791–800 of 875 posts
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The I hate Crocs blog was most active in 2007/2008. http://ihatecrocsblog.blogspot.com
I'm probably missing your point, but I don't mean in the sense of them being a common type of footwear, I mean they were on runways, worn by celebrities, etc. https://www.whowhatwear.co.uk/crocs-shoes/slide4
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In Switzerland, most instructor cars are Diesels, since they have higher torque and are very hard to stall. Then you go home and drive your parent's petrol engine car and you stall it all the time
Huh. That's completely the wrong way round. My instructor's car had a petrol engine that would have been appropriate for a skateboard, so I had to get the clutch just right and learnt properly.
The pupil can do that on their on time, on the first shitbox they acquire. If you want to learn how to start an 037 without stripping the gear feel free to do that.
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I drove a manual for about 20 years and I still really enjoy them, but there is one thing that made me happily leave them behind: stop-and-go traffic. Not having to clutch constantly when driving in the city is a big enough win that I'm willing to give up the fun of a manual for it. But I do sometimes miss having a stick on a windy mountain road.
I currently use a (automatic) borrowed car from the shop while my (manual) car is being repaired. I mostly do city-driving. One of the biggest issues with the automatic is stop-and-go traffic. It's absolutely trash at accelerating smoothly but fast, and I have no choice but to either go very slowly forward to not make it janky, or really aggressive acceleration. With a manual car, smooth-but-fast acceleration is easy…
We have an older generation Q3, which replaced a slightly smaller car that had a manual transmission and similar turbo 4-cylinder engine. I was a little bitter about this marital compromise in the very beginning, but learned how the car behaves and have no problems today. I only use the "manual" gear selection for speed control on steep grades. To me, it can provide smoother acceleration than I ever got in 30 years of driving manuals. It shifts quicker and with more continuous power delivery compared to any manual operation I've achieved or witnessed as a passenger. The change is learning to anticipate and speak to the car with the throttle instead of anticipating and speaking with the clutch pedal and stick.
For fleet efficiency reasons, these modern automatics will prefer high gears and also use clutches to lock-out the torque converter and avoid slippage. Combine that with fuel saving coasting modes and you can potentially reach states where a small turbo engine is at low RPM with low boost pressure and a high gearing load. If you want to accelerate right then, all these bad conditions need to be reversed through a kick-down procedure, and you maximize the feeling of a delayed surge in acceleration.
It's not the same transmission as the current generation Q3, but one thing I've noticed is that there is a slight risk of this sort of stuttering/slow take off when braking to a low speed without stopping. If I am at a complete stop with brake pedal depressed, the starts are very predictable. But braking into a turn lane or driveway gets the car into its most hesitant state if I try to accelerate back out of this slow roll.
From personal experience, the new automatics are better than manuals. I found going from a 5 speed to a 6 speed annoying -- it added a lot more shifts. After 26 years of driving a manual, my car got totaled and I pretty much had to get one with an automatic. The new car has hill descent mode, which is pretty similar to what a manual does, and it has some more sophisticated limited slip traction control modes, which e…
All the automatics I've driven in seem to at best have a "best fuel economy" mode, a "sport" mode that doesn't even get close to pushing the engine to red-line, and an up-down shifter that lags too much for a downhill-into-a-tight outside-turn-into-an-uphill type scenario.
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> Computers keep getting more and more locked down and are losing peripheral ports. Excuse me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, the Framework laptop? https://frame.work/
> Excuse me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, the Framework laptop? Very gladly: It has even fewer ports than most mainstream laptops. The theoretical flexibility doesn't make up for the facts that it can have at most 4 ports, and the MicroSD reader counts as a port. So you can have one USB-C (which you need for charging), one USB-A to be able to connect a mouse, one HDMI to be able to con…
So you could in theory swap e.g. the charging port for a MicroSD reader, move all the files and swap again.
In any case I see your point. I always generally scoffed at laptops with less than four USB slots alone and lack of an ethernet port. But I have a 20€ dongle for that now, which is convenient for switching between the work and private laptop.
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By the time I got to that kind of traffic my left foot and right hand were already on automatic. Doesn't feel like a chore because half the time I'm not even aware of what they're doing - they just do it.
It's not the cognitive load, it's the physical load of pumping the clutch constantly for an hour or more.
I still get befuddled when parking her car because I never remember to shift into park and I'm wondering why I can't turn the ignition switch to off and pull the key out. Gets me every time!
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It's not the cognitive load, it's the physical load of pumping the clutch constantly for an hour or more.
I don't even notice it. I would assume you're using a hydraulic clutch? I thought those were pretty much the standard (ha!) since 80's. Maybe I'm just getting a workout without realizing it? I do know whenever I drive my wife's car - which is an automatic because she also hates driving a manual transmission in traffic - my left foot nearly goes through the floorboard before it realizes there's no pedal there! :) I st…
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Seriously, snow ? You don't need a pickup for snow!
Moving snow, not driving on it.
This is what you build for that purpose:
https://img.archiexpo.de/images_ae/photo-mg/67143-15337174.w...
https://d3v9db8ug40up8.cloudfront.net/styles/large/s3/2020-0... This is colloquially called Unimog (successor, kind of), a general purpose utility vehicle with awesome drivetrain, huge tires, great weight distribution, not too heavy, serves winter and summer in several roles.
or
https://www.ecotech.at/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ecotech-Sc...
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Any idiot can see a 2022 ford truck is better than being hit by my 1988 Saab, which a 4 year old is visible over the hood on, as compared to a ford, which, I think I probably couldn't see my wife over the hood.
Talk about a strawman and cherry picking. Now compare your saab to a modern golf
I drove a Triumph Spitfire for a while. Any time I took it out of town I took the state highways or country roads, because not only would that thing fit under a truck trailer, at a stoplight I could reach out and touch the bumper on most vehicles. Anything bigger than a sedan and I had to reach -up- to do it. I was only ever safe in that vehicle in the same way that motorcyclists are safe - constant vigilance and pre-planning, which I learned as a bicyclist.
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A great number of the cool designs from the 50's and 60's are illegal because the front of the car eats people. Swallows them, chews them up, and spits them out. The sloped design of new cars isn't just about aerodynamics. In a low-speed impact a pedestrian is lifted onto the hood. Forward leaning grills, such as on the Dodge Charger, some of the beefier Mustangs, and any number of other muscle cars or sedans, instea…
Okay but then why is the rolling brick wall of a modern pickup allowed?
The tall grill at least doesn't ram your head through the glass. I don't know who started calling them FUVs (Fuck U Vehicles) but they are not wrong.
