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A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

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Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#61
post #9

“ Since there is not a clutch safety switch on the starting circuit, make sure to press the clutch down before you try to crank the engine.” Growing up, a friends dad would use this as a ‘feature’ on his Datsun to move the car out of traffic when it wouldn’t restart. Put it in first, release the clutch, crank the starter, and move the car out of the way.

In my old Audi sometimes the clutch wouldn’t work so that’s how I started it. Also learned double clutching and to anticipate traffic lights so I didn’t have to stop.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#62

This story reminds me that I have a recurring nightmare: I am driving a car and the brakes hardly work at all, so I am in constant fear that something will go terribly wrong. This nightmare was born from a real experience with my first vehicle, a VW micro bus that had horribly squishy brakes.

Had a 84' Chrysler LeBaron. Brakes went out on the way home from work. Managed to get it to the closet auto body shop. They had it for three days, charged me $1,200 for a new master cylinder and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know I needed. I paid $500 for the car and tried to tell them to do the absolute minimum to get it going. Apparently that was the minimum.

Drove it home, brakes worked like a dream. Got up next morning, third stop light, brake goes all the way to the floor, I'm drifting into the intersection. I panic, look both ways and gun it through safely. Drove that thing with brakes barely working back to the shop. Calmly told them whatever they did? Didn't work.

Same thing. Another $800 bill, this time the brakes worked for a few more days, then it happened again. I took it to another shop. The mechanic asked what they told me they did and what they charged me for. I showed them both invoices. He pulled me aside with my car still on the lift and whispered to me, "Look man, they didn't do anything. They just filled the brake fluid up. When it all leaked back out is why your brakes kept going out. Imma fix this for a super discounted rate, but you need to get a lawyer, you got lucky not getting into an accident or killed."

I sued the shop, got all my money back and then some. About six months after they settled my suit, I got a call from the local paper asking why I sued them because they were doing a story on the shop scamming hundreds of people out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#63
post #58

I could have written this for my Ducati, but they nonetheless stole it, put it on a flatbed, tried to drill the ignition and fuel cap to start it and failed because Ducatis have had immobilizers for decades now . One dreams of a better class of thief but if they had the IQ would they be thieves of a multi-decade-old motorcycle? The tax that morons levy on the rest of us cannot be understated. Look at what these lead-…

do you still ride?

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#64
post #58

I could have written this for my Ducati, but they nonetheless stole it, put it on a flatbed, tried to drill the ignition and fuel cap to start it and failed because Ducatis have had immobilizers for decades now . One dreams of a better class of thief but if they had the IQ would they be thieves of a multi-decade-old motorcycle? The tax that morons levy on the rest of us cannot be understated. Look at what these lead-…

do you still ride?

Only e-bikes in the city, haha! Banned by order of the wife since we have a young newborn. "When the kids go off to college" she says knowing full well that I know that 20 years without and getting on in my sixties will kill me instantly.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#65
I love this car already. It has character, a personality. It’s the friend who’s kind of a pain in the ass but someone you usually have a good time with.

Reminds me of the car I learned to drive manual on. It would only start when the drivers side door was open. So if you stalled the car the process was: open door, clutch in, start engine, clutch out and go, close door. You learned not to stall…

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#66
post #9

“ Since there is not a clutch safety switch on the starting circuit, make sure to press the clutch down before you try to crank the engine.” Growing up, a friends dad would use this as a ‘feature’ on his Datsun to move the car out of traffic when it wouldn’t restart. Put it in first, release the clutch, crank the starter, and move the car out of the way.

IIRC The British Highway Code* used to suggest this as a method to move a vehicle stuck on a level crossing! (Train crossing).

They did note that it’s only good for manual cars. Automatics were not standard in the UK in the 80s.

All from memory, so might be mangling the details :-)

*Or could have been the Australian version.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#69
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't push-start a car, it's because it has electronic fuel injection. If the battery is stone dead, there's no juice to run the FI and fuel pump, it will never start. It would work on stone cold carbureted cars because there'd be enough fuel left in the float bowls to bootstrap the whole operation.

Some old cars had mechanically powered fuel pumps so if the engine is moving the pump is going. Mine just had a little shaft buried behind the mounting bracket. Probably safer not to introduce electricity to gasoline…

Probably safer not to introduce electricity to gasoline…

Ooookay. I've never even heard third-hand stories of an electric fuel pump lighting the gasoline on fire, if that's what you're getting at, and I was a professional mechanic at one point.

Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)

#70
post #43

I feel like this could be adopted for your homegrown "whatever" framework (eg: UI framework, Auth framework, …) Congratulations on getting hired to this team! You probably count yourself lucky, but don't. We had been trying to fill this role for the past 5 months and every candidate would run away as soon as we showed them our homegrown auth framework. But don't run yet please, do give it a try. So, you are still her…

Stop it!

... you'll need to refer to these pages on Confluence, but they haven't all yet migrated to the new Confluence documentation structure, which is here, so you'll need to search both. And then the really detailed documentation is in Sharepoint here, but when we update these documents we'll also need to convert them to PDF and publish them to our Customer-accessible ticketing system using this specific ticket number, which you'll need to remember because search on that system doesn't work very well.

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