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The upcoming McLaren is a bit "meh." Could almost be mistaken for an Ascari...

That's actually what i thought it was until i read the post. The new SLS or whatever the hell it is looks like ass, Mercedes cars are getting uglier every year.

I had (still own somewhere, actually) a commodore 64, the "portable" one that was about the size of three brief cases stacked on top of each other. Also had a Laser Disc player, don't know where the player went but i still have a good number of LD somewhere. Also the Neo Geo Pocket, i actually really liked the device a whole lot, but it died a slow painful death at the hands of Nintendo. I was also one of those unfortunate people who purchased a MiniDisc Player, it seemed like such a good idea at the time but ultimately a huge failure.

The NSX wasn't really a great car to begin with, great idea with mediocre execution. The idea that it's a super car with economy car maintenance is its greatest selling point, but they used a crappy motor (C30/32 - 90 degree V6, nobody uses 90 degree V6's anymore for lots of reasons) and mounted it transverse so it's hard to work on. So basically instead of engineering the motor to fit longitudinal and engineering a real MR platform (a la ferrari, Lambo, etc) they just took an existing motor and trans design and just put in the back of the car to make an MR car (a la MR2). The worst thing is that Honda never bothered giving it a proper refresh in its entire run, they gave it a little better displacement but still kept the 90 degree V6 all the while they had a perfectly good 60 degree V6 just sitting on the shelf (J32/35). The NSX made up for its crappy motor by having a super light and rigid chassis, if they had put as much work into the motor as they did the chassis, then the NSX would've stood the test of time.

There are valid arguments for Japanese cars, but not the ones your defending. The 3000GT was also one of those great ideas with poor execution, a better example of a car with the same ethos as the 3000GT but with perfect execution would be the Nissan GT-R. The GT-R set out to accomplish everything that the 3000GT wanted to, but actually did it right (and that goes for any BNR GT-R R32-R35), the 3000GT is well known to have horrible reliability issues especially with its transmission and transfer case and its general design was poor (another transverse motor type with a maze of turbo plumbing from both the firewall and the radiator side, complete crap to work on). That's not to say that 3000GT's aren't fast, they are certainly fast, but for how long. My friend's VR-4 spent more time in pieces in his garage than it ever did on the road, but when he had it on the road it was something to behold, quite frankly, performance of that type isn't worth it to me. If i can't drive it year round and know it'll perform the same in the morning as it does in the evening then it's not worth owning.

EDIT:

Also a Vette would kill an NSX, a lightly modified S2000 will beat an NSX, NSX's are pretty to look at and great for their time, but their time was 1989 they set the bar high but not that high. Notable Japanese cars to use for these types of debates would be Supra, GT-R, STI, EVO, FD RX-7, Silvia, S2000, Z cars, etc. try to avoid DSM and Honda's that aren't the S2000.

Speaking of cars "borrow" styling cues, the Hennessey Venom GT Concept looks exactly like the Lotus Exige. Except bigger.

Looks like Exige mixed with Carrera GT, but it's definitely nothing we haven't seen before, the proportions in the concept art make it look like a hot wheels car.

I thought the EXACT same thing when i watched that episode. I think the reason they push so hard to get the armor is that they know it's way beyond what their engineers can come up with. The Russian Crimson Dynamo or whatever it was is a brute force giant robot, nothing particularly high tech about it in contrast to Tony's armor. I think Stain is looking more at the potential of technology advancement to gain from the armor than the strict use of the armor itself. As far as Tony getting his ass kicked by the Russian bot, Tony has never really been known for his fighting ability, so i'm sure if his armor were in more capable hands then the Russian mech would've been in for a world of hurt. It was nice to see him resort to the Hulk Buster armor though (even if it wasn't referenced as such).

I've been catching this show more consistently, it's on Nicktoons for the greater part of the afternoon. I gotta say that the writing and character development has come along nicely and even more references to the comic (they recently had Hulk Buster armor on there). I was afraid that Iron Man;AA would focus too much on the mystical side of things with lots of Mandarin story arcs, but they've barely touched any Mandarin stories and have focused mostly on Obadiah Stain. So far it's made for some good action since it's mostly battles of technology (the tech Stain stole from Tony's dad vs Tony tech). The animation is still crappy when it's organic and fantastic when its mechanical, but i think that's just inherit with the type of animation they're using. I've watched up to the point now where Tony is refining his enemies technology and integrating it into his own armor. The first 5 or 6 episodes are kind of crap, but it picks up pretty strongly after that, so i would try catching it on nicktoons when it's on.

You shouldn't imho, unless you are on a corporate lease plan. VW's are the Bic lighter of the automotive world. Audis are slightly better.

I own an Audi (A4 1.8t quattro manual), and while i agree it is slightly better, they're still a bitch to work on. It's nothing particularly difficult, but just little things that add up and make things cumbersome. For instance, yesterday i went to change the trans fluid, and it requires a twelve point security bit (the twelve points with the hole in the center) on the drain plug, and no tiny one that you could buy from home depot, the fat boy ones. I had to go to my mechanic friend to find the right size 12 point socket except his wasn't a security bit so we ended up having to grind out the security pillar in the center of the bolt. And when i did a steering fluid flush i couldn't use the BG synthetic from my buddies shop, i had to use Audi specific "synthetic mineral oil". You'd also think that since Audi's (A3/TT are exceptions) are longitudally mounted that it'd be easy to change out the belts (usually it's just pull the radiator and you're ready to get cracking) but not on the Audi, you have to remove the front bumper to get to everything. In all honesty though, i've had nearly no problems with it mechanically, while my VW was in my garage more often than on the road, so there must be better QC or manufacturing on the Audi side of things.

I agree with David, everything after the 360 has looked very "bleh", definitely not show stopping like some of the classics. I've always been a fan of Ferrari's older designs and Dante's list is pretty much what i'd go for with the addition of the 512's (bb/tr/m), 308 and 355. I'm not crazy about any of their modern FR designs, the 550/575 weren't bad but the 599 and up look like garbage. I hated the F50, i don't know how they went to that from the F40, if they went from the F40 to the Enzo then that makes a little more sense, but the F50 looks like crap to me. Also loved the P series cars.

What's neat is that the Hyundai Genesis Coupe 2.0L Turbo qualifies under the cash for clunkers bill, i'm not sure what your gas mileage is, but you could trade in your mustang + $5000 credit from the govt and pick up a Genesis, i know i would.

This isn't helping the original question but diesels have been using fuel injectors long before they were used on petrol engines.

As to the original question; I'd be looking for a new brother in law.

Due to the strange mixture of fuel your equally strange brother in law ran your car on, he could well have blown the head gasket which could lead to the temp light coming on as it could be allowing combustion blow by into the coolant jacket.

i didn't mean to write fuel injectors i meant to write spark plugs but thanks for finding the mistake, that changes the context completely The point i was making is that deisel fuel won't combust in a petrol motor due to there not being high enough compression so if it did "burn" somehow i can't imagine it being a good thing for the motor.

EDIT: i'm brain dead today, spelling and grammar all over the place

I'm surprised the car was able to burn through the diesel, it must've just burned it as heavily diluted gasoline because diesel won't even combust in an unleaded gas motor. Diesels don't use spark plugs, they rely on high compression (hence why a lot of them are turbocharged as well) to ignite the fuel where as unleaded would rely strictly on the spark plug. Did you actually make it through the whole tank of diesel/unleaded mixture because i'd be concerned more for the motor if the diesel wasn't siphoned out. I don't think that would effect your coolant system at all though, they function pretty separately. I would imagine if it effected anything it would be your emissions system like O2 sensors since burning through the dilluted gas would be really tough on the motor. That's just my two cents though.

Knoppix is good as a live-CD. I haven't actually used it installed on a machine but it makes for a pretty workable live-CD for data recovery, developer/testing, or just anytime I need a Linux system up and running quick. I think mikeszekely is looking for something a little more long-term for his VM though.

I do that exact same thing with puppy linux (using as a live cd), I have a friend who uses Knoppix and said good things about it, I've been meaning to try out Fedora but never got around to it. I've used Ubuntu in both VM and Server applications and it worked well. Some unix commands weren't supported but i was able to find work arounds, since i use Suse and Redhat at work a lot i'm not really into GUI's in my day to day hardly at all (and it also doesn't help that the rest of the time i'm in Cisco ios, or some other network CLI). If you're using Linux as a learning tool then go with something that has a feature rich terminal since that will be the most practical if you're going to apply it in a networking or data center environment. I hear Fedora is backed by Redhat so i'd look deeper to see if a lot of the features are carried over, also Debian is supposed to be really stable but haven't used it myself.

I use Ubuntu too, but don't use it too much at home as a main OS, i use Redhat at work all the time, but that's sort of a different breed. I know people like Ubuntu because it has a very strong support community and an enterprise release but there are other client distros out there that offer a prettier GUI. I've heard good things about Knoppix but haven't used it personally

Google would be the only company who has a chance at taking a slice of the OS pie (speaking long term). They have the resources and the manpower to start at the consumer level, it's the enterprise level that's a tough cookie to crack. If 5 or 10 years rolls by and Google is able to get an enterprise server version of their OS to the public, then Microsoft should be very worried.

i read he was just the stig for that particular episode, and bbc confirmed that he did in fact drive the ferrari around the track, they would not confirm if he was the stig for the past seasons however.

i prefer an ups with a battery backup for my pc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....ps&name=APC

they're kinda expensive though.

agreed, along with what Azrael said. I only have one UPS and it's for my server stuff (server, router, and switch), i'm also lucky enough to have cat5e already run through my house and terminated on a patch panel in my basement so all of that noisy, hot and heavy crap stays in one spot that i never see.

Oh, also, i'm not sure where you work, but i got my UPS from my work as a DRMO item (just the chassis, the battery was expired), and then bought the battery separate. If you know anyone who works in government or government facilities, they throw away UPS' all the time (switches too!).

I love Tim Burton and i feel this is right up his alley. There's always going to be both sides of the coin of people who say dark, anorexic and spirally is overdone, but then if he didn't do it, you'd have the other camp who says it's not Tim Burton-y enough. That's like watching a kawamori project without giant transforming robots, it would be good, but not quite there.

To me drifting is, like someone else here said, an exhibition sport. I do admire a drifter's ability to make a car do something that it really isn't supposed to and in a controlled manner, but only up to a point. I don't think drifting is "great," but personally speaking I'll take drifting over drag-racing or NASCAR any day of the week. No offense to anyone who likes that stuff, but you wanna' talk stupid there're two examples right there; driving in a circle or a straight line really really REALLY fast. Wow...

The only car-sport-event I could really give a damn about would be Trans-Am/SCCA/road-course/auto-x racing, or whatever you call it. If you want a true test and display of man and machine it's gonna' be there; certainly not strictly driving in circles, lines or around traffic cones...

Let's not forget WRC, that takes some real balls to do. When you think about it, it has a little element of everything involved in one sport. Ridiculously boosted cars; some elements of drifting; and of course going very very fast (but no circle jerk like nascar) in the dirt/snow/rain/mud/etc. etc. I love watching WRC too, the drivers aim to please it seems, lots of cursing, digging themselves out of mud pits and snow holes and one race i remember Gronholm doing a 720 in a hairpin turn as a crowd pleaser right in the middle of a race.

I'm trying to buy this as a box set so i can watch it with the wife, where's the best/cheapest place i can find it that isn't a HK bootleg?

I can't imagine that car being even remotely street legal. It's a JGTC car without the cool sponsorship stickers so it looks kind of hokey and over the top. Probably would've helped if they used an S15 instead of an S14, the S15 has much stronger contours than the S14.

I see no reason for this car to exist, if I wanted more cargo room I'd get a 5 station wagon, if I wanted a SUV I'd get a X5 or even a X6. But right now BMW is turning into a German Toyota with all these crossovers/SUV's/SAV's whatever and slicing a diminishing market even thinner. They should have spent the money and made a 5 series coupe to compete with the new E-class coupe, I know they have the 6 series but I personally think those cars are hideous and reminds me of a German Monte Carlo, big on the outside, tiny on the inside, and really no point to it other than a design exercise. At least BMW interiors are getting better and that Twin Turbo V8 is a real masterpiece.

agreed, their cars are getting uglier with each generation while their motors are becoming works of art

My brother is in the market to purchase a 89-93 as a project car. Him and I already made the list of things he has to do to it right away to make it a fun and acceptable ride and the list is pretty short:

Get rid of automatic seat belts/get better seats

Change out Rear Tail lights to the OEM JDM rear tail lights (it has a dual rear circles with center turn signal like 0|0 looks awesome)

Decide between turbocharging the KA24DE or dropping in an SR20DET or RB25DET

He's leaning towards the RB25DET swap since everyone does the SR20 and the turbo KA's, plus the RB block is invincible and the extra displacement is welcome. I'm going to wait five or so more years and then pick up an R32 GT-R since the 25 year rule will take effect and it will be considered an antique. I found the official way to work around the import problem, but it's a lot of hassle, paperwork, but most of all time, and i don't have a lot of the last one so i'm willing to be patient.

I've loved the Nissan's i've owned, i've also fallen victim to the desire of owning a 240SX, i'm not in so much a pickle of not affording it as simply not having time for it. I would love to get an S13 240SX and then go all mad scientist on it.

Oh! to the unanswered question of the Mazda Speed3, that car is fantastic, they're fast out of the box but can be made faster and they're VERY practical. Only problem is they're FWD, so i hope you're used to torque steer, but even with FWD they still handle the curves really well. Ideally, it would've been great if Mazda put their 2.3 Turbo motor in a new SPEED Miata, or provided an AWD option for their 3 (since they discontinued the SPEED 6) but maybe they'll surprise us as the redesign gains some sales momentum. The best part of the 3 is getting this great package for a great price, you can pick up the speed3's for very reasonable prices (at least in my area), I say go for it... and attend some professional driving courses ;-)

oh sorry i dont know, the car is not mine and i keep forgetting the owner to ask him that too

Intercooler on the front, so he either turbocharged the KA24DE or dropped an SR20DET in there, or if he had some real money he went with an RB series motor, but they're a lot more expensive and difficult to do. In any case, the hood shouldn't be raised like that (i've seen the RB swaps fit flush no problem), it's probably just a fitment issue or he didn't close it all the way.

lotsa nice cars, Ascari KZ1, Gallardo, F430, Ford GT, Audi R8, veeerrry nice selection.