Don’t do stupid stuff to try and impress the people riding with you. They aren’t impressed and won’t want to ride with you anymore.

2014 Sportwagen TDI:

Got a 2014 TDI sportwagen 6-speed that I’ve had since new. Kept it through the dieselgate fiasco since there is really nothing comparable in my eyes. Ticked over 150k miles a few months ago with a couple of mild upgrades like wheels, suspension, skid plates, Kerma tune, aftermarket headlights, etc. I will be keeping…

Instead of the jerky coming from a steer named Betelgeuse, it comes from the star system.

As much as I would love for my car to drive itself to the grocery store after a snowfall, or even when it’s raining at night, I honestly think that it will be impossible for autonomous vehicles to navigate in anything but optimal weather conditions without a major overhaul to the infrastructure they drive on.

Yup, did it for Thanksgiving, as well as every weekend between then and Labor Day to move. Might actually take US-23 down the coast this time since I’m not in a rush.

This’ll be the first year that I am more than 30 min. away from the gathering location: going from the tip of the mitten to northern metro Detroit. But based on the fact that normal weekend tourist traffic anywhere along the first three hours of the four hour drive is basically non-existent, and I’ll be going opposite…

Neutral:

Agreed on all counts but I would add that the tolls are damn steep compared to the Ohio Turnpike (and obviously we don’t have anything like that in MI). Family missed the exit for I-80 on the Ohio/Penn border and decided to just keep going only to get hit with an $80 toll at the end (they were going to central Jersey,…

I stopped riding on the roads about 10 years ago after getting clipped by a mirror. Luckily I also have a pretty decent paved trail system nearby that I can ride on but have been migrating towards mountain biking anyways.

And that proves just how incompetent my local dealership is. I brought in my VW to get the timing belt changed at 100k miles (I’ll service everything else myself, but I won’t touch engine timing), and I asked about getting my trans/diff fluid changed while it was there (manual trans). They said they don’t do that…

Not the porn industry, but football (and movies). Could record an entire football game on VHS, but not Beta.

Used to see wind turbine blades along I-69 all the time back when they were building tons of wind farms up in Michigan’s thumb. They used to travel as a convoy of nine blades and they would all stop at one rest area to check on everything at the same time every day during the week. Nine new blades every day for an…

In Michigan, the maximum gross vehicle weight is 164,000 pounds, when spread out over 11 axles. This is because we already had a law in place and were “grandfathered” in when the federal law was enacted.

Worst part about it is that the travel time difference (from northern Metro Detroit to just north of New York City) for the two routes is small enough that if there is construction or traffic along I-80, a GPS will reroute to I-76 immediately after you miss the exit. So if you are a slave to the GPS (as my family is),…

It’s the same thing for I-80/I-76 before Youngstown in Ohio. You have to exit off of I-80 in order to stay on I-80 to continue directly west though Pennsylvania. Otherwise it just turns into I-76 and goes southeast to Pittsburgh. But more importantly, you are getting off of the Ohio Turnpike by exiting to I-80 and not…

Neutral:

For some reason, longer road trips are the only time I will ever buy yoohoo chocolate milk and Jack Link’s pepper beef jerky. No idea why, but its the only time I will ever purchase those things.

What’s the side-to-side stability like? Do you feel safe under the car if you are really putting the business on a stuck bolt? I’m in the market for something like this and am contemplating quick jacks but I would be concerned about these tipping over on their sides.

Neutral: