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My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

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421–430 of 456 posts

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I never understood why the community didn’t deal with it when the police would not. Because if you are the one who actually has to do the violence rather than outsourcing it to the state it becomes clear this isn't a subject worth that violence. Put yourself in the shoes of the guy who has to do the pistol whipping. Unless you've got a badge and a state paycheck and can just blindly live with your actions as "it's m…

When you say enforcement isn't worth it, you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society. It's also pretty likely that the state violence will be a threat rather than a literal pistol whipping. Harder for the vigilante to make that work.

>you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society.

How's that different than letting complainers send state violence enforce stuff that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#422
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no specific order, per se, but kind of this order, here's my 8: 1. 1986 Toyota MR2 AW11 2. 1996 Mazda Miata/MX-5 NA 3. 1990 Porsche 944 Turbo S 4. 1988 Pontiac Fiero GT 5. 1995 Mazda RX-7 FD 6. 2007 Lotus Exige S 7. 1994 Autozam AZ-1 8. 2013 Acura TSX Sport Wagon I'm a big Toyota/Mazda fan, currently drive a Mazda as my primary vehicle, previously drove mostly Toyotas, and I have a love affair with 80s and 90s spo…

that’s a good list. i also collect japanese beaters (currently several miatas, an ae86 and an s13) and british lightweights (two vintage lotus racers and a modern aston factory race car) so lots of overlap. i have been looking for a 944 as well. there’s a great porsche shop across from my workshop so at least it will be convenient.

I love all beaters, not just Japanese ones, but Japanese ones tend to be the best. The lighter the weight, the shorter the wheelbase, the more fun it is, regardless of how much of a shitbox it is.

One of my favorite cars in my past life is the Scion iQ. It's not in my 8, but one day I'll pick one up super cheap and turbo Busa swap it to make something ridiculous. This dude swapped in the drivetrain for a Yamaha R1: https://daveintheusa.com/ and it makes around 180hp (vs stock 106hp) at a lighter weight with higher revs, I think with a turbo Busa swap you should be able to do something similar and make close to 300hp.

I always had a love for the Honda CRX as well. If you make a car light enough and give it decent suspension, it doesn't matter if it's FWD, RWD, AWD, it'll drive good.

I'm hoping once I retire I'll have the time and space to learn how to fabricate composites. I've done a bit before, but I want to get to the point I can make my own dry carbon fiber panels. Like my ideal would be to restomod a bunch of my list of 8, keep them looking fairly stock-ish, but just cut weight like bananas on them. Think carbon fiber body panels but painted so its not stupidly obvious, titanium or aluminum billet components wherever possible, lightest wheels I can manage (Volk CE28Ns or similar), and /excellent/ suspension. I don't even care if I make that much more power than stock on most of these cars, I just want to make a bunch of beater go carts :)

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

catastrophic converter is such a hilarious autocorrect.

It's not an autocorrect. These things are terrible.

If you have a better way to get rid of all those pollutants, I'm sure we'd all love to hear about it.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#424
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how your “shift” makes it any better. Did you really think people did exhaust mods purely to torment everyone around them? The noise and the its effect on listeners is the entire point. The fact that it’s primarily to gain kudos from “other loud car lovers” and especially attention from vapid women doesn’t alter the fact that they know and more likely relish if not most charitably are completely indiffere…

> Did you really think people did exhaust mods purely to torment everyone around them? I didn't, but the OP wrote: > So it is about subjecting OTHER people to his car So my comment was in response to that. I don't think people should ignore the suffering they cause for others, but to me it's different if the motivation is to cause pain vs bringing joy to like-minded people.

Right! They're not actively malicious, they just don't care about other people.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#425

I love cars and driving them. But the modded Corolla/Civic/Accord/Camry (why) people have always driven me crazy because their mods often seem directed to inflicting their cars on everyone else, with loud exhaust, subwoofers, and (subjectively) garish cosmetics, rather than things that make it actually good to drive . I recognize this is judgmental and it's unhealthy to always be annoyed at these people on the road,…

Have you considered people can enjoy different things than you? I personally enjoy a nice exhaust tone and I like subwoofers as well. And I don't like them just because they might piss off somebody like yourself, it's for my own enjoyment. Not all exhausts and subwoofers are created equal. Most modern cars with 'premium' sound systems like Bose, JBL, etc. have subwoofers, but they're usually small and don't require a…

I feel certain that there are people that enjoy their lives as serial killers too.

I'm all for letting people enjoy whatever they enjoy, as long as they don't impose it on the rest of us. That's just part of living in a society.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, you ride a bike long enough and you're more or less forced into this level of hostility toward the drivers around you.

Maybe a bicycle. If you ride a bike long enough on US roads - you probably have a death wish. Given the gun ownership rates, I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets shot for doing obnoxious shit in a road rage incident.

Tl;dr: Not sure why you're catching downvotes here, you aren't wrong.

True Story:

~25 years ago, well before ubiquitous mass shooting events or the now weekly local road rage incidents, I went for a ride early one Sunday morning. With the sun barely up, the air was crisp without being chilly even at speed, and the local roadways were empty. The two most common stressors while riding being the weather and other drivers this was shaping up to be something special. The kind of borderline tantric riding conditions you daydream about but only encounter once or twice a year if you live in a busy metro area.

So imagine my irritation when this blissful communion of man and machine was rudely interrupted by a Bentley running a red light. Dude blew through the red and pulled 3/4 into my lane before he noticed me and slammed on the brakes, leaving me about 8/10ths of a second to juke a full lane width to get around him. Not only was this the only car in sight in any direction but literally the only other vehicle I'd encountered on the road this morning and this dickhead has just made a passable attempt at killing me.

Now I'm not one to hide my light under a bushel so of course I gave the driver the finger on my way past. I noted the driver appeared to be in his late 70s, had his similarly elderly wife in the passenger seat, and a very young girl in a lovely church dress in the back seat. It's amazing the amount of detail you can capture in a split second while riding an industrial grade adrenaline dump, but I digress. This dude had absolutely earned some flavor of response and given I wasn't prepared to get into a fist fight with a guy old enough to be my grandfather I figured the least aggressive option that conveyed my total disgust at his driving skills would get the job done.

My miscalculation here was in discounting the psychology of the kind of geriatric upper middle class white guy that drives his family to early church services in a Bentley. In hindsight I'm guessing it had been several decades since that guy had caught any flavor of static off of literally anyone and had grown so unaccustomed to getting called on his shit that when it finally happened dude divided by zero.

At the time I was also ignorant of the performance characteristics of a 4 door Bentley sedan. Having mistook it for your garden variety land yacht I exited the interaction at a sedate 20mph over the speed limit confident that was sufficient to get me over the horizon with no further hassles. So you can imagine my surprise when I checked my mirrors and saw this guy power slide through another red light and charge me from behind at something like 3x the posted speed limit. The chase that followed was deeply stupid in ways usually reserved for action movie scripts. This guy just would not let it go. I dragged him through 6 red lights, two neighborhoods, and a mall parking lot before finally cutting through a pedestrian greenway to lose him. I ended up stashing my bike and riding gear behind a service shed in a local park and hiked home, returning hours later to retrieve my ride.

To this day this encounter haunts me a little. I can't say for certain what would have happened if either or both of us had been armed but the potential was certainly there. These days I frequently take back roads to avoid a section of the local highway due to how frequently folks are getting shot in traffic through there, and you couldn't pay me to ride a motorcycle anywhere within a 50 mile radius of any major metro area. Y'all be safe out there, shit's crazy.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say enforcement isn't worth it, you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society. It's also pretty likely that the state violence will be a threat rather than a literal pistol whipping. Harder for the vigilante to make that work.

>you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society. How's that different than letting complainers send state violence enforce stuff that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?

"that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?"

Begs the question.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1K? And I thought my tires were expensive, damn...

Lok 1k miles worth of equivalent tire wear, but you got me curious and it looks like a set of z-rated motorcycle tires is about $700 these days so not off by much.

> 1k miles worth of equivalent tire wear

LOL, that does make more sense. Just wasn't how I read it.

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the first time I drove a model 3 I felt like I couldn't stop. it's on par with my 80s van that has drum brakes on the rear. the brakes just aren't good enough for sport, the car weighs too much. if this is hard to understand, you're living in a different world from motorsports enthusiasts

You don't need to drive race cars to understand that a Tesla Model 3 stops faster than an 80s van with drum brakes. Sure, probably not as good as a sports car.

The van weighs 1500lbs less and has discs up front. It’s seriously not that far off

Re: My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded

#430
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the most unsafe drivers I see usually have a "baby on board" bumper sticker. foot out the window, eyes down looking at a phone, can't stay in their lane, let alone manage a consistent (speed limit obeying) pace

If you think parents drive less safe on average than young men, you are very incorrect.

Unexpectedly successful fishing comment lol
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