Add to list: Hacksaw and blowtorch. Two of my favorite tools. If you can spare the scratch, get a battery-powered Sawzall and metal-cutting blades. Rarely does a project or repair pass on my basketcase Volvo without me having to break out of these because I broke something, or a bolt is jammed. Just don’t be stupid…

There are all manner of things already in your house what could go boom. Still, you could do what I did with a house designed to be steam-heated by an on-site boiler: Put it in an outbuilding in the back yard built like a dynamite silo (sloped walls, thin roof), and run a trench. It doesn’t *have* to be inside your…

Erf. My grandfather had a Ram 2500 with some plastic part in the gearbox. (Dunno what it was. Grandpa isn’t a mechanic.) *Every time* he’d pull his work trailer over the pass on US-2, this part would break, and he’d wind up limping the truck into a shop in Wenatchee. After the 4th time, he traded the truck in. Entire…

My 1992 Mi Shiti Bus RAGE. (Actually an Eagle Summit with a Mirage hatch I played Scrabble with). Not only did it run, handle, and function like an arthritic octogenarian with a wooden leg, but it was also a magnet for bad luck. List: Had the left rear window broken twice in as many months. Was rear-ended when parked.…

Oh this guy! A buddy of mine lives down by there and we were checking that out the other night! I wonder if they have anything to do with the shop full of Opel sports cars across the way. And wait until you see the red Geo Metro stretch limo that rolls around Kenmore. Or the hippie bus in West SEA, with a second floor…

OMG YES PLEASE!!!

Tl;Dr Wanton greed is corrosive to the individual, those around him, and the world at large. That's why. Also feel the need to comment on the irony to your last paragraph. If the economy wasn't running the bankers wouldn't have jobs either.

One reason I care is because money woes are basicly the leading cause of stress in America. Stressed people often take their stress out on others. Life is hard enough naturally. Why cause *more* problems for yourself and those around you? Are you acting on impulse or are you an active participant? From where I'm…

The one-lane side of that tunnel scares the hell outta me and I've never had to stop in it. No wonder you were able to fill a coke can with piss!

"Dad and Grandpa owned pickup, so I do." Yep. Pickup. Singular. Same truck. Fridgidare white 1969 Chevy C/10 with the venerable 350. Seems a better (certainly more frugal) way of doing things than this leasing business.

Here's a question (4 in fact): What is wrong with Americans? Do normal people actually *enjoy* living in their own prisons of debt, and being thralls to their banks? Did we learn *nothing* from the housing bubble financial crisis of '08? Is this nationwide commitment phobia? Live within your means, folks. It's not a…

Eh, just so long as there is an option to remove it on the order form, everything will be okay. I still see factory audio systems as only existing so there is something to *remove* when you go to insall an aftermarket unit to suit your personal preference. But maybe I'm just stuck in the 90's. That junk is coming out,…

Fastest way to end a date.

Man, I see a lot of digital dash haters here and have to play devil's advocate. My first car was a Black 1990 Ford Thunderbird with a digital dash (and power sunroof). The dash was simple and well executed. The tach was a bar graph shaped like an upside-down J, oil pressure/volts/fuel/temp gauges were all simple LCD…

My D/D'r is a 1976 Volvo 245, with the GT front clip, code-name 'Fitz'. I bought it off a chemistry teacher in Seattle, who had been using it as a mobile Jersy wall to protect his Ford for the last 7 years. If I did get a date, the Car would probably scare the poor lady off. It's navy blue with a meteor shower of…

Oh, *this* is where the money that the police could be using to get my stolen belongings back went to. Well I suppose we have to keep the hiways safe for the rat rodders cruising around in tetanus-inducing, barely welded together scrap piles. (Before anyone gets on me I do love Rat Rods as an art form, but I think we…

I love the landings where the headwind is so high the planes basicly VTOL. Or the takeoffs where they seem to do the same. Just angle that nose into the wind and *SPROING*!

"Never race against anything you wouldn't be happy losing to; God has a cruel sense of humor."

I've ridden in the Nissan Sunny/Sentra cabs of Mexico (Cancun to Playa Del Carmen). Watching the cab driver take corners that mashed my family and I against the side windows, or riding an inch or so off the back bumpers of overloaded coach busses before veering off into oncoming for an overtake was terrifying. Still,…

Those of you talking about manuals as anti-theft devices: Volvo 240 manual with a D-type overdrive, and reverse lockout. "Nope! You drive."