Piston Slap: At What Rate, the Falcon's Restomod Wings?

Envious. (photo courtesy: OP)

Stephen writes:

Sajeev,

I drive a ’65 Falcon convertible with the 289 and a T-5, hydraulic clutch, and 4-wheel discs just like it came from the factory. (Wink – SM)

I replaced all of the rubber in the front suspension about 15 years ago and it’s past time to do it again. I’m up in the air between sticking with factory stuff or upgrading to some of the aftermarket Mustang stuff (i.e tubular A and control arms). While the aftermarket stuff is significantly improved over stock, I actually drive the car; earlier this summer I did a road trip from Denver to Bozeman, MT via Yellowstone, a total of about 1800 miles. I can go to any auto parts store and get replacement parts, while I could wait for TCI, etc to FedEx me something.

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Piston Slap: Oil Burning and Carbon Cleaning?

Arley writes:

Sajeev,

I have a 2003 Jetta TDI with 178k miles. Runs 100%. My mechanic recommends a carbon cleaning. What are the positives and negatives? To be more succinct, what can go wrong?

You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish. (Good to know! – SM)

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Piston Slap: MAP-ping Engine Load

TTAC regular David Holzman writes:

When my scan gauge says my engine is under 99% load, and I’ve only pushed the gas pedal about halfway down, does that mean, as I suspect, that I can floor it and I’m not going to get more than a drop more power out of it?

And, in a modern car (’08 Civic, stick), will the computer control prevent me from wasting gas by pushing the gas pedal beyond the point where I’ve reached 99% load?

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Piston Slap: Playing Super Breakout by Itself?

C.V. writes:

I am a mechanical engineering student looking to learn how to work on cars.

My friend has given me the opportunity to take his 1988 Mazda B2200 extra-cab 5-speed. When I drove it, I saw why. The catalytic converter has broken off, and apparently pieces of it are in the exhaust. Would it be possible to just replace the catalytic converter, or should I replace the whole exhaust?

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  • Dale Had one. The only car I ever bought because of a review in a guitar magazine.Sure was roomy inside for such a small car. Super practical. Not much fun to drive even with a manual.Sent it to college with my stepson where it got sideswiped. Later he traded it in on an F-150.
  • Bd2 Hyundai's designs are indeed among the most innovative and their battery technologies should allow class leading fuel consumption. Smartstream hybrids are extremely reliable.
  • 28-Cars-Later So now H/K motors will last longer in between scheduled replacements. Wow, actual progress.
  • AZFelix I have always wondered if the poor ability of Tesla cars in detecting children was due to their using camera only systems. Optical geometry explains that a child half the height of an adult seems to have the same height as that same adult standing twice as far away from the viewer.
  • 28-Cars-Later Actually pretty appealing (apparently I'm doing this now). On a similar note, a friend of mine had a difficult situation with a tenant which led to eviction and apparently the tenant has abandoned a 2007 Jag S-Type with unknown miles in the garage so he called me for an opinion. Before checking I said $2-3 max, low and behold I'm just that good with the 3.0L clocking in at $2,3 on average (oddly the 4.2 V8 version only pulls $2,9ish) and S-Types after MY05 are supposedly decent.