I had 297,000 on my 97 F250 Powerstroke when I sold it last year.

I call BS on clutches only lasting 50K. I chipped my TDI at 160,000, the factory clutch was crying after 5,000 more miles of abuse. I put a slightly more stout clutch in at 165K and now that one is slipping in 3rd after 63,000 miles of ripping on it, and yes that's a VW.

I know right? I'm up to 223,000 on my '04 TDI and besides a clutch, timing belt components, water pump, (glow plugs under recall) and a $100 lift pump, I haven't replaced anything relatively significant.

In other words: Consult CR if you're in the market for a toaster, vacuum, minivan or beigemobile, otherwise don't consult CR.

...and goes completely unnoticed by the driver until they see it momentarily flash in their rearview mirror as it ejects itself to the side of the roadway.

True that, and Dual-Sport (aka Street & Trail) bikes typically don't see nearly the abuse that a real trail bike sees, most of them are designed for 80% street 20% off-road and they end up sucking at both.

I don't know if its the way that douche is riding it, but that thing's handling looks absolutely shitty compared to even 20 year old street & trail bike technology. Gimme an XR650 instead.

Belt drive is where its at for street use, but dirt bikes don't use belts because mud, grit, rocks, branches, etc would cause all kinds of havoc in a belt drive. Dirt bikes and quads also typically use different brake pad materials than their on road brethren.

I think a DSG is easier to understand than the classic automatic slushbox; conceptually it's just two parallel manual transmissions with even/odd gear ratios, two wet clutch packs take turns engaging the next gear with the driveline.

If it was a bad T-stat and at least one of the coolant sensors were working I would expect it to throw a code and run in open loop.

Just realized that you actually stated the year was '90, that definitely would have a mechanical distributor, no cam sensor so nevermind.

My buddy is working on an older 3.0L Ranger with the "Vulcan" engine, it was a reman and running erratically. The cam sensor on that engine was driven off of the same auxiliary shaft as the old distributor ignition ones and the worm gears on that shaft were stripped causing the ignition timing to jump all over the…

Excellent and informative article. I would've liked to see a bit about direct injection vs port vs throttle body. Open loop vs closed loop operation, and how they relate to maps is also key for diagnostics involving EFI. The only other thing I could think of would be Speed Density air metering vs Mass Airflow.

Unstable idle can also be caused by an intake air leak, usually past the MAF or even on the manifold, usually these are accompanied by a transient CEL code for a lean condition though.

Nice, but I understand how EFI works. The only witchcraft going on under the hood is in the evil slushbox! How a crappy 3-speed automatic with no TC lock works is even mysterious to me.

Yeah, supposedly these arrays would be placed strategically in regions that had little or no weather to damage them, which is great if you happen to live in Death Valley, but for the rest of the country we do have weather, which makes wind and solar power a part time deal at best. Some of us in the midwest river…

Not if it meets some objective that ultimately provides benefit, which is not the case as of lately.

What the US CURRENTLY CONTRIBUTES is what I said. I didn't say give up on the EPA, get rid of catalytic converters and shut down the scrubbers and let untreated coal fumes billow into the atmosphere.

No not really, hmm I forget... were we talking about ter'rists or onerous emission standards for profit? OOH SHINY!!!

I saw a documentary on alternative energy where someone actually did the math and figured out that we could in theory, power the entire country off of solar power if we built molten sodium towers with mirror arrays all over the desert in AZ... badass! Unfortunately, there's no superconductor available to transmit all…