Forza 3 is a game I can just pop in, do a few races, and have a bit of fun while realizing just how many races I haven’t finished yet. Horizons... it makes you sit through awful characters and wander a map in order to do anything meaningful. If I wanted to play Driver SF I’d play Driver, and if I wanted to play GTA…

I think the Mythbusters have a revisit on their hands. I seriously thought this kind of high side was impossible on a bike as you’d start sliding the front tire before the back end went over but I guess this proves that quite wrong, at least for a race bike on race tires...

I was mildly interested in a crown vic PI as a comfortable long distance cruiser until i saw just how awful the gas mileage was. They seem to be averaging 19mpg. To put that in perspective, that’s as bad as a 2001 Mercedes ML430, which also averages 18-20mpg, and probably has a good 500lb surplus (and 4WD) on the CV.…

This is what I immediately thought as well. You have a situation where one wheel grips and one slips (no system is balanced perfectly, so one side might have slightly more grip than the other), so its allowed to slip a bit and then the LSD kicks in and tries to turn both wheels. There may be some oscillation as the…

There are a few games like Mirror’s Edge where you watch the trailer and listen to the music and realize that no matter how the game turns out, you’re gonna play it just cuz the music was just that good. My other example would be Syndicate. Say what you want about Skrillex, but he killed it with the trailer song for…

This... This is glorious engineering at work. Think about what it took to do this. A complete subframe for the bike. Custom axle mounts. Completely extending and rerouting the wiring to the bike. Custom bodywork to mate the trunk with the front clip. Lots and lots and lots of welding. Probably tricking quite a few…

I’ve got a few less common ones. How bout a loud metallic whirring sound coming from the general area of your accessory belt? That probably means a bearing has died. Mine was on the AC compressor. If you let that noise go for long enough it goes from slightly annoying to “I think there’s a monster in my engine bay”…

I drove by a guy recently towing a rickety wooden box trailer with a very clean 80’s 911. No truck, no problem!

There are a couple empty miata shells in my area going for cheap/free... Bad ideas are brewing...

Or being raised with an attitude of “yeah... I can do that” even when you damn well know you have no idea what you’re doing. You’ll either succeed or fuck up spectacularly, and in both cases you’ll probably learn some important stuff.

I am a “no collar worker” (aka high tech in the Bay Area) but I loved woodshop and wished my high school had metal shop or auto shop. Those things are life skills. Being able fix shit around the house should be a basic requirement of growing up. You may not remember 90% of what you learned in those classes later in…

I broke my rule and bought a 1/2” HF torque wrench which has lasted me quite a while. That wrench does 90% of work between “stubby wrench tight” to lug nut tight. For anything with >100lb/ft (very rare unless you’re doing front control arms or axle nuts) I will get a loaner torque wrench from Oreilly with a 250 lb/ft…

My harbor freight impact socket set has lasted me the last 5 years with pretty regular use on an airgun (especially the 14, 17, and 21 mm... yay Mazda!). I’ve used them with 2 foot breakers and even a couple times with that 2 foot breaker + extension. But yes, everything at Harbor Freight is YMMV, so that just…

If you have a neighborhood auto parts store, and even better, if they are not a national chain, get friendly with the staff. They know their shit and can save you time and money if you can ask the right questions. Most local shops also have a small toolshop in the back so you can get specialized jobs done like turning…

You will learn very quickly what tools you can cheap out on and what tools to spend the good money on. Here’s my general rule. Does it have any moving parts? If yes, then don’t cheap out on it. I love my harbor freight wrench sets, but damn it, any time I buy a harbor freight tool that has one moving part it will…

When you’re on that good of a gravy train then you might as well ride the sucker all the way down. Lets see how long her son tries to hold on to his job, cuz I don’t think he’ll be qualified for much else if he loses it.

The HHR was the more interesting take on the PT Cruiser idea. It also was tiny inside, had horrible visibility, and had the classically bad GM interiors. The HHR SS made up for it with mounds of torque steer.

Man... I love Luc Besson movies (directed, written, produced... they all have his touch), but holy crap has the quality of his work dropped in the last 10 years. Well, maybe not drop, but become far more inconsistent. I say The Transporter is the height of his post-5th Element career, at least for American releases…

For all the people sitting there idly scratching their heads going “huh... I wonder why they brought the guns...” and then settling on “maybe its cuz they just really like guns and wanted to show them off...” Yeah... uh huh, ok... I could MAYBE seeing bringing a gun, in a case, with a mag just so that you could open…

When life gives you lemons... you go full LeMons? Stuffing a flat six into a GC sounds very much like Supergramps from Mighty Car Mods...