--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00013 Date: 01/17/98 From: CHRIS ZYCHSKI Time: 01:49pm \/To: RONNIE THOMPSON (Read 0 times) Subj: Transmission Repair RT> CZ> A friend of mine has a 1989 Cavalier w/2.5L (he says) and RT> CZ> 5-speed manual transmission. Symptoms indicate bad throw- RT> CZ> out bearing. This also has been verified by a repair shop. RT> CZ> The question is about the $780 estimated charge to rebuild RT> CZ> said transmission. Does this price sound right to yo'all? RT>IF it only has a bad throw out bearing, why would you rebuild the ranny??? RT>Course, if I was replacing the bearing, I'd also toss in a new clutch, RT>pressure plate, and if that vehicle has a hydraulic cable, I'd replace it RT>at the same time. I'd see no reason to rebuild the tranny unless it is RT>making some strange noises. IF it does need rebuilding and the $780 RT>would be for doing all the work, that's not a bad price at all. Found another place which diagnosed the transmission to be ok. This place has replaced the clutch - hydraulic - complete for $355.00. -cc * SLMR 2.1a * It is better to copulate than never. --- Renegade v5-11 Exp * Origin: The Bearsville BBS * Warren, MI * (810) 582-9429 (1:120/650) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00014 Date: 01/17/98 From: CHRIS ZYCHSKI Time: 01:49pm \/To: ALAN MORRISON (Read 0 times) Subj: Escort AM>the last few weeks? It seems the volume is about half what it was before AM>the holidays. I peeked in over at Hot-Rod and Old-Car echos which are AM>also very slow. So where did everybody go? Shoveling/scraping snow? -cc * SLMR 2.1a * It is far safer to be feared than loved. - Machiavelli --- Renegade v5-11 Exp * Origin: The Bearsville BBS * Warren, MI * (810) 582-9429 (1:120/650) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00015 Date: 01/18/98 From: BILL MITCHELL Time: 10:14am \/To: ROY J. TELLASON (Read 0 times) Subj: Vehicle Confiscation RJT> Not much of a cost, I guess, since people put up with it RJT> rather than trying to change anything, and it does get them RJT> some revenues... :-( Actually I don't see a problem with this example at all. The ticket doesn't involve points, nor is it a moving violation. It should be dismissed by the violations bureau, or the judge if fixed within whatever time is allowed. After all, he did know the light was out and knowingly drove the vehicle with it out, that's evidenced by the fact that he had bought a new one and had not installed it. It's not as if he didn't know, like the time a cop was following me and my tail light went out while he was behind me. He pulled me over, and I honestly did not know the light had just gone out. I thanked him and proceded to replace it on the spot. He gave me a written warning, it only stated that I was a road hazard, nothing more. I laughed so hard on that one I still have it framed on the wall here. --- * Origin: The Right Place, Fort Lee, NJ USA(201)947-8231 (1:2604/539.11) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00016 Date: 01/14/98 From: DAVID WEI Time: 06:54pm \/To: CHRISTOPHER TARANA (Read 0 times) Subj: Re: cool cop cars -=> Quoting Christopher Tarana to David Wei <=- DW> "This is CNN headline news, a drag strip near Vancouver, Canada had a DW> *VERY* powerful explosion, it had wiped out everything within 5KM DW> radius, and lefted a crater 4KM wide. From the computer and written DW> record salvaged at the site, indicated that at the time of explosion, DW> a car named `David's Nuclear Mustang` was running, but no radioactive CT> I hate to argue on the open echo, David. But I saw this piece CT> on NBC's Dateline, and it wasn't David's Nuclear Mustang that was CT> responsible for the explosion, but a Todd Jasper's Modified 16 Sec CT> Fiero with a Holley Throttle Body! Apparently the car stalled after a CT> record-breaking 17 second quarter-mile run, and someone was seen CT> spraying Starting Fluid into the air intake moments before the strip CT> was decimated! :-) (TIC) Hehehehehe... :) Well, the Mustang would qualify as Thermo Nuclear, and Fireo'd qualify as low-yield nuclear artillary shell... (Yup, they made Nuclear warhead shells... :) ) ... Don't confuse me with facts!! ___ Blue Wave/OS2 v2.30 --- Telegard/QWK v3.09.b13/mL * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Vancouver, B.C. Canada (1:153/757) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00017 Date: 01/19/98 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 11:36am \/To: ALL (Read 0 times) Subj: buying imports I've never owned an imported car, though we did have a Subaru in the family a few years back (damn shame the way that thing rusted out...), and I've never particularly had any desire to own one. I thought perhaps some in here might find the following to be of interest... CRANK UP THE _ENOLA GAY_ By L. Neil Smith Exclusive to _The Libertarian Enterprise_ So the Japanese (it says here) are ramrodding a drive in the UN to relieve everybody on the planet of their personal weapons. Especially -- it goes without saying -- us ugly Americans. The Japanese, of course, are the exemplars of moral excellence who gang-raped their way across the Asian mainland and _ate_ Allied prisoners during World War II. The Japanese are the paragons of virtue whose government and corporate eaders resign in disgrace (they usually slither back later on, an argument for the earlier tradition of _seppuku_) with such regularity they could print schedules of it like a railroad. The Japanese are the upholders of decency who let children who show the faintest spark of individuality be beaten into conformity (the practice is called _ijime_ -- "The nail that sticks up shall be pounded down.") by their little schoolmates. The Japanese are the keepers of the public trust who bullied their own folk out of their guns to please a vile, self-serving aristocracy, who routinely torture suspects until they confess, and who subject their citizens to searches of their homes twice a year -- by police fully as corrupt as those of New rleans -- to make sure no nasty old guns sneaked under the floorboards when nobody was watching. Fact is, the Japanese establishment is terrified of creeping individualism within its own anthill -- their classical and postwar culture, a sick, wisted mishmash of intimidation, brutality, class exploitation, and perversion, is n the verge of collapse -- and is desperately trying to shut the threat off at its source, by destroying its most potently articulate symbol, the gun in private hands. The effort is doomed. The Japanese people are fed up grinding their lives away for the sake of industrial feudalism. Fed up seeing their kids kill themselves when they don't do well on the SATs. Fed up with rapacious taxes and paying higher prices than anyone else in the world for TVs and stereos they make themselves. Fed up with $10 hamburger, rice at twice the world price, and real estate prices that lift my own humble domicile into the multimillion dollar range. Fed up with bosses who conduct "business" by getting drunk in restaurants where the main attraction is groping and licking the parts of ude female dancers that can be pressed through openings in a chickenwire barrier. But I digress. All this puts me in an awkward position. Everything I own that uses electricity is Japanese. So is my car, an '84 Subaru wagon. I _like_ Japanese stuff. My longing for a new Toyota Land Cruiser is a palpable presence in ur home, like Harvey the Rabbit. My wife feels the same about a Mitsubishi Spyder (but only the one with the big engine). In the ordinary course of events, ur fortunes currently being on the rise, we'd have acquired both vehicles, uncomfortably close to a hundred grand worth of rolling stock, sometime in he next few years. We've worked hard, we've waited a long time, we deserve it. But now we're not so sure. To an extent unappreciated by the most cynical American student of politics, the _keiretsu_ or _zaibatsu_, a handful of corporations that comprise "Japan, Inc." _are_ the Japanese government; democracy means about as much there as t does in Mexico. What the Japanese government and its UN delegation want is what the _zaibatsu_ want. If the Japanese government wants to disarm us, it's because Toyota and Mitsubishi (and half a dozen others) want to disarm us. The US government always claims that every stupid war this country ever blundered into was to save the Constitution and the Bill of Rights from foreign devils (the British come to mind) who wanted to destroy them. That being the case, why shouldn't the average Joes and Janes coerced into fighting those wars regard Japanese anti-gun activity as an act of war? Let me repeat it so you'll know I meant it: why shouldn't we regard Japanese efforts to destroy the Bill of Rights as an act of war? Why shouldn't we carpet-nuke their crappy little islands from one end to the other this time and obliterate a culture -- I refuse to say "civilization" -- as worthy of such treatment as the Aztecs were? Well for one thing, because we're the good-guys. We just don't do that kind of thing. We still feel guilty about the pair of puny A-bombs we used to save millions of lives (most of them Japanese) in 1945. For another, we're individualists. We understand that it isn't the Japanese _people_ who are the problem (they _love_ guns) but the corrupt and evil leaders of a corrupt and evil corporate and political structure that was forced on them, largely by us. In fact, it's the likelihood that the Japanese eople are growing restive, and worst of all, _individualistic_, that has their corrupt and evil leaders on the rag. So what _should_ we do? Well, we already have a predisposition to feel ambivalent about imported products, especially Japanese products, and especially automobiles. On one hand, we love the damned things, they're pretty, they _work_, and even with the most punitive tariffs our own corrupt and evil leaders can levy against them, they're still a bargain. On the other, until the Japanese bought the unions off by building factories here (neatly dodging tariffs, as well), Japanese cars used to get torched in Detroit parking lots. Plenty of people still vividly remember World War II. Many more have learned enough about Japanese politics and culture to resist o the last breath any attempt to impose them here. For those determined to resist, Japan's sociopolitics leave it uniquely vulnerable. If, for example, Detroit's Big Three all went belly-up tomorrow, the US government (perhaps this is unfortunate) would react lugubriously, but would also go on without a hiccup. Ayn Rand and Robert LeFevre would have maintained that Japan -- often cited s an ideal "partnership" between big government and big business -- is the ultimate expression of fascism. In Japan, when one of the Big Eight gets a sniffle, the state mainlines Nyquil, because there _is_ no meaningful distinction between Corporate and Official Japan. One of my correspondents compares it to lichen, a symbiotic combination of algae and fungus. Now what do you suppose a year or two of depressed auto sales -- if we inavoidably linked it to Japan's asinine gun polices -- might have? I'm (reluctantly) willing to postpone purchase of my Land Cruiser, to consider buying a Suburban like G. Gordon Liddy and my mother, or even look into the new SUV by Mercedes. I notice that my wife's been eyeing that little BMW that looks like a shark. My suspicion, in this age of the MBA, is that if Japan, suffered as little as a 2 or 3 percent drop in their American auto sales, they'd be pathetically willing to straighten up and fly right. What does "straighten up and fly right" consist of? For openers, they would cease their worldwide personal disarmament advocacy. And it would be good if they withdrew from the UN altogether. We're going to do it, sooner or later, and there's no time like right now to start a trend. After profuse and abject apologies, the Japanese government would adopt the Bill of Rights and make a point of seeing that their people acquire guns, preferably from us -- no registration, Vermont Carry only. Finally, the architects of the current policy would be "invited" to do the right thing, which, in Japan, I'll remind you, involves a long, razor-sharp knife and a good friend standing by to behead whatever's left. Failure on any one of these points will be a signal for the boycott to continue. People often ask me what the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus is for, what its coordinators across the country can do. Well, they (and anybody else who wants to help) can start by copying this column to everyone they know. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce it anywhere as long as it remains unaltered and credit is given. Above all, send it where it'll do the most good: Japanese diplomatic establishments and your local purveyors of apanese road machines. My dad fought World War II and was a prisoner of war. One of my uncles was crippled and another died in a submarine. They all believed (because the government told them and in those days folks believed it) that they were fighting the Japanese and Germans for our rights. Starve Toyota, feed the Bill of Rights. Detroit will love us for it and so (for once) will the unions. And by liberating ourselves, we liberate the Japanese people. Which I guess beats nuking them until they glow. =================================== Novelist and political essayist L. Neil Smith is the only Libertarian ever o be called a "thug" within the pages of the _LP News_. He's also been characterized by a disgruntled reader as having written the "single most repugnant ... piece of tripe ... ever seen in an American newspaper." In is spare time, he's the award-winning author of _THE PROBABILITY BROACH_, _PALLAS_, _HENRY MARTYN_, and _BRETTA MARTYN_ and 15 other novels, as well s founder and publisher of _The Libertarian Enterprise_. Order his books from Amazon.com via "The Webley Page" at http://webley.zq.com/lneil/lnsbooks.html, or give LAISSEZ FAIRE BOOKS a toll-free call at 1-800-326-0996. ====================================================================== "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest imits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." -- Henry St. George Tucker (in _Blackstone's Commentaries_) email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00018 Date: 01/19/98 From: TOM WALKER Time: 10:01am \/To: MARC GERGES (Read 0 times) Subj: Active Handling -> Salut TOM! -> -> TW> The Vauxhall name is almost totally unknown here in the United -> TW> States. -> So it is for continental europe. It's only the Brits who have them. -> -> TW> Although the GM Pontiac Dealers did sell the "Victor" for several -> TW> years in the late 50's. Buick dealers at the time were selling an -> TW> equilivent sized Opel. -> Mmmmh... I don't know the Victor, I wasn't around back then. -> -> Do you happen to know the Opel GT? Baby Corvette, sold in the early 7 -> Friend of mine says they have been sold in US too, but I don't -> believe him... It was one of the Hottest Sellers at the Buick Dealers. Very fine little car. Don't see many now days but saw them all the time in their day. --- GEcho 1.20/Pro * Origin: Jim's East County BBS! El Cajon, CA. (619) 561-8424 (1:202/100) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00019 Date: 01/19/98 From: TOM WALKER Time: 10:03am \/To: DAVID LUDWIG (Read 0 times) Subj: california smog -> Reply : Requested -> -> my car ('84 300zx turbo) just failed california smog really badly -> -> i got it a year ago, and it passed smog then (after replacing an o2 -> sensor), its about a year, and less than 10,000 miles later, and it -> failed so badly its now considered a 'gross poluter' -> -> any idea what would cause that?? bad sensor?? (its electronic fuel -> injected).. i havent changed anything that would affect emmisions -> (new oil and filter a few times, new air filter) Did you just get it tested recently on one of the New Dyno Machines? If so the Requirements are much tighter. Particularly at the 2500 RPM wheel load test. Actually the Standard is the Same but the old test was so poorly thought that it was ineffective at catching the Gross polluters. It could be any number of things so it will have to be Analyzed by a Good Honest Competent Mechanic since under the NEW law there is NO repair Cost Limit. --- GEcho 1.20/Pro * Origin: Jim's East County BBS! El Cajon, CA. (619) 561-8424 (1:202/100) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00020 Date: 01/19/98 From: MARK LOGSDON Time: 01:36pm \/To: TOM WALKER (Read 0 times) Subj: Vehicle Confiscation TW> -> The fix-it ticket helps fill the officer's quota, which of course TW> -> exist, and those type of tickets usually don't have a cost as TW> -> long as thing does get fixed. TW> TW> Actually in a town with a REAL quota system Equipment violations don't TW> count. There is NO PROFIT in them except for the Stupid types that TW> Ignore them and don't get them signed off on time. Aren't you assuming that EVERY town, EVERY county, EVERY state, and EVERY country has the exact same laws and enforcement policies? --- QScan/PCB v1.19b / 01-0232 * Origin: IBMNet Connection - Indpls, IN - 317-882-5575 28.8 USR (1:231/1) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00021 Date: 01/19/98 From: JOHN FAERBER Time: 06:01pm \/To: MARC GERGES (Read 0 times) Subj: Active Handling TW> equilivent sized Opel. MG> Mmmmh... I don't know the Victor, I wasn't around back then. MG> Do you happen to know the Opel GT? Baby Corvette, sold MG> in the early 70ies. Friend of mine says they have been MG> sold in US too, but I don't believe him... He is right, it was sold here in the U.S. still some on the road. --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: * MacSavvy OS/2 BBS * Dallas, Texas * 972-250-4479 * (1:124/1208) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: F1P00022 Date: 01/19/98 From: JOHN FAERBER Time: 06:03pm \/To: BILL MITCHELL (Read 0 times) Subj: Vehicle Confiscation BM> bureau, or the judge if fixed within whatever time is BM> allowed. After all, he did know the light was out and BM> knowingly drove the vehicle with it out, that's BM> evidenced by the fact that he had bought a new one and BM> had not installed it. If it is his only car, he gets in to go to the store and it goes out, then he goes to the parts store to get another. What other choice did he have, but to drive it to get the part to fix it? I always triy to keep an extra bulb or headlight with me, just in case. --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: * MacSavvy OS/2 BBS * Dallas, Texas * 972-250-4479 * (1:124/1208)