SAmadei

How long before Chevy sells its first 6-figure Silverado?

Finally got a deal to allow me to dump my dying BB Storms... Amazon has Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx HD's for $69.99 with two year contract... VZ is still pushing these for $199.99. I had a little issue getting my VZ account ready for upgrade, but I have the phones and they are working fantastic. Next I need to get a screaming deal on a BB Z10 to replace my bulletproof but old G1.

Delivery. Driver stops, but never takes vehicle out of drive, passenger has to jump out, makes delivery and jumps back in while driver fights off traffic. Repeat 400 times. Even when I'm by myself, I stop, put the car in park and the locks take too long to unlock, causing me to jam up the system.

Trip to Hooters gratis with a few beers.

MmwhahahaHA! All your mags are belong to me! ;-) Yeah, it was very cool to see Camino, Zora, his projects and the very cool barn in RL. Then on the way back, it was nice to see that the other house still has a roof, fences and all the trees still standing after the big storm. 8-0

I have a bunch of boxes, so the bins aren't needed. I'd be glad to take them off your hands, assuming nobody else hasn't asked for them. PM your address and best times to pick them up. Sat and Sun should be good days for me... maybe Fri or Mon... and we'll figure the best time for me to come over...

Refresh my memory... how far in PA are you? Is it 6 boxes total or 6 boxes of Pontiac-related? I'd be real interested to add them to my 24 boxes of magazines, as my collection gets weak in the '80s and has a big hole in the middle of the '90s. I'd need about a week or two to schedule a ride over to PA to pick them up, however.

Most of the cars have not left the NYC-DC corridor in a while. The '04 GP has done the stretch from Fl to NYC... my Buick wagon has a similar run... PA/NJ to TN/AL and FL and back to NJ. My sister's GP has been in the traveler, however. Since its purchase in NY about 3 years ago, it has criss-crossed the USA several times, using a south path, north path, central path. So it pretty much has hit everything in the lower 48 except WA, OR, ID, FL, GA, AL and New England. I'd have to ask her to be sure. Unfortunately, its now kicking out a P0742, so the trip back to NJ is likely going to be iffy.

Blah. GM continues being dead to me.

When Aldus Pagemaker came out in '85 it was awful, as it was too much program for the CPU/memory/HD back then. Even 3.0 was pretty bad... but our top 2~3 systems made it workable. When 4.0 came out about 1991, it finally worked right and didn't crash every 8 minutes. Then in 1993, I suddenly got so bored with desktop publishing and never touched Pagemaker again.

Cool. Would have been cooler as the notchback.

I find this path of duality by Chrysler to be interesting considering that GM ixnayed the idea of side by side Camaro and Firebird. Chrysler thinks they are leaving money on the table.

I passed one of these on the Garden State Parkway in Cape May in the sprint... and later found that Avalon Honda is selling them. I just never got a chance to post about it, IIRC.

I wouldn't. Knowing all the issues old carbs have, the new carb will be more predictable. For example, if rebuilt to OEM spec, there will be little to adjust. The mixture is not adjustable on most '80s carbs. IIRC, the only thing on '86 307 that was adjustable was the idle.

Worst problem I have with drilling rivets is if they spin... if so, I'll either snap a vice grip on the outside ring or put a nick in the ring that I can stop the spinning with a flathead. OTOH, putting these parts back in with nuts and bolts is a disaster. So I either use clip-on nuts on the part or weld nuts to the part. Also, I wouldn't use a battery-powered drill... they don't last long enough. Since I assume this is on the parts car Panther, I would use a sharp chisel and BF Hammer. I've taken out rivets in the junkyard in 3-4 hits.

Passed both the written and driving test on the first shot. Only thing that irks me to this day... I was confidant I aced the test... after all, I was in the top of the class, am VERY good at taking tests, the material was simple, and some of my stupidest friends aced it. I got my test back and found I had barely passed. Unfortunately, we only got a score back, not the entire test. Either I screwed up filling in the little ovals... or, as I am more convinced, since people knew I would have scored well, someone swapped my test... the test was administered by a bunch of phys ed teachers of questionable interest in seeing that things were done right... and it wouldn't surprise me to find that certain sports-orientated people might have access to the tests before they were submitted. In any case, since I passed, retaking the test was not an option. I have taken other unofficial driving tests over the years without prepping and aced them.

Thanks, guys. Brigantine had a rough time, but I honestly think LBI and Absecon Island (AC and others) got worse. Keep in mind, though, I was only able to wander 2~3 blocks from home to survey local damage (still ft+ water in streets) and talked to the authorities about it, and the consensus was that the north end was hit worse. I might get an eyeful tomorrow. It was close, as the penultimate high tide was too close for comfort... I was forecasting a second surge 5+6 ft higher, which would have flooded the house. Bottom line: I have one of the biggest beach/dune combos in NJ in front of the house, I have taller neighbors that act as windbreaks, I'm close to the highest ground. I would do it again. But not if I lived in LBI, Ocean City, Outer Banks, Florida, etc.

Bringing this up is like comparing fuel economy to cup holders. Gasoline packs the highest reasonably safe power density.Electricity/Batteries do not. The Volt marketing does not tout the ability for the Volt to forsake the electrical cord and run on butterfly farts because, at present, you cannot buy a Volt ready to run on butterfly farts or the parts to convert the Volt to use butterfly farts. And it will take a decade for GM to engineer these changes and get the EPA and PETA to play along. In the meantime, somebody discovers a way to make economic synthetic gasoline and all GM's Volt technology becomes an overgrown E-Assist (for butterfly farts).

Well, that was fun. Survived Hurricane Sandy in Brigantine (island north of Atlantic City). Yeah, I'm one of those "stupid" people who stuck around... but keep in mind, I was very prepped, know my topology and have done it before. House and car both dodged storm surge by about 2 ft. Worse NJ storm ever... worse than Gloria... 1962 Nor'easter... and worse than 1944. Probably about as nasty as a NJ hurricane can possibly get..

It uses electric... the assumption here is that in the future electric will be produced from a clean source, but that is outside the scope of the invention presented here. I also don't see an inefficient process being that big of a deal, if the system is using solar panels in some desert or windmills out in the ocean, as the energy would have essentially gone to waste anyway. There is a lot of loss in batteries and battery charging. I think they've missed a few ingredients in that recipe... I bet we find out that this is some sort of fraud. Yeah... like a catalyst. However, a catalyst that is not consumed is not in the final product would not be in the final ingredient list... the gasoline would be made from CO2 and H2O... not catalyst. Keep in mind that I'm a skeptic of this process, as well. However, unlike cold fusion or 100x improvements in lithium battery tech, I feel that there should be a way to reasonably economically undo the combustion process... after all, we already have carbon dioxide scrubbers and already know how to make certain components of gasoline, such as butane or isooctane (but is cheaper to make these from refining oil than from other sources). Of course, I still cannot get a straight answer as to what chemical a synthetic gasoline would be made from. The Volt that has too little battery and quickly turns into just another gas swilling ecological killer? The Volt that in 5 or 10 years has a dead or degraded battery pack? The Volt that is failing to meet sales expectations in a market with $5/gal gas? In the end, the Volt is using a compromised technology, with grand promises that it will get better if people promise to buy more of them. If someone can actually convert CO2 and H2O into some form of gasoline, it allows us to continue to use our infrastructure, converts billions of legacy engines to something greener and it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, I say more power to them. Its use would make the Volt greener. If they are frauds, OTOH, they should be crucified.

I would love to know what the chemical formulation for this "synthetic gasoline" is... but in the long run, I still think this has more potential than all the mess of mining Lithium in Afghanistan produces and the huge technical hurdle battery capacity has. However, if synthetic gasoline is basically used as an energy transfer medium, I would have to imagine that every car will have some sort of E-Assist to recoup regenerative braking energy. Overall, though, unless I see more details, I believe in this about as much as cold fusion.

More at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html

I would imagine this is still only a matter of swapping the snout of the starter, as a worse case scenario... the only wear part in the snout is the bearing, and its not much of a wear item. Its great that you did get a replacement fairly easily, but keep in mind that many of the rebuild kits are pretty easy to use, if the E-bod starters become harder to source in the future. Done it a couple times, no problem... I think once on a G-bod, once in a B-bod.

Probably the first sleeper in our family of cars was the '81 Cutlass. Originally a diesel, it blew the head gasket and my father put a '77 Olds 350 4 BBL in it from a Toronado. Problem is the car was much quicker than a 350 can explain... and later, it came to our attention that Toros didn't have 350s. So its likely a 403, if the stories are all straight. Car then started eating 200-4R trannies left and right. Later, I had the woodgrain '88 Pontiac Safari with the built 403 and the big nitrous kit, shift kit and LSD. Much faster and could take most Camaros and Mustangs. Scored a couple Vettes and a Viper once, as well. Car was all acceleration, though... top end was temperature limited. Car had rust issues and I just could not keep it cool. After the rear died, I had a friend install another rear... and against my wishes, they put a one legger in it... and I started loosing interest. Next sleeper was the '95 Caprice Wagon... LT1. Not outrageously fast, but faster than it appears. I would argue the two supercharged GPs are sleepers... and the '99 Bonneville was... as I had squeezed about 10~15 more hp out of the 3.8... but the tranny dying put that to an end, so far.

I'm still partial to the French Connection chase... probably since I've driven the route a few times... and knowing that they filmed some parts without permits or properly shutting down traffic (The accident at 86th and Stillwell was a real accident, involving an innocent driver), its pretty crazy to imagine the chaos created... knowing the usual traffic volume and the narrowness of the roadway, I could not imagine trying those stunts in a modern car, let alone '70 vintage cars. There are a lot of chases which I watch and I would attempt it, (if I had, like diplomatic immunity)... but not this one. The drivers had ball of brass. The only other chase I could not imagine doing would be certain parts of Ronin.