You know what really grinds my gears?!

[*insertusernamehere*]

Ricers.

You know, I used to not care too much. If you want 10 degrees negative camber and ugly wheels with stretched tires, sure.

Now that I have a Miata again and I'm meeting other Miata people, they are all ricers. I go to a car meet on Tuesday nights and it's just Subaru people with their Hello Kitty bullshit hanging off their mirrors, cars with 20+ stickers on the windows, or a Miata slammed with cambered out wheels and stickers all over it, but they don't have the money to fix their blown head gasket because they spent it on race land coilovers for mad stance points. When you talk to them, all they want to talk about is their plans to turbo their car, tune it, lower it, etc. It's exhausting. Why is this appealing to people? Why the hell do you want to scrape on every bump in the road in an AUTOMATIC Miata? (yes, someone has an auto Miata with a blown head gasket that they drove to multiple meets.) I think over half of the Miatas I run into nowadays are modded to the point where they handle worse than they did before, and I feel like it's shifting more and more into that direction every day. Everyone cares too much about how their car looks and not about the other 99% of their vehicle. These people will pop their hoods so you can see their painted valve covers and silicone hoses, but they can't talk to you about anything deeper than that because they don't actually know anything. Of course, they know EVERY type and model of wheel out there, but they don't even know what kind of package their Miata is, or how to change their own brake pads.

Maybe I'm just now noticing this, or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, but I'm disappointed by how few "real" car people there are out there without having to go to the track.

Lol these are car guys at large. They only bother me when they try to make it seem like everyone should be stancing and if you're not you're doing it wrong. Some people are just in it for the hype, some just don't know better and some are scared/nervous to actually do extensive engine work. All of which is fine and imo adds some interesting variety to the car world. I don't mind a well stanced luxo-barge. Just don't make it seem like you're the ultimate car guy for it.

Reminds of this one kid in harrisonburg. Oh man, I'm bored so story time.

This young fellow comes into advance and tells me has a '96 323is and he needs a clutch fan. Of course we don't have the part at advance, so I recommend him to rockauto, pelican and fcp, noting the 2 latter ones will be better quality. As he leaves I drift over to the front of the store to check out the car and the thing is slammed on e39 stock wheels, chopped off muffler, dirty dull black paint, m3 front bumper - scraped his way out of the lot.

So 2 days later he comes back and says he needs a socket for his taillight. Of course, we don't have it. I send him online again. I asked him if he got the fan yet
"oh nah, imma get it soon tho"
"is the car overheating or anything"
"yeah but like only if I sit too long or run it too hard but it don't like go all the way red so it's cool tho imma just get a cheap one."

Fast forward a week or 2? IDK just whenever he showed up again, but this time to pick my brain! He doesn't have a fan clutch tool but needs to get the bolt off. So I tell him we don't have anything at advance that'll do the trick so go order the fan tool. My coworker overhears us and goes and grabs the big ass 32mm wrench off the floor and hands it to him. OK, lemme tell y'all, this is WAY to big for the space, I made SURE to tell him this. Needless to say homeboy ignores me out of excitement and races home to pull off his fan.

The next evening he comes in (lol) "hey I need a thermostat housing". I start smiling in a failed effort at not laughing in his face, so I asked him what happened and sure enough he cracked the housing trying to fit that big ass wrench in there.
"can I return that wrench man that thing was expensiveeee"
"no, it's yours"
"damn".

Surprisingly we had a thermostat, sold him and he's off. HE COMES BACK FUCKING AGAIN 2 HOURS LATER
"yo maaan this stupid ass car the damn thing broke I was tightening it and the plastic cracked."
"YOU TIGHTENED IT TOO MUCH"
"Imma sell this car its bad man they just break".

We order him a new tstat and when he picks it up he tells me he's about to trade it for a stanced Miata with every panel from the doors forward a different color. He's excited about this.

Stay with me we're not done yet.

So sometime after the semester ends I'm pulling up to Wendy's to feed my fat ass something with bacon and as i pull into the lot i see this cleeaannn early model e30 but swapped to late model bumpers (cool points imo). I park beside it and start looking the thing over from front to back. Who comes outside? Mr. 323. I'm honestly shocked lol. He tells me he traded some guy from fredvegas just the week prior. I'm like
"OH! He traded you that for this?!"
"haha yeah he was kinda mad cause it started overheating when he started driving home on 33 and he had to get it towed he was threatening to not send me the title" (WHY DOESN'T HE ALREADY HAVE THAT WHAT?!?)

So he tells me his new e30 (80k miles, reupholstered cloth seats) needs a pass window reg, pass front shock, a slight rough idle and a check engine light (lol). So I'm thinking good, this is good, just get the codes checked, probably just needs something on the ignition side of things, do a valve adjustment, get a new shock and the regulator is cheap if he pokes around the fb page (he asks me what fb page I'm taking about ha) and he'll have a really clean car.

But no, what does homeboy tell me? How he's going to build the head and bottom end, what turbo he's going to buy, that the m20 is low compression and really good for boost (i lost count of how many times he said the word "compression" it was like a child that learned "hello" 30 mins ago), what exhaust he wants, he's not touching that shock because he knows what coilovers he prefers...

Yeah... You do that my friend, ya couldn't even afford your tstat housing after you were told how to not break it and you're not even going to fix the regulator BUT YOU'RE GONNA TURBO YOUR LOW COMPRESSION MOTOR E30 YEAH OKAY.

Also apparently there's an update to this, if anyone cares. James replaced me at the store in hburg.He texted me and told me the kid came back in and started ranting about how bad BMW inline 6's are.

He's now driving an Audi A4.... Mhm.....