A shadow vessel can be essentially just a fancy water taxi. When you’re talking a megayacht of even a fraction of this size, there aren’t too many places to dock it, so they’re anchored offshore and the shadow vessel is used to get around locally and to shore. As someone who likes boats, I find the whole idea of…

I grew up with sociopaths in my family. TheWalrus had nothing in his comment reflecting that. If you’re anywhere near MA, I’m sure the surviving sociopath in my family would be willing to spend some quality time with you if you’d like a live lesson in the behavior of a sociopath. Throwing around terms like “sociopath”…

I loved those little engines! Gear-driven cam. I remember seeing dual port heads someone made for the EA81s way back when I had one, but they were extremely expensive back then. Are they fairly attainable now?

Regular Ej22 was open deck, but the turbo version was fully closed. The latter was expensive to build being sand and die cast, so Subaru went cheap and just bumped up displacement too high to come up with the POS 2.5 when the overpriced STI came to the US instead of bringing the closed deck 2.2 back where they could…

If the Canadian ones followed the US models, they were GL or DL with 1.8 or 1.6L engines respectively (though I’m not sure if that GL/DL match to displacement was strictly true). EA81 series engine. About as sophisticated as a garden tractor, only slightly more powerful, and at least as easy to work on.

It was the EA81 in the BRAT/Leone/GLs—OHV, gear driven cam. Replaced by the EA82, an OHC version with a separate timing belt for each head. The XT later had the ER27, basically a 6-cylinder version of the EA82.

Even when you could get decent ones in the $25-30k range, I wasn’t interested. Good looking, but slow and there (were) cars I thought were more interesting for the price at the time (mostly Gandini’s work: Espada, Khamsin, Montreal). Money kept going to a house instead. Even with the large price increases of those…

I wonder if they really saved that much doing that or if the idea was more to push people into more profitable trims.

There are adaptors. I used one on a bike build to convert a ‘61 Columbia Firebolt step through cruiser to a 6-speed freewheel, which ditched the coaster. It’s the only brake on that bike and it works well for a rear brake only and it SEEMS solid, but I don’t completely trust it as the only brake and there’s no cheap…

People shit on friction shifting and indexing is great, but on an around town/utility bike, I like being able to blast up or down multiple gears in one move and my legs have never had a problem telling me when I’ve found the right gear. Some of this might be down to custom shifters I got the feel for, so there’s no…

Around here, it seems like people stop more for perfectly clear roundabouts than they do for damn stop signs.

I guess I can see leaving out the EG33 (basically a 6-cylinder EJ22 only on the SVX), but it seems odd to mention the EJ series and not bring up the 2.2 closed deck block (or the JDM EJ20G for that matter) from the lst gen Legacy turbos that were related to the homologation run for Group A rally (technically, those…

He only has to pay 10% to a bail bondsman to get out (this can vary by state, but FL is 10%).

Dodge Ram, Fl, sounds right.

The ‘80s Cadillacs had MPG feedback and Camaros had the upshift light. Must have been a popular thing in the industry then. My Subarus did not have either.

Focus ST did that, too. Yeah, let’s invite LSPI by driving around in 6th at 1200 rpm to save $.02 in fuel!

I love Gordon Murray’s cars and philosophy, but my first thought was the shift knob, too—aside from the GMA logo, it looks like a cast piece found in industrial equipment. From the photos, it looks like there’s more flash along the side than a bottle of off-brand cleaner, but at least a replacement could be had from…

Used mine all the time from vent to fully open and never had issues with them. Two were even aftermarket pieces with a combined mileage of about 420k miles.

My Focus ST averaged the highway rating with a combined cycle and I don’t drive Mrs Daisy. With DI, you get turbocharging with what used to be a decent NA compression ratio. Peak power is only produced at full load. Reduce load, reduce power, reduce fuel consumption. Of course, the displacement still has to be large…

As above: you’re talking about what some outlying individual will pay while I’m talking about VALUE as if the two are the same thing when they are definitely not.