Today I have a gripe that I would like to discuss with you all. The topic really irks me on some cars and I feel it needs to be addressed because I see it too frequently. Maybe I need to stop getting emotionally attached to rolling heaps of metal. I don’t know, just peruse this and let me know your thoughts on the subject, because I may be the crazy one. This gripe of mine is known as “parting-out” your car. Read More
Up until this year, I had never had a garage of my own to work in. I spent many…. many nights working on cars in the dark, in the snow, the cold rain, the hottest sun, and bone chilling wind. If that’s you, I can relate. Just substitute the word “garage” for “driveway” in the question above.
For me, my favorite tool has got to be my MIG welder. I got mine when I was 16 years old, and I spent every last cent that I had on it. Today, I could probably buy a better welder for about one third of what I paid 13 years ago, but I don’t regret it for a second. It has paid for itself hundreds of times over, and taught me far more than I ever wanted to know about metal & things that are very hot. Sure it has burned me a few times, and sets my pants ablaze from time to time, but that’s always my own fault. When it isn’t causing a denim inferno, it is surviving my hundreds of trips to and from the house, sub zero temperatures and the hottest of hot days in New England. It’s all business. Weekend after weekend, it never lets me down. I just flip the switch, crank on the gas, and liquify metal. It is by far, my favorite automotive tool.
So what’s yours?
Over the past 6 years, I have slowly but surely replaced the majority of the steering components on my truck. The latest part that I swapped out was the Idler Arm. Mine was totally smoked, and may have even been the original one that came with the truck 22 years ago. As you can see in the picture, there is nearly zero bushing left inside where it attaches to the bracket. I am sure that the fact that it was ungreasable lead to its demise, but it was the gigantic car launching pot hole near my house that really finished it off. Let’s hear more about it!
In the moment before I hit the unavoidable paved crevasse that was racing toward me, I began saying “oooooohh” very loudly and immediately clamped my jaw shut. I figured that if I did this, maybe I wouldn’t bite my tongue off when I rolled my truck deep into the nearby woods while on fire. I then double checked my seatbelt, and began mentally preparing for impact. The mating of my right front wheel with this hole in the road, was time bending. In reality, it may have lasted less than 1 awful millisecond, but it felt like an eternal sentence in Destructionville. Oh gosh the sound was atrocious. Imagine what it sounds like to crash a medieval castle into an equally large, yet fragile, glass tank full of anchors. That is close to the sound that my truck made when contact was made. Each and every part of my truck separated for a split second and then came crashing back together again. When my brain turned back on and all wheels were touching the ground again, I was miraculously still driving down the street. I pulled into my driveway, twitching just a little bit, and noticed a fantastic new clunk in my steering to track down. Alas, the idler arm had given up the ghost. Read More
In a world of exotics, yellow has a place of its own. To me nothing screams “I’m here” like a bright yellow exotic sports car. If I were ever in a position to buy an exotic, it would without a doubt, have to be yellow.
Why yellow you ask? I love yellow because it’s different, it’s loud, it’s a change in the opposite direction from red, and if your lucky enough to get invited to a prestigious car show, there’s often a class for yellow car entries. To me there’s nothing cooler than observing an entire line of yellow Ferraris, Porches or Lamborghini’s on display. Most of these cars tend to wear it well. Read More
Have you ever seen a commercial and just wanted to watch it over and over again? Recently, I was cruising around Reddit and saw this posted up by thesauce25. It is a commercial for Shell gasoline, with the help of Ferrari race cars racing through the city streets. The sounds coming from the cars are incredible.
(If you can’t see the video, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_kwxzU4wL4)
Now you are probably thinking to yourself “yes, that was quite wonderful for my eyes, ears, and soul, but I still want more.” Read More
If you have been driving long enough this has pretty much happened to all of us at one point or another. You pull into your driveway and hear that dreaded hissing noise. Upon checking all of your tires you find the culprit, somewhere somehow in your daily adventures you have managed to get a nail stuck in the center of your tire.
Well have no fear, we have filmed a great video that will show you how to repair the tire that is going flat on your vehicle if you have managed to become unfortunate and run over one of these things.
In the northeastern part of the country, we live under a blanket of snow from December to March. During this time, the roads are covered in 3 equal portions of snow, sand, and salt. While the sand and salt mixture does in fact do amazing things when it comes to road conditions, it also removes the structure from your vehicle. Not cool salt, not cool.
Many people ignore it until the guy at the inspection station says “I had to fail you for safety because your control arms aren’t there anymore, and neither are your rocker panels, floor pans, and rear quarter panels.”. You then look at your fresh new red “R” on your windshield and wonder where all the metal went. Read More