a Chrysler outside the US...

Yeah, but once the NIMBY people start popping up, they'll have to reroute the trains so that they still take the same time as the slow trains. Maybe they'll have the sense to put the tracks underground. Unfortunately, 200 mph trains can be noisy on the outside.

Oddly, from my relative perspective, in my "circle of friends' cars", the Chrysler is the only one with a real tranny "habit". Obviously, my Bonne's tranny is probably going, but at 199.7K, that's not a bad run. The only other car with a tranny problem is a '98 Cavalier... that has this bizarre issue where it feels like it disengages then engages suddenly... but the thing has put probably another 80K on since then (that car must be well north of 250K now) and was still going. Also, I have a '88 Caprice ex-police parts car with 200+K with a tranny with no reverse. Go back a decade and a half, and I swear about 70% of the "circle" had some sort of serious tranny problem at one time or another... and most of them were GM cars... (where today the only significant GM cars in the "circle" are mine). Tranny reliability has recovered quite a bit from the '80s and '90s.

She killed first, we're just obeying Hammurabi. A kitten is just an fairly defenseless animal... sure, in the wild it would have killed, but for survival. This woman had no reason to do this... she's lower than the animals. People have become too comfortable with our position in the world, unable to grasp read pain and death. To cause such unnecessary pain and death, means one needs an intimate firsthand experience. One upon a time, I was an idealist and pacifist. Watch the cruel, vile beings on this planet for a quarter century... I mean WATCH... closely... not just the soundbite they put on the "news". Sooner or later, instead of debating over who gets the burden of throwing the switch, you'll fight to pull it first... to protect your friends and family.

Yeah, because then I could buy a new GM product. I have no faith, though. Waiting for the GM liquidation.

Ahhhh! That explains it! I didn't notice that it varied with the vehicle type. I'm used to special formats having some sort of descriptor (livery, commercial, farmer, etc.) I can't believe Maryland was still using ABC 123 in 2004. In NJ we exhausted those combos around 1973 and reversed them. (Dad's '67 Camaro had ABC-123, family '74 Nova got 123-ABC.). Cool state-by-state descriptions of plate formats... http://www.15q.net/usindex.html

I don't think the solenoids will leave a OBD code without a CEL, but I don't have an Aztek FSM (yet...). Mine wouldn't. Still worth a check out. So the hard shifting is happening all the time, over several driving cycles?