OT: buying cars

[rbowman]

I don't know if they all were but the Geo Metro I had was a rebadged Suzuki. I don't know how Suzuki managed to screw up their car business, but the failure was just a minor speed bump for the motorcycle business. That's still going strong.

I bought it with about 90,000 on it as an experiment to see if I could live with a subcompact. The only problem was it was a sort of cactus green. I took it to Arizona and it could be a problem finding the thing when coming back from a hike in the desert. I'd always mark a waypoint in the GPS.

[rbowman]

The one I had was a second generation with the 4 cylinder engine. A friend had the three cylinder and 4 was definitely better. It was an interference engine so not knowing the maintenance history I changed the timing belt at 100,000 miles. Tight but doable.

The engine is also popular with the home-built aircraft crowd, although it wasn't a real power house.

[Muggles]

That's how I feel it's like finding an SUV in a large parking lot. At least if I got a beetle the shape alone would stand out from all the SUV's.

[rbowman]

Montana is a very religious state. God chose to but ice and snow there and he will remove it in his own sweet time so there's very little salt, just copious quantities of bank run gravel. The windshield repair places love it.

They tried magnesium chloride on the intersections in town one year. Supposedly it's more environmentally friendly than sodium chloride but it's also hell on alloy wheels.

[rbowman]

Yeah, the stores sell 'traction sand' seasonally and the smarter people throw in a few bags of that, concrete blocks, or whatever junk is laying around.

The one mistake is thinking you're going to use 'traction sand' to spread out under your tires. It's slightly damp when the stores sell it so it just turns into a big, sandy, ice cube. If you're looking for traction material and not just weight buying a big sack of kitty litter works better.

[rbowman]

Even the Healey 3000 had vestigial rear seats. I even stuffed a person back there once.

I've had several hatchbacks where the rear seat got folded down into a cargo bay the first day and the seats were never seen again. Does that make them sports cars?

Then there was the Volvo White sports car I drove for a while. Two seats, 14 tons, and 10 wheels without the optional trailer :)

[rbowman]

I'll go with definition 2:

1. (Automotive Engineering) a production car designed for speed, high acceleration, and manoeuvrability, having a low body and usually adequate seating for only two persons

Heavy on the 'adequate' modifier.

[sms]

There was an issue with leaks into the fuse panel, but IIRC it was not a windshield leak it was some other leak through the firewall. On mine it resulted in water in the relay that controlled the intermittent wipers with the wipers coming on by themselves.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I put Nokian WRG3 on my car last year. Great tires. They have a real snow rating, yet are good for 149 mph in the summer.

[Ron]

On top of what I wrote above about the windshield (not in this post - another post above this one), there was a rubber hose in the cowl area that would stop up and cause a build up of water which would come through the firewall.

[rbowman]

I've found that to be the opposite. That was the first lesson I learned with the Audi. If you're running wide, get off the gas. I was used to getting on it and walking the back end around.

[rbowman]

Spend enough time on a bike and you don't trust anything. I hate those damn spinner hubcaps. You get so you subconsciously look at the wheels at intersections to make sure they're not starting to move and the spinners are always moving.

[rbowman]

Too true. Like I said in another post I almost killed myself before I learned how to drive the FWD Audi. I learned to drive with a RWD on a lot of dirt roads.

[sms]

Yes, now that you mention it, that was the cause of the water leaks onto the fuse box.

Was just in England and Ireland. VWs are extremely popular there, and I presume in the rest of Europe, but in the U.S. their market share is very small. They finally opened a U.S. factory after closing the one in Pennsylvania decades ago. But I think that the Jetta and Golf sold in the U.S. still come from Mexico (not sure about the TDI models). Personally, I have no problem with buying a foreign nameplate vehicle built in the U.S., or a foreign nameplate vehicle built in the country of the company that made it, but a big problem with vehicles from the maquiladora factories.

[rbowman]

Those holes in the floorboards are really handy for dumping contraband. They do suck on wet or slushy roads though.

[Ron]

The Rabbits also had a problem with the movable vent glasses coming loose because the 2 hinges and lock were glued to the glass. That was really stupid. I was able to re-glue them using rear view mirror glue but it wasn't easy to get the alignment correct.

I know, blah, blah, blah....lol

[Stormin Mormon]

In colder climates, sounds like trapped water would freeze, expand, and break things?

[ChairMan]

+1

[clare]

Lots used in ice racing, autocross, and rallying - not pro rallying today - they are almost all AWD and 4WD now.

[clare]

Nokian and Nokia were originally part of the same company. Nokian just neans from Nokia - a town on the Nokianvirta River in the region of Pirkanmaa