Equidistant was always the biggest problem with V-brakes but as long as you had the adjustment screws set reasonably well you were fine. I love love love v-brakes for their lightweight simplicity- not gonna go back to them and ditch my modern disc brakes but on a retro build they’re awesome. The orange Avid Magnesium…

Here in the midwest we have it drilled into our heads that riding in wet basically ruins trails (which is true for midwestern dirt) so I can’t even imagine having dirt that doesn’t rut and ruin the second it rains :)

Now I have to come out west to try your trails. 

If you take a look the brakes are the old XT V brakes with 2 pivots and a linkage, sometimes called parallel push, sometimes called dual pivot because there are 2 pivots on each arm. As long as you aren’t riding in the wet (and really, who even does that?) they’re fantastic brakes. 

I mean, I’d be perfectly happy if the show he had was Joe Rogan being forced to participate in every gross, awful thing he made people do on Fear Factor. “Today on Joe Rogan Experiences... Joe experiences what it’s like to eat ostrich testicles while being covered in a box full of pissed off stink bugs...”

Door locks that required keys that would freeze and lock you out of your car because you live somewhere that gets ice. Also having one key for the door and one for the ignition. Also those keys being really small and easy to break in a frozen door.

Ohmygod same. I have had manual transmissions for the past 35 years. 2 years ago I finally broke down and bought an automatic. It’s just... so much easier and more comfortable and less stressful and just... it makes driving pleasant again. 

Starting in the cold/that first 10 minutes of driving after you started in the cold. When I was a kid I remember the route to school littered with cars pulled over to the side that had flooded or whatever because they were absolutely garbage in weather below 30 degrees.

As long as they don’t have to pay for it, they win. The goal is just to keep pushing it further down the line until they can retire and become lobbyists. 

Of course they knew. But they also knew that if they raised taxes to fix any of the crumbling infrastructure, they’d all lose their jobs and be raked over the coals for being freedom hating tax and spend politicians.

I think the problem lies with the fact that they don’t have the deep parts bin one needs to make a cheap car- to make something cheap manufacturers often uses old tech and old components that are essentially already paid for. But tesla’s old tech and components are more expensive than their new ones, because honestly,…

Most languages have idioms that don’t really translate at all- mon petite chou never actually refers to a small cabbage and fuck it almost never means “I’m going to have sex with it”. Supposedly “ich bin ein Berliner” really translates to “I’m a pancake” because language never does what it’s supposed to and it’s…

My grocery store repurposed the salad bar for beer and wine. Because Wisconsin.

I mean, are we surprised? For the entire reign of the boomers, it’s been “nah, let’s just patch it, it’ll be fine”- they spent all their power pushing off the costs to the future- why improve roads and bridges when we could cut taxes instead? why improve schools when we could just cut taxes? in fact, why do anything…

I’m just gonna toss this out there: you are a man who loves to wrench. Tan seats are a terrible idea. I say this as a guy who didn’t buy the green with tan interior outback (EVEN THOUGH ITS THE BEST COLOR) because I knew I’d destroy that tan interior with bike grease and dirt in about a week. Just sayin’, save…

So the BroncoRaptor, far from being a tough creature of the wild, is more like a french bulldog or a pug, a creature so mutated by human design that it can’t even be born naturally? Our grandkids are gonna look at us and poke us with their long pointy sticks in shame. 

I feel like this is some kind of really obvious parable that’s gonna be told to our kids around campfires the way we talk about the Titanic.

The point being, we have regulations that make sure that a car, when bought new, will be repairable and safe for operation on the road with other cars and trucks. We have regulations that make sure that manufacturers have parts available to fix that car or truck.

8 years was a good run and there’s still a cult-like following for them because they fill a niche that literally no other vehicle can fill. At least until there’s an AWD transit connect with a base model you can hose out.

Imagine if you bought a car because it was the least expensive car available, and after a week of driving it was not shifting right, wasn’t steering right and the brakes didn’t work well?

One potential awesome upside to the hidden tailpipes- less chance of melting/ruining fancy Overland(TM) accessories that are bolted to the fenders or on racks on the back of the vehicle. For example, big back-facing exhausts and carbon mountain bike wheels really do not mix. And while I know that no SERIOUS off roader…