Meanwhile, some people are unphazed. Ontario plates. Roanoke Va this morning with about 3" on the ground.

The intermittent 4WD on those Rangers w/ automatic hubs is usually due to a vaccuum leak. About $160 and a few hours to convert them to manual

There ARE hills in Kansas!

Even Napa stocks cheap parts now&then. I asked about price & availability of air cleaner mounts for my old diesel Mercedes(like to have them on hand 2-3 years after last set was installed) and the price quoted was way too low. Sure enough, URÖ brand-absolute crap: a brand I would only use to get back home from a…

1000 stars! No one who has not worked on Lucas electrical systems can grok how stupefying they are. Not just not working, but malfunctioning in seemingly magical ways.

That’s pretty neat. I’d like a version with 80-150 hp, please.

Ah, but were there 1950s car with script on the rear touting >Automated Turn Indicators<?

Yah, the pneumatic suspension was a pita. Think the pump was $900 back in late 90s. Swapping Legacy struts in was cheaper and weighed less.

The coolest thing about the XT aside from its way low CD(.29, iirc) was the push-button 4wd on top of the joystick shifter. Really surprised I didn’t tear the transmission out of my ‘88 popping it into 4 while violently downshifting coming into hairpins.

Not even remotely a 2-wheels guy, but that’s freakin beautiful! Would step out of my cage for that thing any day

I just saw one this morning-the nicest one I’ve seen in at least a decade. Older gentleman at the wheel. I pulled alongside to ogle and gave a huge grin & enthusiastic 👍 when he noticed me. His face lit up, he nodded slight acknowledgement, then returned a sweeping 👍 to include my 300TD.

Back when I got into diesels to do the WVO thing, I really wanted one of these. But they are damn slow, and the mountains in SW Va can be a bit steep for them.

The downward element immediatly made me think of those gangtsa-wannabes who had a teardrop tattooed under their eye.

When I played with 80s Subarus I always wanted to find a knobby motorcycle tire that would fit on their spares’ rims: 4 of those on that little 4wd would have been a blast in the snow!

Majority I see here in SW Virginia are S/CUVs. Late model. My theory is that with low-profile Mall-crawler tires they don’t have much traction. But, their traction-control system keeps them from learning just how little actual control they have until they try to flaunt physics & get bitch-slapped.

(late to game, I know). The other thing is that diesels run hot when they run rich: opposite of gas engines.

I would love to have dual modes. A light-is-green:stop-texting friendly tone and a WTF? Stop-texting-while-driving! blast.

Saturn was a good idea—just failed execution. No drain back holes in the pistons, which meant-when combined with cheap plastic temp-sensors that cracked and failed-that once overheated the lands would coke up and you’ld have an oil-burner. Bad casting of plastic intake manifolds of the 3rd gen S-series: the fix was to…

“...and lighting geeks like me.”

That’s easy enough to do: buy one from a single mom who got it from her parents & never changed the transmission fluid. Or coolant. Or brake fluid. Or PS fluid...