SAmadei

Curious the glass is gone... and headlights. Unless the car was uncovered and vandalized at some point. I kinda wish there were closer up pictures... its just fascinating as hell.

Nice little DIY setup... http://www.humanspeakers.com/audi/headlight-simple.htm

The terrible sound emnating from the car almost eight seconds before failure wasn't severe enough? You mean the sound he picked up by moving the camera and mike closer to the speedo (and A-pillar)? That's not the sound of the drivetrain vibrating. I would guess it was wind noise, or the wiper blades flapping on the windshield. Edit: Also, the vent is right there... at high speeds more air will be forcing its way into the HVAC system... lots of stuff in there could have created a minor vibration only picked up by the camera's mike. When driving a car at 120-140 you pick up a lot of stray noises... that wasn't that terrible... I'm pretty sure it was only picked up by moving the mike. Vibrating driveshaft would have been deafening at 135, the picture would be shaking all over the place and he wouldn't have been able to drive with one hand without needing new shorts.

Yeah, there are a kits that basically add-on to the headlight wiring harness. Usually, two or four relays are included and a lead to the battery. That way the voltage to the headlights has the shortest path... and you get the highest voltage possible with your setup. Otherwise, you may have upwards of 2-3 volt drop between the battery/alternator. Obviously, you can test with with a voltmeter to see if there is an issue. Of course, most people have never seen what their headlights look like with 13ish volts applied. Since I have been playing with newer cars the last, this has been not as needed... I'm pretty happy with the modern lighting. A link... http://www.jegs.com/...10002/-1?CT=999 Edit: picture in link appears to be 2 headlight version. One could cobble this together at home for less, though.

On the square sealed beam ones, time seems to ruin the outer seal. In my experience, only usage dims the inner bulb. Its not really supposed to work this way, but in real life, the Halogen inner bulb dims because as time goes on, the Tungsten stays on the glass of the bulb, instead of continuing the Tungsten-Halogen cycle. I've heard different reasons why... too low a voltage to support the Tungsten-Halogen cycle or too much cooling of the bulbs. I know the hot Halogens I have in the house, running on AC, never dim over time. Since your car is older, you may want to look into adding relays for the headlights, so you can eliminate some of the voltage drop. Keep in mind, your car predates Halogens and voltage drop, along with so-so alternator might be hurting your bulbs.

What. Is. The. Story. With. That. ?. Seriously, I need more info... why are the bumper and interior panels looking new while the rest is, well, not.

Ugh, I really hate the sound of a car repeatedly hitting the rev limiter. After 100 hits in 15 minutes, or something, the engine should grenade just for spite.

Its about time! Ugh. *winces*

Oh really? Me thinks my wagon is missing the governor. I thought all the B-bods were ungov'd. Is your's OBD1 or OBD2?

You should be getting more than 18 months out of square halogens. I was finding the brightness and sealing falling off severely at 4-5+ years. Its been a while since I replaced a square bulb, though. Perhaps the quality has really dropped off. Can you see any dirt inside the outer enclosure? Of course, keep in mind, that I also highly recommend the Silverstar retrofit. The '83 Impala got Cool Blues because at the time, Silverstars were not available for the square bulbs. And while I didn't care for the blue tint, the light was much better than the halogens. DF79: Yeah, I was losing a Silverstar every year at the one year mark, too. But not this year. I haven't seen the Silverstars fall off like the OEM Halogen bulbs. The Corolla's OEM bulbs were so bad at the 5 year mark, it was tough to tell they were on sometimes. It got Silverstars, but BOTH blew out at the one year mark. I wish I had the spare money to put Silverstars in the Sunfire or GTP... both could use them.

I find that they do... in general, the inner bulb is not radically different than the bulbs used in modern composite flush mounted headlight assemblies... and those definitely get dimmer if not replaced after 4-5 years. Worse, the big problem I have with square selaed beam halogens is that because the internal bulb is sealed, they seem to skimp on the outer seal... and a LOT of the square bulbs I have purchased in the last decade get water, dirt inside the outer enclosure. Sure, they light up, but the lighting is dimmed significantly. And these will not pass inspection, in general. When I got my grandmother's Impala, all four bulbs were more than 3/4 full of water. It was weird to see... but it was like having four small, dirty aquariums on the front of the car. Other bulbs have simply fell apart when I went to change them. Not good. OTOH, when I come across a 25+ year old OEM... its still sealed properly.

Then governor all cars to 80 mph and start passing out the 1.0 3 cylinders. Every car ever manufactured for street duty has had at least one example raced with nothing but sanctioned safety improvements. Ford (and Chevy) is selling these V6 cars on that 300hp tag line, among other reasons. I'd bet that there is at least one racing SCCA already.

The guy is right though... the governor has to do with the tire rating... its not there because Ford thinks the car will crap out at 114... though, it appears it does crap out at 135. And considering that there were no SEVERE vibrations leading up to failure, I'd say no amount of balancing would have prevented the destruction. I imagine that the V6 and V8 get different diameter driveshafts and the V6 one is flexing so bad at 135 that it tore apart. Honestly, its my opinion that Ford is at fault here... if you put 300hp in a V6, the driveshaft should be up to snuff. However, Ford will not own up to this because the governor was removed. Its a enthusiasts' car, though, and governors are going to be removed. Cars were sold for years without governors and I've never heard of a driveshaft blowing apart on the top end... the engines always ran out of steam first.

And yet, I see these all over Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and even a couple in Manhattan. Quite honestly, as someone who has driven a Caprice wagon as a NYC daily driver, there is no parking... regardless of the size of the car. I could put that wagon in some tiny spots... I'd say a smaller car gets you parking about 15% more often. If you park in a garage, it cost the same for a fullsize Caddy as a Chevy Spunk, er... Sonic. You have to have something like a Smart to get a real parking advantage.

Dodge has had great color selection, but the Purple, Pink, Green, etc., have been very limited. If you wanted a Purple Challenger, you had better have lots of money in the bank, because the window of opportunity was VERY short, and I'm sure the cost was a premium. Even used, a quick look on eBay shows Pink Challengers going for new car money... even B5 Blues are expensive. However, there is one purple Challenger on eBay for a fairly inexpensive $30K. All these colors were made in low numbers. Furious Fushia was only used for one day at Brampton. Otherwise, its pretty much all Black, Silver (including grays), White, Red or Orange.

Got in to a slide where the passenger front corner of the car was leading, it hit a weak spot in the center, double-sided guardrail and broke through... due to continued momentum to the right, the guard rail skewed the car through the passenger door... finally, the second rail support stopped the car. I'd say the driver is hurting, but there appears to be not enough blood to indicate a fatality to me. However, there are a lot of additional factors, so its tough to tell. There are a lot of guardrail-skewed car photos on the 'net... most WAY worse than this. Most had have heavy doctoring to remove the blood.

Looks like a vinyl top over a roof cap w/ an opera window...thing is, Checker did at one time offer a padded top w/ oval opera windows...seen pics of them...there is a silver one around here w/ a black padded top w/ oval opera windows. I remember a vinyl top for the few civilian Checkers that where produced, but I don't recall them having oval opera windows... that must have been a '70s thing, as the oval window must have been sourced from the '70s Lincoln OEM stock. Keep in mind, I recall there being more civilian Checkers in the '61 production days, unlike the '82 production days. In fact, its my understanding civilian Checkers after the '60s are extremely rare.

Because highly skilled people don't want to visit war torn Detroit to earn a buck.

You might argue about how the Cruze's trunk is large by competitor's standards, but I consider the Cruze and Malibu's trunks to be awful. The Cruze's trunk doesn't fit my mother's suitcase load. If I owned a Cruze, I'd have to make two trips to the airport to deliver myself, two additional family members and travel junk for three people. Overall, with the entire industry shrinking cars, I find it especially difficult to believe GM will grow the Impala... especially when it is based on a platform intended for smaller cars (EpII vs W) and GM's current huge CAFE fear.

I always thought the solution would be a bluetooth chording keypad/mouse and bluetooth HUD. Put the Smartphone screen on the windshield, to limit ones eye diversion... and replace the shifter knob with the chording keypad/mouse. Now you are never taking your eyes off the windshield or hands off the control of the car. Sure, people will still crash... but people are going to phone, surf and text anyway... might as well accept it somewhat and make it able to be done safer. Of course, the learning curve of the chording keypad/mouse might be too steep for some folks.

Bizarre. If it was a stock Checker, I'd vote Cheers. But its not. I vote Jeers for all the dumb crap it has on it. What is up with what looks like a vinyl covered oval opera window?

I only worry that the next Impala will continue to shrink, especially in regards to width and real-world usability of the trunk. Otherwise, I stopped having high hopes for the Impala when the RWD Impala disappeared off the drawing board.

GFs had the Droid RAZR for 2 weeks and its still awesome. Only problem so far is battery life... with her usage, its barely lasting all day. A heavy user would have to plug it in more than once a day. I'm still tweaking the thing to try to extend the battery life. Otherwise, it just has every feature one can think of... or a decent app for it... and runs seamless and fast... killer fast on 4G. It streams music (or files) off your computer at home and even adds lyrics to the music playback... without me doing anything special and with performance as if I was doing it local... I do kind of wish it had stereo external speakers, though.

A little carbon monoxide never hurt anybody. A lot put them to sleep permanently, but a little was reasonably harmless.

OCN, my GF has informed me that that was LAST year's new fad... though I never saw any last year and so far 3 sets this year.