Piston Slap: B-Bodies Shall Master the Road Once More!
Timothy writes:I need help bringing my 1994 Buick Roadmaster out of the dark ages.This sedan was the last car my parents bought and I’ve had it for several years now (143,000 miles). I love the huge interior and I’ve always been a fan of Buicks for general motoring. (See what I did there?)Seriously, I like the car a lot, but it’s so … wallowy, if that’s a word, that I don’t drive it much. I’d love to have a more European tautness to the suspension and steering. The trouble is that I know nothing about cars. You guys talk about the W126 Mercedes and Fox body Fords and I get lost real quick. I’ve inherited a garage full of tools, and since I don’t use the car as everyday transport, I’d like to try and do a few things myself. Bigger things will be done by my trusted mechanic.And please, I’d rather not get as involved as your Valentino swap, which is awesome!How can I upgrade the suspension and steering, yet still keep that awesome Buickness?Once that’s straightened out, I’d like to know more about why the heater core needs to be “blown out” twice a year.
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Three Guys Discuss The Chinese Car Bubble Theory

Chinese dually. Picture courtesy transportfool.com

I spent an interesting Saturday with two old friends of mine. They had never met before. One, American, CFO of an insurance company, had been in the finance and banking business all his professional life. The other, born Chinese, naturalized American. Was one of the top mortgage writers in the Silicon Valley before the dotcom crash. Came back to China and heads a Chinese/American bank. The two got along splendidly.

Of course, we talked about money and cars. Recently, there was a discussion on TTAC on how the bursting of the Chinese real estate bubble would destroy the car market just like it had in the USA. I eagerly set out to pick their brains.

Quite oddly, the first one to throw water on the bubble theory was my friend, the staid CFO of the staid insurance company.

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  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
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