Between this and the Corvette, I’m peak old man now and its great!
More on this barge later

More pics and info tomorrow!

I've been miles om the Corvette to break-in the engine over thr last couple of days. Dyno tune is scheduled for next Tuesday, I need to put another ~230 miles on it before that...
Even with a base tune, its fun to drive around...with sticky tires and coilovers on it, its fun to turn in and have the rear end move around. V8 rumble is also quite nice

That's all, hopefully the next time I post about the Vette would be after it's been tuned.

I'll gonna be so much faster while karting now

Blizzaks
Working handbrake
Manual transmission
All time AWD

Now I need to wait for that 1 snow day here in southern Indiana!
I do like these wheels more than the other ones too

Ive been steadily putting my C5 back together. Still need to actually bolt down the intake, connect all the coolant and vacuum hoses, connect all the engine harnesses and drain the fuel tanks of 2 year old gas.
Hopefully she’ll be ready to fire up by the start of June

I've updated my sim racing setup!
I used to have a G29 wheel which was good but its 5 years old now; the steering shaft is too wobbly and it tends to lose calibration fairly easily and randomly.

So, I got some new hotness:

Its a direct drive wheel (as opposed to the gear driven G29) which means that the motor is directly connected to the steering shaft which gives better and stronger feedback.

For it to fit my wooden rig, the rig had to be modified.
The angle of the plywood that the wheel attaches to needed to be adjusted. A friend built my current rig and one for another friend as well.
The other rig already had the intended modifications done to it so we swapped the front halfs of the rigs:

My old rig is to the right of that pic, the plywood at the top is angled down.

This is the new rig now:

And the new setup:

Triple monitors coz my brain cannot comprehend VR:
I also ordered and constructed the triple monitor stand. Its made up of 8020 aluminum.

I spent way too much time aligning the monitor to be pretty much perfect

This is in-game:

I still need to adjust the in game perspective a little, its a bit janky

Happy Christmas (or whatever else)!

Meet @Just-Jeepin today! You can see him in his natural habitat in the pic above (its his 3rd wash today actually)

He was also gracious enough to lemme drive Sunset

I only drove it up and down the street. My thoughts:
The clutch is interesting, would need some getting used to to figure our the grab point without slipping the clutch too much.
Its faster, smoother and shorter than I expected.
I could hear a lot of external sounds (cars passing by) that I expected tho, probably coz of the soft top.

Tuscadero is a pretty color tho!

Before:

New and improved me, courtesy of our Lord and savior:

Thanks @Rusty-Vandura foe the stickers

@mazda616 Coolant temp gauge in the Mini. If it moves from its normal position, the head is already warped!

@DrDanteiii this is indeed the right answer

This is Oppo even though its not something I would get
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/inventorylisting/viewDetailsFilterViewInventoryListing.action?sourceContext=carGurusHomePageModel&entitySelectingHelper.selectedEntity=d638&zip=46131#listing=340715491/NONE

2006 Burban with the 8.1L in it!

@derp noice! I think I’ll be doing a similar drive at the end of this month. I’ll make an Oppo post once I’ve confirmed that.

@derp where are you heading to?

@Qaaaaa said in People's Choice: Retro Chic:

@Tripper R53s are not worth the trouble. Shit to work on, parts are expensive, fuel economy is demonstrably bad, and they're not a very good daily driver, between the stiff suspension and lack of interior space. I would also argue (and others would disagree) that they're not a good car to do motorsports with, since they're heavy, not very fast, and the brakes are actually shockingly bad. So, you have a compact car that's heavy and gets bad fuel economy, but also lacks the "sporty" a sport compact should have. Also, the seats are pretty bad. The one redeeming feature in my experience is that a certain type of girl tends to like them, and by association, the operator.

I dont see how its shit to work on...way easier than my Corvette has been to work on, 25mpg isnt bad, 18 when im autocrossing. Also, its got tons of interior space, I have a 300lb friend whos 6' 4" and he fits just fine in his R53.
The brakes not having enough cooling is an issue but brake ducts from the front bumper fog light holes are supposed to help with that.
Its 2800lb on the scales with half a tank and me in it, its not that heavy in my opinion. Its not fast but it isnt slow either, but they do definitely need a smaller pulley and a BOV mod to make more boost down low to be fun imo.
The seats in mine are quite supportive (I do have the cloth seats), never had an issue with em for autocrossing. They arnt as good as say a E9xM3 seat but decent.

@AestheticsInMotion eat all of em one by one and then it'll be the morning and you'll have enough sugar to get through the day. Problem solved.

@Tripper Yeah, mines a little crunchy usually but at 200k+ miles I think its quite livable for me.
I do replace transmission oil every 40k miles tho

@Tripper Not sure what you mean by buzz the gears? Do you mean you feel some crunchyness thru the shifter (from the synchros)? If so yeah, mine does it too but I do have a bunch of miles on it.
@amoore100 the Tritec is waaay more reliable than the early R56 motors...those early engines had all sort of major issues (I know a guys who spun a rod bearing at 30k miles)

@Sam-Blockhan the new Italian Job movie (hmm 2003 was a while ago) has a very similarly specd Mini as mine. R53 is the manufacturer code for a 1st gen Mini Cooper S, so its ItalianJobR53

@GibbsEmphasis I ate some ice cream for breakfast today