I had an inexplicably good experience, in Massachusetts no less. I walk into an RMV branch at 4:55 PM (five minutes before closing) with my Pennsylvania license to transfer. Not only was I out by 4:59, but they found my original license from Massachusetts was in the system and had technically not expired, so the…

I bought a GS500F as my first bike...it was decent to learn on, though I found it somewhat heavy and wide compared to the Nighthawks in the MSF class. The big issue for me was the fairings...of course I scratched them up dropping the thing, I should have seen it coming. Full fairings also make the bike feel wider,…

I will say, I’ve had nothing with good experiences with mechanics fixing my screwups IF I tell them what happened and where I need help. Then again, both my general mechanic and my Subaru specialist are solid, upright shops.

The minute I end up on a dealer’s website and click on a car that’s been sold or otherwise out of inventory for weeks, it erases any goodwill a decently managed Facebook page or Twitter account could have. Basics first.

If it is in the Skyline, enter it in the Vintage Grand Prix car show...it’s in Pittsburgh some time in July.

128 in Boston isn’t terrible to route around on bike, but it really depends where you are. The real issue is that 12 miles on 128 is going to translate to 15-20 miles on bike once you’ve found the route. That’s more because Boston road insanity extends far outside of Boston proper.

The Toyobaru uses Toyota’s D4-S system, which combines DI and port injection. It’s been used for a little over ten years in various Lexus models, and has no history or reputation of carbon issues.

Considering Fiat is making a version of the car with an engine that makes 160hp and has had factory tuned versions with both 180 and 200hp, maybe there's a marketing agreement in place that Mazda doesn't want to talk about? I could easily see a Fiat Spider being priced above the Miata even without a significant power…

Agree entirely. This is a show that's been on for 13 years in its current form, and at a certain point it started getting repetitive. To make it worse (better?), YouTube is starting to provide, in earnest, the car content that only Top Gear seemed able to provide only three or four years ago.

There's too many loose ends in the build for it to even hit 20. My bet is that he's roughly $14k all in and doesn't quite understand that mods don't add value. At 20k I'd expect at least the correct clutch and exhaust.

I was somewhere in the middle...hooning my Celica all the way to my Dungeons and Dragons games.

The event I'm familiar with is through ADSI, which is HPD instruction as well as an autocross course. Sounds up my alley, but it's not easy to find a time to get out to Devens as well as everything else.

I should give it a try. I was kind of scared away by the types of guys who went to the Subaru meets, who spent way more money on their cars than I ever did. I know intellectually you don't need to drop money on adjustable shocks and other fancy suspension bits to have fun, but...lots of egos in the car hobby.

I have not- some of my old Subi friends do, though the guys who are really into it tend to have Miatas and Civics as track rats. I should give it a shot- I'm pretty paranoid about my car, which has dissuaded me from doing track or autocross events in the past.

I have never seen that, but that sounds...interesting. In my neck of the woods the slammed cars were self-limiting...I used to go to NASIOC meets a few years ago and there were meet locations the lowered cars couldn't actually get to because of the quality of the roads. My drop was minimal, but even so it turns out…

My rust experience was on my brother's Celica, which had a bit of an inspection ride. The car had taken a hit to the door when he hit some black ice, and the door needed to be replaced. Cheapskates we were, we got a door at the junkyard and had a shop remount it with no body work...there was some damage on the sill…

It's the internet, and you know what they say: "It takes two." I'm equally at fault here.

I'm in regulatory policy for a living, and any interpretation of a policy should be weighted in terms of the actual outcome. Since OBD-II emissions inspections wholly replaced sniff tests in 2008 or so, it's become easier to pass pretty much any car as what used to be a relatively involved process of getting the car…

I read the whole thing. The city of Boston has plenty of cars rustier than that with valid inspection stickers, so either there really is no audit or maybe your interpretation of the law is better suited to NH's regime. I'd also bet if you were this pedantic with an inspector, he'd probably fail you out of…

I said in my very first comment holes through sheet metal should fail you. I see no inconsistency, and no legal reason in MA that the Civic would be failed, as there are no "sharp edges or abnormal protrustions". The only way you can be failed for rust is if it's rust on a structural member that could be deemed to…