Why the BMW sits low on one side.

I always wondered why the BMW sits slightly lower on one side than on the other. I thought it might be years of sitting lop sided because of the fact that the handbrake only grips on one side. It’s caused the fender liner to get all torn up as well (I thought this was because of me driving over those annoying concrete things in parking spaces….

It turns out there is an explanation….

The spring has snapped. Damned Previous Owners!!

The truly annoying thing is that I’ve had both the BMW dealership and a tire/alignment shop examine the car to look for exactly this kind of thing, and neither of them found it. I’ll be ordering springs today .

Alpine 500

My friend James and I ran the Alpine 500 this year (and past weekend) in his Fiat 124 Sport Coupe. It was a fantastic trip with the Fiat working hard pulling us up several 8-10kft passes in the Sierras. Lots of interesting vehicles, several Alfas, Fiats, couple of Healeys, 3 914s showed, although there were some problems, and a couple of Ferraris even.

The Fiat suffered a few times with getting a little too hot – at high altitude with steep hills, and then we lost a shock absorber retaining nut. Fortunately we were able to complete the rally and get home with no problems!

Pictures are all here, starting with the pre-registration event – first pic is our car.

This is really nice.

The nice bit is right at the end. The rest of it is scary and exhilarating…
Rendezvous

Enjoy!

NYTimes article on Hybrids

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times today about hybrid cars, including some talk about a diesel-hybrid sports car being developed at a university in San Diego. The prototype does 0-60 in 4.3 seconds and gets 40 to the gallon. Cool stuff. Being a diesel also means you could run it on Biodiesel or vegetable oil.

I did find the following quote really sad though:

To the extent that consumers worried about low fuel economy, it was as a matter of personal inconvenience: stopping to refuel every few days was a big hassle. Before Lexus began selling its 400h S.U.V. hybrid this spring, the company conducted a focus group to find out why would-be buyers wanted a hybrid. The reason: convenience. “The big deal was, I don’t have to stop that much to fuel up. That was a primary purchasing factor!” says Dave Hermance, executive engineer for environmental engineering at Toyota’s Technical Center. “It wasn’t so much the fact that ‘I’m going to save $600 a year in fuel savings.’ Then there was the ‘Oh, yeah, it makes me feel very, very good about the environment. When my kids come home from college, they don’t chew on me as hard, because I’m doing something environmentally correct.’ “

So the problem most Americans have with gas guzzling cars is they have to fill up all the time. If we are seriously that lazy as a country – is it any wonder that we have a declining industrial base and an obesity epidemic?

Are you wearing Diesel?

Nearly everyone I know thinks that diesel cars are lame. I have always appreciated them at least for the fact that they make suicide impractical (takes about 30 years to get cancer, whereas a gasoline engine will kill you within an hour from carbon monoxide poisoning). They also hit peak efficiency at about 60,000 miles and run for perhaps 200k to 300k.

Recently I learned (from the show 30 days) that they can also run on vegetable oil. I also (through some judicious use of google) learned that it is not terrifically difficult to make biodiesel from vegetable oil.

In addition – one can get biodiesel delivered to one’s house in 55 gallon drums, for about $3 a gallon. The last diesel price I noticed was $3.65 – a couple of weeks ago.

Sort of makes me wonder why more people aren’t snapping up those old Benzes and TDIs on craigslist, and relieving themselves of a dependence on foreign oil!