General Car Discussion: MotoH's Thread

[brewnog]

Cool. I bet the Lotus is fun to drive.

Do you wear a scarf and a cap when you drive it?

It had really hard tyres on it when I bought it, and was VERY hairy in the wet; every roundabout was taken sideways! It's got super sticky tyres on it now, it corners like it's on rails in the dry. It's still very twitchy in the wet but rather predictable. It's so small it can feel quite intimidating next to other traffic, but on twisty B roads it's fantastic.

With no heater, and barely any weather protection, you need to wear woolly socks, gloves, thermal underwear and a massive hat in this weather!

 

[Kronos5253]

Oh man, my first car was a '95 Chevy Lumina (sedan, not the van). I miss that thing like you wouldn't believe. Lots of room, comfortable steering, 3.1L V6.. Only thing I didn't like was how the engine was set up. The battery was buried in there. Aside from that, the car had good power with good response from the pedal, good lines ('95 monte carlo looks better since it's a coup, but still), great handling, and it could take a beating! I used to take that thing out in the snow when no one was on the roads and whip it around corners. Front wheel drive definitely isn't as fun as rear, but it's still a blast. I'd take it on backroads/dirt roads around here too and whip it around. It was a fun car... I'm actually considering getting another one.

 

[BobG]

I had a '66 Corvair. You know, the Corvair was never as likely to roll over as Nader said and, by 66, they'd changed the suspension, anyway. The one flaw that never got near as much publicity was the heater. The engine was air cooled, so you didn't have a radiator that could route hot water into a heater core. Instead, hot air from the engine was mixed with outside air to the passenger compartment. Once the seals got old and brittle, that meant you were pumping just a little bit of carbon monoxide into the passenger compartment.

It wasn't a huge problem when you were driving around since the driver never sat in the back seat anyway, but, if you left the engine running while parked at the local scenic overlook, there was always the chance your date would pass out.

 

[turbo]

Man! Corvairs were bad. The pushrod tubes were "sealed" with O-rings that didn't last for crap. Drive or ride in a Corvair and you came out smelling of hot motor oil. That was a bad design all around.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Man! Corvairs were bad. The pushrod tubes were "sealed" with O-rings that didn't last for crap. Drive or ride in a Corvair and you came out smelling of hot motor oil. That was a bad design all around.

But the engines were great for sand rails! Aside from a high-performace porsche engines, corvairs were the engine of choice. They had much better performance than the far more common VW engines.

 

[turbo]

But the engines were great for sand rails! Aside from a high-performace porsche engines, corvairs were the engine of choice. They had much better performance than the far more common VW engines.

I know, but they were crap for general usage. You could tweak the crap out of them and scare yourself silly, but for daily use (for poor folks) they would leave you disappointed.

 

[edward]

I had a 65 Corvair. I got it with only 11,000 miles on it and really cheap because the book came out about that time. The previous owner had bought it for his wife and dumped it for a Ford Falcon in a hurry.

I had already read about the suspension fix using the Corvette three point linkage. Mine was the 4 carb version with turbocharger. It was definitely fast and a very stable vehicle.

The constant oil leaks starting at about 30,000 miles drove me nuts. Especially the oil cooler.

 

[Zantra]

I recently found a photo of my old 240 in some family slides.

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8508/my240.jpg

The one bad thing about those cars was that you could flip the car over with very little warning. There was nothing in between rock solid and out of control. It would roll before it would slide. The closest call that I had was taking a 15 mph curve doing about 60. I approached the curve doing about 80, hit the brakes just before the curve, but released the brake a little late as I hit the curve. For a moment the entire car was riding on only the front passenger wheel. I nearly flipped it right into a rock wall. The guy riding with me didn't move or speak for quite some time. I acted like it was no big deal. Yeah, I meant to do that!

Managed to float the front wheels doing over 150. I could slowly turn the wheel but nothing would happen. It wanted to drift... it was all that I could do to keep it on a two lane highway.

150 on a 2 lane highway? I don't think I ever had it up over 100. I didn't have those kind of cajones back then. Although the mustang is another story. the needle only went to 85 put I almost had it back at zero. Pretty solid at those speeds too.

Still.. it was magic.. brief pause where you think the thing died, then boom, the turbo kicked in.. rocketship

 

[Ivan Seeking]

150 on a 2 lane highway? I don't think I ever had it up over 100. I didn't have those kind of cajones back then. Although the mustang is another story. the needle only went to 85 put I almost had it back at zero. Pretty solid at those speeds too.

Wow, you never once tested the limits on your Z? How could you resist? What did the speedo reach on your Z? Mine read 160. With enough time and road it would have probably hit 160 too. I ran out of nerve and road before I saw the absolute top end. The needle was still barely climbing when I started to back off of the throttle.

It was definitely highly unstable at 150. I assume that a proper front-end spoiler would have made a big difference.

I owned the Z when I was at my craziest. It is a miracle that I am sitting here today, truly. But, even then, I only tried going that fast once. I did make a 500 mile drive in less than five hours once - Oroville to Long Beach - but I don't think I ever took it over 120 on that trip.

 

[xxChrisxx]

With no heater, and barely any weather protection, you need to wear woolly socks, gloves, thermal underwear and a massive hat in this weather!

I can just imagine you speeding round with 50s style driving goggles.

 

[MotoH]

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/3253/audivsford.jpg
Sexy.

 

[mgb_phys]

Cool. I bet the Lotus is fun to drive.
Do you wear a scarf and a cap when you drive it?

The amazing modern equivalent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4YNkurhLk

Of course if this is a bit too tame, there is now a 500hp version (0-60mph <2.5sec)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The amazing modern equivalent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4YNkurhLk

Of course if this is a bit too tame, there is now a 500hp version (0-60mph <2.5sec)

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1050/acceleration.jpg

Pretty hard to argue with that. Now I know what I want for Christmas!

Note that near the end, he made the same mistake that almost flipped me into a rock moutainside. He was late releasing the brake coming into a turn and got some smoke from the front passenger tire.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Sexy.

Exactly, Group B is where my love of box shaped 80's cars comes from.