SAmadei

A tragic trend I'm seeing... CTS-V coupes owned by 94 year olds. I've seen about 4-5 of them lately, driven by some pretty old folks, but the funniest guy was doddering along doing 23 in a 35 zone when I blew him away with an overloaded full size van. Hope it was a loaner, but he had WW2 vet vanity plates, so I doubt it.

The VATS or PassKey system basically works by ready the resistance on the pellet on your key. There are 15 or 16 different resistance pellets available. If your pellet get dirty or the contacts in the ignition get dirty, they will occasionally misread the resistance and the car won't turn over... the security or PassKey light will usually blink and you have to wait x seconds to restart. So I would first clean the pellet and try to clean the contacts in the ignition switch. The controller is a black box that is very hard to get to under the dash... it gets married to the key the first time it reads and remembers that resistance forever and cannot be changed. To my knowledge, it can't be easily tested. If you replace it, you probably should replace the key, as well. IIRC, the wiring for VATS is inserted into the ignition switch before you install both, so switching the ignition switch won't actually switch VATS contacts. Pulling the VATS wiring out of the steering column is a major PITA, too... I know from firsthand experience. If VATS fails, it shouldn't play with the radiator or radio... but what you are observing sounds like normal behavior... when the key breifly goes past run, it will likely momentarily energize the radiator fan and radio, but both are cut out when you get to start... then the VATS is simply killing everything. Going back to run really should restart the radio and/or radiator fan... If the problem is VATS/PassKey you really should have a warning light blinking when it fails... perhaps you might need to retrieve it via OBD... I've never had a problem with VATs on a '99... only older. As for your FOB, its likely dying. The transmitters seem to get duller as it ages, and you end up replacing batteries more often to compensate. Perhaps open it up and clean all the contacts.

I'm basically signing off until this is over. Mandatory evacuation for my normal home... going to go live in the other home for a day or two. It will be like camping... but its also like jumping out of the pan and into the fire, depending on where Irene decides to go. Earlier today I was in Cape May when the entire county was deemed to evac, and it became a madhouse. Lines at gas stations 2 miles long, massive traffic on roads. Cleaned out stores. Right now I'm putting valuables in the car and putting less than valuables up high, just in case there is a waterlogged house here to come back to. I'm not one to get scared... in fact, I would normally ride this out, but doing that doesn't help my pets and would likely just get me stuffed into a shelter somewhere... but this is actually looking REALLY bad. Good luck to everyone else also in the sights of Irene.

Not necessarily. The original Mustang was released as a 1964 and 1/2. Not sure it's meaningful to make a model year standards statement with an example that's ~48 years old. OK, well the final G8 was a 2009.5, is that modern enough for you?

Well, actually, my sidewalk is disappearing... but its taking since 1977 to do it. Of course there is vibration around it constantly... cars driving by, the street sweeper, my lawnmower, people walking on it. If we got a massive quake, I'm sure it would be gone... along with the neighborhood. Weather and seismic activity have nothing to do with one another. Sure they could. But I'm not suggesting anything like the myth of "earthquake weather". I'm talking about weather the causes massive flooding, overfull aquifiers, saturated rock that might act as a trigger. Keep in mind that the entire east coast is slowly rising due to the removal of the last Ice Age's icesheet... the oilcanning of the bedrock certainly is the cause of some minor East Coast quakes. That is weather related. If that can happen on a large scale, I'm sure smaller scale flooding could have similar effects of a weak bit of bedrock. We've gotten a LOT a rain recently. Keep in mind that the weight of Taipei 101 is being blamed for two earthquakes. If that building can weigh down a fault, a massive quantity of water could do the same thing.

You need the earthquake strength and duration to put sufficient energy into the system to start the liquefaction process. Otherwise, you would get liquefaction without an external source... which isn't happening, as everything is still standing. I agree soil type/groundwater is very important.

You feel Chevy is following Hyundai? I don't. Hyundai's car lineup has some product variation. Outside of the Camaro and Corvette (which has not fit the Chevy portfolio for 40 years, and is more of a "GM product"), Chevy is microscopic appliance, small appliance, medium appliance, largish appliance. That's Toyota's modus operandi.

If it went on long enough, certainly. The gamble is that we don't get quakes strong enough to cause it. Most of the strong quakes have epicenters outside NJ, but what kills me, though, is that we've had 173 quakes that have epicenters in NJ, 40 in the last decade. This list includes none of the 3.0~4.5 quakes I recall from 1984~86, 90, 94 or the two 2010 quakes. The quake, as most know was centered just NW of Richmond, VA. I wonder if its related to all the rain we got in the last few weeks... its likely Richmond has received as much as PA or NJ. We're certainly overdue for a big one, hope this was it for a while... as liquefaction, or not, our buildings are not built for even mild earthquakes. Of course, at this point, we're kind of distracted by staring down the gun at Irene... who looks like a lot like 1985's Gloria, if you ask me. We've weathered storms pretty good, but forget that in the past, partial (1/3 of Longport) and whole towns (South Cape May) have been washed away during these storms... such as 1916, 1944, 1962. Where my house is was ocean in 1916. 8-0

Way out at the shore, where we sit on 3000-6500 feet of sand, we get a Jello effect... especially if you are on a highrise that's essentially "floating" on the sand. For most people, it was quite obvious, and they immediately clogged the entire cellular network... which is very scary to me. For me, I was reading in bed... and suddenly, I was shaking back and forth and I realized I wasn't causing it... Cat went into hiding... Dog started barking. I looked around, thinking someone was pushing the bed, as it stopped... then it started a second, a bit harder... then I realized what was going on and it was over... about 10-15 seconds total. Cat finally came back out 8 hours later.

Nothing says "Dodge Tough" like aftermarket fender skirts... And nothing screws up a good photo faster than a newspaper on the dashboard...

I would imagine it is. Meguiar's usually makes good stuff. I have a non-Heavy Duty Meguiars kit in the garage, but in the end, I simply put new headlights in. It seems like the Pontiac headlights get checks in the plastic, rather than actually getting cloudy, at least on B-villes and GPs.

Only at the light end. Most of my pass car regs are higher... usually for no apparently good reason. In my currently due pile... '99 Grand Prix GTP $46 '99 Bonneville $46 '04 Grand Prix GTP $71 IIRC, my '81 Bonne was slightly more... $80-something... but the '83 Impala, which is slightly heavier, was $46. Go figure.

You should add that info to the Solstice Wikipedia page, with a citation to the source.

I thought in the end, all coupes were GXPs... if so, there were 102 pre-production 2009s, 1152 2009s and 12 pre-production 2010s made. With about 61K Solstices out there, that's about 2%. If I'm wrong, and these are normal coupes, and GXPs are a subset of that, well, they are that much more rare.

THICK electrical wire! It ain't goin NOWHERE! LOL With people stealing thick copper, you're still a braver man than I. ;-)

Is that red clothesline holding the tranny up? Braver man than I. LOL.

Five words, Olds: Undocumented Storage Paid In Cash. ;-)

Yay! I'm ahead of the curve... I lost interest in the Volt 3-4 years ago when I found out it was just another FWD 4door appliance. Time to make a "cool Volt", GM... Tesla roadster style. Makes you wish GM was still making Kappas... and could stuff a specially tuned Volt drivetrain in those.

Cube's right. Hardtop would imply that the roof is one piece... and in a car like the Solstice that the entire roof is removable.

Interesting. I like the size... the width... the rear. Like the dome of the hood. Front could use some slight tweaking... I would separate the little vents from the headlight elements. I'd prefer to see an LSA in there. 425hp twin turbo V6 sounds like something I would see going back to the shop for warranty work every weekend, with a giant hole burned into the top of a piston. This screams "make me a coupe". Wheels are kinda meh. Name is awful. Price will be awful... shame GM can't give some of this styling magic and substance downmarket.

Cool article. NJ's wine industry is in a similar situation, being overshadowed by NY's vineyards to the north, many people are unaware of it... hard to believe that a little state like NJ can make nearly twice as much wine as PA. Living in South Jersey, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone's taste-testing room. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a wine drinker, either... so I kind of miss out on the fun. In fact, the wild grapes grow so thick in my yard, I'm thinking of putting in 7-8 acres of vines myself. After you sober up from your trip, maybe schedule yourself a sequel across the river.

Careful, as the insurance premium might not get raised until you are already in the car for 6 months to a year... there can be a pretty good sized delay between accidents and the rate adjustment. I like the '66 Rambler idea best.

LOL... first video: "Driving this car requires constant holding of the wheel". Well, duh.

It started earlier than late '81, as they did find their way into 1981 cars. I had always heard all '81 models got the DX... but I know for certain our '81 Cutlass had the DX. I'm not sure what its build date was. DXs still had problems, at least for '81. Blown head gasket prompted a switch to a gas engine in our case. Then my friends clamored over the 350DX block. Dad recognized the value of the DX parts and IIRC, sold it mostly for the fuel system. Definitely. The racers were on that early. IIRC, they were boring and stroking the 350DXs into 455s.

How fast where you going at impact? I'm assuming it couldn't have been much more than 35-40, as by your story... I would have expected much less physical injury, considering all the safety equipment. Hope you're feeling better as soon as possible.