Frisbees of death

Stop putting your goddamn license plates inside your cabin! Are you people insane? If you have your license plate inside your car and sitting on your dashboard, you’re asking to turn into diced human meat in the event of an accident or even a seriously sudden stop. Most of the times I see people with the plates on the dash, I try to see if there is anything holding the plate there other than some minor ‘wedging’ and a little bit of nothing else.  

 
(Case in point… SVT Mustang askin’ for a License Plate ninja star to the face)
 

If you’re one of those guys that likes having his plate “mounted” on his dashboard, here’s a little adventure that will hopefully allow you to learn something as well. Go outside and touch the edges of your plate right now…that shit is sharp and jagged on the rim, right? Now pick up the plate and see how much it feels like it weighs. It’s not exactly heavy, but it’s got a decent amount of heft to it. Now if you’re feeling really daring, take the plate and throw it like a frisbee (gently) and see how well it flies. Not exactly the best frisbee, but it’ll go a surprising distance for something not designed to be thrown.

 

That little spinning and flying action is exactly what’s going to happen to you if you ever get into an accident with your plate “mounted” inside your cabin. Plates have more than enough mass and edges that are certainly sharp enough to unceremoniously remove that coconut filled with stupid juice that you’ve been going around telling people was your head.

Sure it looks a whole hell of a lot better than having your plate sticking out over your front bumper and blocking flow to your radiator or intercooler…but I personally think it’s worth the bad looks and air restriction for the “not getting a sharp chunk of metal lodged in my forehead” benefit I get. Go out and find a side-mount or low-mount bracket for your plate so you can save yourself from the embarrasment of explain to someone in the afterworld why you’re there for such an un-manly reason.

 

-Steve isn’t sure why he chose Vermont’s plate as a demo

iPhone Cocks

Let me preface this posting by saying that I work for a direct competitor of Apple’s, but none of my opinion here has anything to do with that. I cheer for the underdog, and having an element of uniqueness is absolutely valuable to me. That being said, a lot of iPhone owners are cocks. That’s right. They are the same douchebags who buy BMWs only because of their name and reputation for being the ultimate driving whatever. Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely can appreciate the attributes of both the iPhone and BMWs, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for their owners to think nothing else that exists is good enough and that they are somehow better than anyone else simply because of their purchase.

 

Let me explain with an example. I’m at a wedding reception and my wife is the bride’s Matron of Honor, so she’s off doing something probably important. I don’t really know anyone at the wedding, so I’m hanging out finishing up my dinner and I pull out my Palm Pre to check email. There must be some kind of iPhone Cock signal app that I downloaded, because one of the bride’s brothers sits down next to me and opens his argument with, “My phone is way better than that one.” Well, fuck you too. Of course, I didn’t say that. I don’t want to make a scene, after all (the bride’s mom was doing a good enough job of that herself). So I blow off the comment, but later make a quick jab at a sore spot for iPhone users: the lack of multitasking. He makes some kind of insecure excuse that you can only do one thing at a time or some nonsense, and then we both go on with our lives. But it gets better. I then run into my best friend, whom I’ve known since we were kids, and proceeded to tell him about my little encounter. Being an iPhone owner himself, but definitely not someone I would consider a cock, he immediately became defensive about my multitasking comment and said the same thing about humans only being able to do one thing anyway. Really? I think he’s drinking the Kool-Aid, too.

At the end of the day, the iPhone is a fantastic device, there’s no doubt about it. But why do good things have to bring out the inner insecure asshole in a lot of people? I think a lot of iPhone users are desperately trying to justify the dick that Apple and AT&T are giving them, especially the early iPhone adopters.

–          Alex “I’ll take a Palm Pre and Toyota Prius any day of the week” Gregorio

I drive a Prius

That’s right, and I’m proud of it. Do you know what I sold in order to buy the Prius? A 2005 Mazda RX-8. Yep, I went from one of the most nimble and quickest sub-$30,000 cars on the road to definitely one of the slowest. You should have heard the bitching and moaning I heard from my car buddies when I proposed the plan. I distinctly remember hearing a lot of F-bombs and general red-in-the-face arguments. So before I go posting any more to Mediocre Motoring, I want to plea my case, in a sense, in order to show that I really do belong here.

(RX-8 to Prius)

I owned the RX-8 when I was 23 years old, fresh out of college and working for a software company making more money than my parents. So like any 23-year-old in my shoes would do, I went and bought a $30,000 sports car. It wasn’t until two years later than I realized that my $650/month payments, 17mpg average and ridiculous insurance costs were making me broke. Plus, I hated commuting with the RX-8. Its low torque engine was no fun in traffic, I hated shifting a manual gearbox in stop-and-go, its gas mileage was shitty, and trying to drive it fuel efficiently was causing excessive buildup of carbon in my motor even with a redline blast once or twice a day. So I made the decision to buy a commuter-mobile. It wasn’t easy, especially with all the pressure I got from my buddies. But it needed to be done.

 

So what’s a 23-year-old working at a high tech company driving a sports car going to buy as a commuter-mobile? A high tech car, of course! Did I buy the Prius because I think I’m doing my part to save the world? Hah, fuck no. Although I’m not convinced of the argument that the Prius is worse for the world than a standard shitty-mobile, I’m also not buying that its high gas mileage is saving fluffy bunnies and oil-covered seals. No, I bought it because I wanted toys. I picked up the top-of-the-line model for all of its goodies, and they don’t disappoint. Leather, auto-dimming rear view mirror, Bluetooth connectivity, GPS navigation system, smart key, backup camera, and let’s not forget Toyota’s Synergy Drive (their hybrid system that, when it was new, really was a work of art.) I looked at a lot of different cars with similar options, but the Prius gave me all the toys I wanted for the lowest total cost of ownership. (And for the record, I would have seriously considered a Golf/Rabbit TDI had VW been selling them in 2007 when I bought the Prius.) I traded in a sports car that was fun to drive for a fuel efficient car that was fun to be in while I was driving.

 

Does that mean, as my classy friend Manuel put it, that I “traded in my balls?” Arguably yes, but I always had the intention of buying a second, high performance car that I could drive on the weekends and tinker with. After two years of owning the Prius, the opportunity arose when I bought the 3000GT VR-4. So now I can have my balls and eat them, too. Er… nah, let’s go with that.

(Back to the land of performance cars. 3000GT)
 

–          Alex “America, Fuck Yea!” Gregorio

Thai kung-fu movies are why I watch kung-fu

Do you know who Tony Jaa is? If you don’t, stop reading right now and go watch “The Protector” or as I like to call it “Tony Jaa breaks every bone in Australia because someone stole his mother-fucking elephant.” Well, I kind of ruined the whole plot (Yes…that is actually the whole plot), but honestly, the movie is completely worth watching for the absolutely brutal and insane kick boxing/martial arts that the movie executes. Oh, and when I said “every bone in Australia”…I fucking meant it. For about 4 and a half solid minutes all you hear are bones snapping and me giggling in glee.

 

Regardless of if you’ve seen it or not (you should’ve followed my directions and have watched it by now) he has his hand in pretty much everything that leaves Thailand and goes global if it’s about ridiculous Kung-Fu movies. I’m right now in the middle of watching his company’s latest flick called “Chocolate” on Netflix via my Xbox 360 (pretty much the best effin’ pair up EVAR!) and I immediately paused the movie to come post here because I was so excited.

 

WATCH. THIS. MOVIE. If you like kung-fu at all, this is your type of shit. Basic premise…retarded girl is born of Romeo/Juliet type parents and proceeds to learn kung-fu by virtue of being retarded and watching a shitload of Tony Jaa (and other kung-fu) movies . Bones breaking, retards fighting retards, what looks to be a gang comprised only of over-the-top drag queens, this movie has the complete gambit of all things hilarious and awesome.

I’m drinking St. Pauli Girl, sitting in my Charge Speed fiberglass seat (mounted to my couch, because the brackets haven’t arrived yet and I’m a car-nerd), and sweating to death, but goddamnit I’m having fun. Get off my website and go watch a retarded girl beat up some Thai gangsters! GO! DO IT!

 

 

– Steve swears a lot when he drinks and watches Thai Kung-fu

The misconception about power

Horsepower from bolt ons doesn’t typically stack. Meaning that if a manufacturer says their exhaust will provide a +10 hp boost, and their intake will provide a +10 hp boost, they are rating those number gains as stand alone upgrades over their stock baseline. So while you got a +10 exhaust and a +10 intake, you will likely only see gains of about +12 or so. The reason for this is that you’re effectively modifying the same thing twice and not neccesarily improving it both times. Either upgrade alone is likely an upgrade, but they change different parts of the same system. A small gain here at the cost of something else, will not always be complimented by the antithesis item.

Another thing to be aware of is the concept that power is not always gained in the same way nor in the same area of your potential power curve (visible in the different parts of your dyno curve). When you see the gains over a dyno curve presented to you by the manufacturer you’re only looking at the gains for that specific part in a vaccuum and there is no guarantee that the gains will remain if you change the system in the future. Essentially what I’m saying here is, just because you gained horsepower with one mod, it doesn’t mean that the horsepower is locked in and permanent if you start changing other parts.

Video games definitely don’t help this misconception. Fire up any racing sim (Forza, Gran Tourismo, etc) and try to upgrade your car. It’s all very nice and simple and everything just sort of linearly improves your power without much regard to the

Things like this aren’t always readily understood, especially by people who haven’t had a lot of actual touch experience to upgrading cars. Reading things online and getting as much information as possible before you do something is always a good idea, but you need to take things (especially stuff you see on the internet) with a grain of salt. There is no regulation or filter to make sure the information you’re getting is actually information that is true or information that is relevant to you.

I’m in Texas for a conference right now so this post will likely be not as coherent as my usual ones and will not have any pretty pictures until I return. I might not actually get pictures, but I’ll try to go back through and make it more coherent. We’ll see how I feel when I get home again.

Why I have a man-crush on Chris Rado

Christian Rado is pretty much the top dog when it comes to racing some completely mental      Scions. He has a blisteringly fast tC drag car that I believe is over 1khp as well as  a 700+ hp tC road racing car that has an awesome front wing on it (proving his camp knows a thing or two about Function>Form). Most people look at his front-winged time attack car and comment only on how stupid it looks or other boring aesthetic comments that prove only that they don’t understand (or care about) physics. Jalopnik (www.jalopnik.com) even commented on it aesthetically in the same breath that they mentioned its record breaking prowess. (http://jalopnik.com/5278644/front-wing+equipped-scion-tc-looks-dumb-sets-record)

Owning some completely ridiculous high horsepower cars isn’t enough to make you my online boyfriend though. Getting to that highly sought after position takes something a little deeper and more personal. You need to prove to me that you’re worthy of being elevated. You can’t be a douche, can’t be too up on yourself, have to show that you respect the sport, can’t be doing it for the money (JUST for the money), and a whole slew of other things. Now don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand jerk-off goody two shoes who are the perfect embodiment of human class. I like people who will get in there, get dirty, and then do it all over again the next week just because they love it. Chris Rado seems like that kind of guy to me. He’ll put a stupid looking wing on the front…if it helps him win. He’ll give a front wheel drive car 700+ horsepower…if it’ll give him the power he needs to keep up with “better” driveline layouts. He’ll shave a sweet beard…if it’ll…no wait, I just like his beard.

 

Anyway, here’s a little video that I stumbled across that spawned this whole man-crush post. It’s an advert for some Need For Speed game that I am entirely uninterested in, but it shows Chris talking and driving and it’s definitely worth the watch. Understand what a racer feels and experiences.

Beer makes me buy things…

I plan a lot of things out. As you’ve read in one of my very early posts on this site, I have a very strict project plan for how I plan on building my car out. This plan includes a list of parts that I know I want, how much I think I should be paying for each part, and a schedule of when I think I can afford said part. Following this project plan has kept me sane, given me an outlet to pour my energy into, and saved me lots of money by protecting me from impulse buys.

My plan, however, doesn’t include any of the human element and more worryingly it doesn’t have any regard for the booze element. I have now stepped out of my project plan twice over the course of my build and each time that I’ve gone outside of the nice and safe lines it’s been at the end of a serious drinkin’ night.

St. Patty’s day 2009: I’m half-Irish, and I’m from Boston so St Patricks day is pretty much bigger than Christmas for me. I drink until I can’t feel feelings and then I drink more. At the end of the night I’ve either: made a bad decision, lost a girlfriend, or I’ve met a new girlfriend. Typically all three of them happen at the same time, but this year was different. I made an AWESOME decision, kept my current girlfriend, and ended up with a kick-ass set of custom width Enkei RPF1 wheels on order.

Dezod Motorsports based in NY state (www.dezod.com) is an awesome supporter of the Scion community and they are in cahoots with Dan Gardner, a pro-level driver currently campaigning a Scion tC in the NASA leagues. (I believe he actually came in 1st or 2nd for his debut year in the car…but don’t quote me on that.) The two of them teamed up and put an order in to Enkei Japan to get a production run of Enkei’s RPF1 wheel with black finish in a 17×8.5  with either a +30 or +40 offset available. 8.5 inches is (from what I’ve found) the largest width out there for a 17 inch rim. Plus, the RPF1 is legendary for its light weight (only 16lbs per wheel if I recall correctly), AND being a decently priced wheel for it’s size and weight. Double, triple bonus!

 

(I got the black wheel without the decals and without the center cap)

Friday July 31st, 2009: There was no real celebration going on, just a barbeque at a friend’s house. We had a great time with some great food and then we went home. As soon as I planted my magnificently sculpted posterier into my IKEA computer chair, I logged onto www.more-japan.com and lucky for me, they were having a “3 day Summer Special” sale on a bunch of stuff. Perfect! Fully backed non-reclining race seats from the Japanese company Charge Speed for 40% off!? SOLD! I ended up getting one Black Fiberglass bucket and one Black Carbon Kevlar seat. (I would’ve gotten both in Fiberglass, but they only had one left)

 

(Again, went with the black seats)

Well, neither of those purchases could really be considered “impulse” buys because I’ve researched everything that I want for the car, and I wanted/needed both of those parts. The beer just made it really really easy to not worry about my bank account and jump on some awesome parts. The More-Japan sale was only for three days and limited quantities and the Enkei wheels were only made in a production run of 40 sets of wheels!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go cook up some ramen for the next two months of my life until I can afford solid food again.

– Steve is a shopaholic (or is it spelled “alcoholic?”)

An introduction is in order. (The final MM editor gets around to posting!)

Ok, I’ve had a little man screaming at me long enough – the one with the beard, not the one with the diaper – so it’s about time I make a post or two here. Name’s Alex, and apparently I’m the older, mature one here at Mediocre Motoring. As Steve posted, my wife and I just had our first baby last Thursday, Nice! I’m most looking forward to when: a) I can put his car seat on the work bench and he can watch me work on the car; and b) when he can actually help me with the car. I’ve got some time, but being overachievers runs in my family and we here at MM at high expectations for him.

 Anyway, on to the good stuff. I drive a black beauty that has been super loyal to me while I’ve owned it. 2007 Toyota Prius Touring. Ah yea, baby, that’s the good stuf. So what’s an MM writer doing driving such a Mom-mobile? I’ll talk more about that in a later posting so I don’t take away from the real deal. In the meantime, here is where my real car passion lies:

 

 That’s my 1992 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4. I bought it a few months ago using the money I made from selling my 2008 Suzuki Boulevard M50 Black. Ok, so I bought the car before I actually sold the bike, but that’s not important anymore. And before you or any other bitches get on my case about selling it (I’m looking at you, Steve), I got rid of it because I instantly became paranoid about getting myself killed riding in the Seattle area after I saw the first ultrasound of my baby boy.  [I still think you should’ve kept the bike. -Steve] Yea, yea.

The car has all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, active aerodynamic front air dam and rear wing, an adjustable exhaust system and the  suspension dampening is adjustable. It also sports a 3.0L twin turbo engine putting out around 300 horsepower and 315lb-ft torque. I say “around 300 horsepower” because the previous owner did the “free boost mod,” which supposedly increases the boost of the first generation VR-4s to the levels of the second generation, from 8-9 lbs (300hp at peak) 1st gen to 10-12 lbs (320 hp at peak) for 2nd gens. I don’t know if this is actually doing anything – I’ve read conflicting reports – but I’ll figure it out once I get a real boost gauge installed. (Go go Mitsubishi for installing a fake boost gauge. Turns out it’s not even connected to the boost lines and actually roughly measures throttle position.) I’ve spent a lot of time and money on the car just getting it back into tip-top shape. I’ll post more about some of that stuff later on. In the meantime, I’ll pull a rabbi move and cut this one short. Dig it! –

-Alex “MrCoolsville” G.

The birth and an aftermath photo

Just a quick post to excitedly share with everyone that Alex (An editor for Mediocre Motoring that hasn’t had a chance to post yet) and his wife Angela just took delivery of their brand spankin’ new baby boy. On Thursday at 11:48am, Evan Alexander Gregorio was born and thus a future car guy is created. Congrats to Alex/Angela!

Now keep that thing away from me until he’s old enough to turn a wrench or play catch with me. Babies weird me out.

Now onto the aftermath part. Remember that epic oil spill? Here’s a quick snap of Alex’s garage after he got around to putting down some oil cleaner.

(Whoops…sorry Alex!)

– Steve is hungry for some babyback ribs right now

How to get rid of 10lbs of water from your body

Seattle was in the middle of a pretty legendary (for them) heatwave recently and it was a relatively miserable week for all of us here. I mean, I’m from Boston and we get some pretty powerful summers, winters, and springs…and…well, all year round Boston gets some pretty distinct weather so I’m pretty used to extreme weather changes. After living in Seattle for about 2.5 years though there are really only two types of weather that I really experience: 50 degrees and cloudy/rainy for 9 months straight, and then a healthy 80-mid 90’s for three glorious months. Needless to say I’ve gotten used to the very mild weather out here and 5-6 days of high humidy + high 90’s to low 100’s weather was NOT something I was expecting.

During this surprising heatwave Jon Picariello (AKA, Pic),  a good friend of Mediocre Motoring‘s, informed me that he had somehow let the battery go dead on his motorcycle and he could use a hand getting it started. A little background here, Pic and I ride the same kind of bike (see below) and he obviously knows I’m a car nut so he assumed I would A.) know how to jump a bike, and B.) have all the necessary tools to jumpstart a bike going motorcycle to motorcycle. Well, I do know how to jump  start a bike and I am a car guy…but I don’t actually have cables. Shame on me, I suppose I should look into getting a set.

(Not Pic’s exact bike, but looks very similar. 500cc Single Cylinder Buell Blast)

Anyway, I inform Pic that we don’t need cables and that we can just bump start the bike and that should get it running again. “Uh…bump start?” I get as his reply. I sigh heavily and get him to look around on YouTube while I ride over to his apartment to help him.

 

(I just searched YouTube now and found the below video, just in case you don’t know what bump starting is and are too lazy to go look it up yourself)
 

I finally get to his house (already sweating to death in my jacket and helmet) and we proceed to give the bike a couple of runs across his apartment’s garage with him on the bike trying to get the thing to turn over. No dice. A couple of coughs and sputters from her and a little flicker of the lights, but no signs of life…just a gallon or two of sweat from me pushing him back and forth. Take a little break, towel off a little and we give it another go with me on the bike and him pushing.

First try in round 2 and she pops sputters and chokes into life; a very very cranky motorcycle now rumbles unhappily beneath me. We decide to let her sit for a few minutes so the carb and plug can clean out and hopefully give the battery enough charge to not be a useless 25 lb weight in the frame. One thing we kind of forgot to consider (I blame the heatstroke and dehydration on my part) is that Buell Blasts are aircooled bikes and after about 5 minutes of letting the bike idle in his already scaldingly hot garage the poor girl overheats and dies quietly. Still not enough charge in the battery to spin the starter….great, more bump starting ahead.

Alright, I’m getting bored of typing so I’ll just give you the accelerated finale of the story. We get her fired up again and after three attempts to get her to move under her own power we get the bike out into the now empty-ish streets of downtown Seattle. We drive it around a little hoping to get a little charge into the battery and to work out the kinks, but the bike doesn’t want to rev past 3,000 rpms. (I’m guessing here because Blasts don’t have tachometers, just sounds like 3k rpm…) Once you push up past 3k the bike starts to cough and then cough and then choke. Pull the clutch, let the revs fall back into a happy number and you can move under your own power again. The bike is still bucking like a girl you’ve just called the wrong name during passionate sex, but technically it’s moving under its own power.

We get the bike back to his garage, park it, and determine that he’ll just call the Harley dealership and let them deal with it. It’s 2am and I’ve got no liquids left in my body, I’m going home, screw you, Pic. All that pushing, and sweating, and cursing your mother’s name for nothing.

– Steve Sweat is better than Keith Sweat