Someone reported to me that visiting mmsports.org on mobile leads them to some pop ups from what seems to be a third party. Has anyone seen this? I can't reproduce.

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So I’ve been in nova for a year and a half now and feel way too separated from the car community and never thought about coming to the forums, so here’s my forum come back. I’ll post up the vette build later. As for the F10, I just picked it up last weekend used from Audi of Chantilly, it’s a 2011 528i and accomplishes what I wanted for commuting (30+mpg highway and comfy) as of now I don’t have too many plans, base wheels need to be swapped out and I need the m tech front bumper cover.

   
   

I saw a M3 CS on the road the other day and was like, 'man that looks good'.  When I got home I checked the price...$100k?!  Oof.  I checked cars.com to see how many are available and there's something like 400 new M3 and M4 CS's for sale nationwide, some at 15% discounts.  And supposedly only 600-800 of each were made for the US, meaning as much as 30% of the run for 2018 is still sitting unsold.

The first car that keeps coming to mind when I think about the M4 of any trim is the GT350.  Now for 40% less than the M4 CS you get a car with 65 more horsepower, that has a vastly more entertaining engine, and a passable interior.  Why then the M4 (CS)?  If you want even more power you can go with the ZL1 or even the ZL1 1LE. 

Thinking back 10-15 years ago, the M3 was usually comparable to the Mustang/Camaro on horsepower and won out on handling, refinement, fit and finish, and design.  Now, even the base Mustang GT/Camaro SS makes as much power as a M3/M4.  And the pony cars can get around corners pretty well now.  

If you move up to the ultimate hardcore M4, the GTS, it's still basically twice the cost and can't really outrun either the GT350R or ZL1 1LE.  I think the US only got about 300 GTS's and now even Enthusiast Auto Group is selling a GTS with 5000 miles for 30% off.  Consider that Ford made easily 20 times as many GT350's and they are definitely not trading at that big a discount.

Even for a BMW fan it just gets harder and harder to justify the M3/M4 or the M2 when you can get such a smoking deal from Ford and GM.  To me, the M car value proposition has just been obliterated.  BMW seems to be just skipping along, totally oblivious to that fact.  Doesn't seem like the next M3/M4 is going to be any different.

And it's a shame.  I would've been happy to buy another M3 but even looking at what they have planned for the next version I have a hard time making the case for the M3.  Are we truly at the point where BMW has 'lost it' (like has been said for the last 15 years)?

Looking for a ~$2000 likely mid '90s Tacoma, Nissan, Ranger type of thing, smaller and simpler (4cyl) the better. Feel free to chime in with some expertise on model/years that are better in some way than others, is auto or manual ultimately more reliable? I don't really know anything about them.

I've got this listed for a few hundred bucks on craigslist but would rather give it to one of you if you want it, would trade for a file cabinet or a nice bottle of whiskey?

When I was asked back in October if I was interested in this car, I knew it would make a great project to build up for autocross. I've liked 5th gen Grand Prixs for a while, and now that I have one I want to make it worth a damn performance-wise. Stock this car makes 160 horsepower with 185 ft/lbs of torque with a 3.1 liter pushrod v6. Not the best, but that doesn't matter. Engine swaps for this car are well documented and can be done for under $700 easily.


With a car like this the suspension should be upgraded before one even considers triple turbo supercharging the engine to run 3 second quarter miles. Thankfully, this car has the sport package, so it already had a stiffer suspension system from the factory. What I am working on currently is stiffening it up further.

The stiffest sway bars that ever came on one of these first gen W-bodies were 34 mm in the front and 22 mm in the rear, and they came with the 1995-1997 Monte Carlo Z34. I recently pulled these from one in a junkyard.
 

Extremely dirty, but they'll work without any problems.


Here's the front bar after wet sanding. I'm going to give it a fresh layer of Rustoleum once it warms up a little bit.

Thats as far as I have gotten so far. I'm going to wet sand and paint the rear sway bar once I have the time to, and I plan on installing them when I have a warm weekend. To go along with these stiffer sway bars, I am getting front and rear strut tower bars. They are both in the mail, and I'll post them as they arrive. The factory front strut bar only ever came with Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertibles, and mine in particular came from a '96 with the 3.4 DOHC v6, which means if I do swap the engine it'll still fit fine. The rear was made by a guy on the w-body forums in a small batch a few years back, I managed to grab the last one he had, which is lucky because nobody makes strut bars for this generation Grand Prix anymore.

After I install these sway bars, I want to give the car coil-overs, which wouldn't be too hard except the car has a transverse leaf spring in the rear. There are guides on how to ditch this setup and give it traditional coil-overs, so thankfully I have lots of material to help me out. It'll be a pain in the ass but it will be worth it in the end.

This will be one of those projects that will always have improvements that can be made, but that is exactly what I want.

Fact: The internet is a scary place. 
Fact: Kids are stupid

These two truths keep me up at night wondering how, as parents, can we best prepare them for entering the digital world yet still provide that access in an appropriate and safe manor as possible? Right now it's not too bad, they use their kindles in kid mode which has to have content white listed to them, plus has timers and ability to limit by type. i.e. I can turn off games but leave access to books. Oh, and a shout out to Amazon for recently opening the portal parents.amazon.com so I can remotely manage their configurations, this has been a huge help! 

My daughter is getting to an age where some of her friends are getting smartphones, she's started in on asking for one but hasn't fought the flat 'no' yet. 
My running plan is to setup a full web proxy at the house for when computers/phones make their entrance and restrict access through that, but it won't solve the issue when they go somewhere else for access. Hopefully the devices will come with some better parent administration in the next couple of years, but I'm curious if anyone has experience with that on any other platforms like ios or android?

A big part of the equation for me is having open discussions around the dangers that exist out there and try to help them learn how to think critically and protect themselves. In my 'trust but verify' mentality, I still want/need to be able to provide a safety net around them though, so any ideas or experiences you may have would be welcomed.

Hey, it doesn’t look like I’ve made a thread for this project yet, probably out of embarrassment, but here goes.

This is my 1989 SAAB 9000 Turbo. It leaks, it rattles, it wheezes, and it’s mine.



I bought it from a guy in Arlington after hunting for a first generation 9000 Turbo for a year. I saw it on the saabnet classifieds in the JMU geolab on a Thursday and drove up in my roommate’s car and bought it on Saturday. Minimal rust (in the important places), crazy low miles (for it’s age), manual (we’ll get to that in a minute), and a three inch stack of receipts for every single repair.

The owner sold it to me for a song because he wanted it to go to someone who would care for it, as his kids didn’t want it and his wife wanted it gone.

So far, I haven’t done that much work on it besides the essentials (plugs, oil, belts). The starter went after a week of owning it, but that was no big deal. The car operated like a dream for a precious couple months.

Then disaster struck. I was parallel parking and as soon as I finished parking, I couldn’t find my clutch pedal. Air in the clutch. After it sat for awhile out front of my house, I tried fruitlessly to bleed the clutch, with MM members before the car show, but the slave was gone.

SAAB geniusly put the slave cylinder on a rod in the transmission. To change the slave requires dropping the subframe, engine, transmission, then conducting open heart surgery on the transmission.



This job was way above my paygrade, as I didn’t even have a cover to work under let alone an engine hoist, so I handed it over to Neil Maddox of Foreign Car Service in Harrisonburg.

Eventually, I got it back (fixed far cheaper than he or I expected and than any other foreign auto place quoted me) and once again, it drove great. I enjoyed working on the little things again, changing the radio, oil, spark plugs, simple things.

Lightning strikes twice and I’m stranded again. But this time, I can’t find any fluid leaking off the bell housing where the slave is (telltale sign of leaky slave) so instead I buy a Genuine SAAB master clutch/brake cylinder. The knock-offs are known to be unreliable so I go for the name brand.

Brandon Bowe and I change it in two hours or so. I drive around victoriously for a week or so until...



Sure enough, stranded again. I ask Neil to look at it. He figures it has to be the master as ‘new’ old stock. The part was built years ago and the clutch fluid eats through the old interior parts and air bubbles form.

I accept this as the diagnosis and send for another master from eEuro. Change the master again, and it fails, again.

Tonight, I will be picking one of these masters up from White Post Restorations, where I dropped it off two weeks ago, outside Stephens City and driving up to NoVA. The car is currently at my parents house in Alexandria, since the purchase of my Mazda 3 daily.

Hopefully, I will put the repaired master in and have no problem getting the car back to Harrisonburg next weekend. But I tend to doubt it.

The good news is, I am now a clutch bleeding whizz.

TL;DR SAAB old, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed?

Hello all! 

As you may know, I always wanted to move to Richmond after college, but that didn't pan out and I'm near DC now. My lady friend and I are going to do a weekend trip to Richmond so she can see what it's like. She's from Pittsburgh and wants to move back there in the future, but she knows I probably don't want to. This trip is for fun, but I'll definitely have my eyes open for if I ever want to move there.

She suggested this trip, so now I'm looking for some suggestions on fun things to do/check out while we're down there. She doesn't care about cars, so the race track/G Force aren't on the agenda. Perhaps some neighborhoods that would make sense for young professionals to live in that would allow me to have a garage could be good suggestions to drive through as well. 

We'll probably come after March.

Thanks!

Come get this thing. Its a 2.0 n/a autotragic VW Jetta with 193k miles and a dead fuel pump.

Panels are straight except for rear bumper which is cracked at the bottom. It's some kind of unicorn, but a shit unicorn where it's not better than any other MKIV but its parts are more expensive.
 
Clean title, shit interior, paint is medium shit and I want it gone.

Give me some money and you can have it. 

"Gee Rex doesn't sound like you're trying too hard to sell it"

Yeah well volkswagens are bullshit I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, they are the herpes of cars change my mind. If you're dumb enough to buy any VW you're probably dumb enough to buy this piece of scheiße, so come on and do it while we're both young.

Good for parts or masochism or for an art installation about why Germans lost the fucking war. 

Pictures? Close your eyes and think of that time you had too much of your grandmother's macaroni and cheese and you suffered for hours as an Eldritch horror creeped through your bowels and slithered out your shithole into the cool water of your granny's commode. Picture what you saw in the bowl right before your wad of Charmin mercifully spared the world of the sight.

Now make it blue, with peeling paint on the roof. There's you're picture.