I have this in my 21 explorer. I've tried it, the fuel mileage savings is hardly noticeable but my annoyance of it is very noticeable. There is a little button on the center console right behind the e brake button. I'm in the habit of using my e brake and now I'm in the habit of pressing both when I start the car. Yes, when activated the operation is seem less, it works as it should, I just don't like it. All that stuff is added just so they can meet the Corp. Fuel economy standard and adds cost to our cars. Then they wonder why cars are so expensive. ... View more

Anybody who mentions Bruce McCall (in a good way) automatically gets my "like"! Fantastically funny man! ... View more

An older brother had one, but I saw him use it maybe a dozen or so times before it disappeared into a closet somewhere and was replaced with something else. ... View more

Know what you're doing if you want to do something like a 1955 - 1957 T-bird. Things like 55s had 6 volt systems, not 12 volt & 55s don't have side fender air vents to deliver air into the car's interior. Just an easy example of how doing a 56-57 can be more beneficial than a 55. Later T-birds 64-66 are also another example. While most everything from a 64 & 65 are transferable, while the 66 has significant body changes unique to only the 66. Buying a T=bird conv 1958-1966 will cost a pretty penny if there are any problems with the conv. mechanism, since although the conv tops are soft fold vinyl, in those years the top is stored in the trunk & that mechanism comprises 8 electrical relays (4 each for raising & lowering) and a number of mechanical levers/switches that divert power off & on to both electric motors and hydraulic cylinders that open & close the trunk area where the top is stored. The process is identical to the 1957-1959 Ford Skyliner which had a retractable hardtop instead of a soft top. Things like what I've mentioned can be an additional challenge when restoring those types of vehicles. ... View more

Will do.  Thanks TG! ... View more

These are NOT cars, they're A.R.V's (Autonomous Road Vehicles) Like a trains, planes, streetcars, helicopters, taxis, buses, and even elevators these will get you "somewhere" as a passenger, without your assistance. (outside of giving/knowing your directions) I'm sure they will have their place in the community, but for those that want to "experience the pleasure of driving" making changes at the spur of the moment to your route and being out on the open road, music playing, windows open and listening to the hum/rumble/roar of an ICE engine. The "electric" whine is missing some of that. Let's start focusing on "eFuel" (the Porsche/Siemens synthetic fuel venture), post more articles on how its progressing, create some "noise" so people know there is an option for "green" energy. The ICE may be on tired wheels, BUT its second wind is just around the corner. ... View more

Every time American manufacturers tried to make small economy cars in the early days, they either got slammed by the press or slammed by the safety police. By the time the bulk of the American buying market got around to the thought process that driving something made out of 6000 pounds of steel might not be such a good idea, Japan and Europe had already pretty much filled that market ... View more

Glass headlight covers, any shape, any size. Hate the discolored, faded, weather beaten plastic modules.   ... View more

I love the standalone VU meters from McIntosh. Found this image on eBay...sums them up perfectly.    ... View more

48-50. Bathtubs. ... View more

" I hope the current fascination for trucks fades soon so we can buy some American cars." That particular psychology experiment isn't ever going away, because human beings are indeed fairly predictable, and as a result, the truck craze zeroes right in on two fascinating sides of the human psyche: 1. Homo Sapien...and practically every other species of man before us...survived because the superior example 'won' its battle in the competition for resources. This applies today concerning the pursuit of status, in that the game of singular-human competition for resources has now gone global, and nothing quite says "status" these days for a large number of Americans quite like a monster monthly payment and an equally-monstrous lifted land barge in the driveway. 2. We're also predictable in our obsession with "Just In Case", meaning, we buy stupid things because we're obsessed with the idea of being prepared for some specious need we might run across in the near future: In this case, a five-foot-three single individual driving around a quad-cab, long-bed, King Ranch F350 (or insert any other similar land barge here) as a daily because he or she thinks they might need to have it for some unforeseen calamity that only an $80,000+ diesel truck can save them from. Need a monster truck or something on a one-time basis to haul something large?  That's why "U-Haul" exists. But until we realize that we don't actually need one of these beasts as a daily... ... View more

Hi JimmyZeeNeo,   Thank you for reaching out to the Ask Hagerty expert service. We would be happy to assist you with sharing some sources that should help with the completion of this 1956 Mercedes-Benz 190.    Bud's Benz - PH: 770-942-8444 - website: https://www.budsbenz.com/   K&K Manufacturing - PH: 800-876-4286 - website: https://www.kkmfg.com/190catalog.php   Authentic Classics - PH: 800-607-1982 - website: https://www.authenticclassics.com/Default.asp   McStarparts - website: https://www.mcstarparts.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3JyEju63-QIVmI3ICh3BhgxEEAMYAyAAEgLMMvD_BwE   Niemoller - website: https://www.niemoeller.de/en/190SL/190SL/B040   If we can be of any further assistance, please feel free to reach back out to our team at askhagerty@hagerty.com. Thank you for driving with Hagerty!   Best, Kacy S.  ... View more

I think I get where you're coming from, but you might find some argument on how "easy" it is to produce an EV there, @MATTMERICA.  Others who've posted info on this site have pointed out a lot of the behind-the-scenes issues and problems with actually getting to the point of dropping batteries and motors into a vehicle - as well as many more difficulties in maintaining them and then getting rid of them after their useful lives are over.  I think there is significant hype to get the public to believe that pitching ICE vehicles and converting us all to EVs is going to solve everything automotively bad.  I'm sure you're not saying that, specifically, but references to making EVs "easy" does tend to perpetuate the myth.  My personal opinion is that we shouldn't look at EVs as an "easy" answer to anything! ... View more

Your best bet is to do an H4 headlight conversion, which means you get to upgrade to the European headlight beam without going overboard with crazy LED light that make your car look like a space creature...and are very likely to blind oncoming traffic because this area is HIGHLY unregulated.  Hella will make H4 headlights for your swap, but you can also get the same size light from Autopal, an Indian company with less quality and FAR less cost. You will need the light assemblies, the bulbs (the ones that come with the kit are junky) and a wiring conversion harness to make the H4s work with your chassis wiring. You don't need the conversion harnesses, but they do make life easer if you aren't good with automotive wiring.    I use Autopals (since I remember the name from my visits to India) with higher quality H4 bulbs (Sylvania Nightbreaker Laser H4) and so far I am very happy with them. If I had more money I'd do Hella for their superior quality, but Autopal is good enough for me.  You can find all these parts on eBay and Amazon. (do a lot of shopping for the best prices)  ... View more

The nose on the 1948 Patriarca Sport Barchetta is kind of cool. I love the color on the 1973 BMW 2002 Targa by Baur but the targa conversion is ugly. ... View more

What a perfect car to electrify, a 125 miles of range would be perfect & keep it light 🙂 ... View more

Where is the BLOCK user button ?   ... View more

I have a couple. First, one of my auto tech class students put a 4 cyl Cummins in a 2005 Chrysler 300. Incredibly clean installation, complete with Cummins decals on the fenders. Next, my best friend bought an Isetta, powered by a Honda 750 V4 motorcycle engine. Talk about dangerous! Stock 10" (maybe 12) tires, stock 7" front drum brakes made it exciting to drive! More exciting to stop! Me, I've had two V8 Corvairs, first with a mid-engine SBC350. Had that car 17 years, still kicking myself for selling it. The other had an Olds Toronado 455 in the back. It was OK, more torque than power. Also a Corvair engine in my 67 VW bus, and a Turbo, fuel injected Corvair in my Type 34 Karmann-Ghia. The Ghia was FAST! ... View more

Is that the rubber diaphragm thingie driven by the combustion blower motor and mounted opposite the points? I have a mostly complete VW bug gas heater, BUT. it's 6 volt, and it has been sitting in a shed in Phoenix since 1984. So I'm not sure that anything works anymore. It was last used in 1981. ... View more

Put the masses on high alert! ... View more

At the expense of sounding obvious, given this spam posting yesterday and another one today... ... View more

It's always been the Cougar II, that car should have made production. I have promised myself if I ever won a BIG lottery I'd hunt one down and make it usable. ... View more

" At some point there is too much horsepower for a two-wheel drive vehicle, especially for front engine and rear drive chassis designs. For me I hit that with the  C7 Corvette ZR1 , even though I must admit all you need to do is use less throttle in lower gears and enjoy 100% power at higher speeds. Which is a different type of fun, right?" The most powerful stock Corvette I have been in was a C6 ZO6 car, you know, the 427-powered axe murderer (I've been in two separate C6 ZO6 cars). What this did for me was reinforce something I heard from Al Unser, Jr. (or at least I think it is him): He states that he only drives a Suburban on the street, he doesn't drive sports cars, or anything sporty or fast for that matter on public highways, he leaves that for the track. I'm not quite that nuts concerning street cars, but I am also a bit nuts about safety equipment, in that unless I am driving a car that's based from a full or mostly tube-frame chassis with a decent cage, I really don't need anything more than 300-350 hp on the street...and nobody does, to be honest.   It's not that I'm scared of faster cars, it's just that at one point, I was doing tow truck driving along with my father, and we ended up with a Sheriff's department account to go pick up cars and trucks for them. Naturally that also meant picking up practically every fatality accident car or truck within in the area, an area with a prominent street drag racing scene, and an impressive set of curvy roads for people to get silly with their inner Mario. Apparently my idiotic dad didn't realize that he shouldn't be taking a 12-year-old/free labor out with him on fatality accident tow jobs (I once tripped over someone's cranium...unattached, that is, and I was heartily congratulated by law enforcement because they couldn't find the guy's head, I was naturally given a cold soda by one of the deputies as a sarcastic reward for my Encyclopedia Brown detective skills), so I got to see lots of things.  I encountered a race car builder who doubled as a deputy at that point, and he also took time to point out interesting things when the opportunity arose (I think I was the only one to show interest, lol): I once walked back and forth over an eighth-mile section of highway picking up pieces of a scattered C3 Corvette, the owner survived the crash after inexplicably falling asleep while doing 100+ on a nearby interstate, and in the middle of that, the one deputy then took the time to point out where the Corvette's body structure collapsed, where he would have beefed up the car to try to survive that kind of hit, why the car was terrible from a survivability standpoint, etc, etc.   My general street philosophy has developed into something akin to James May's long-running joke about the Dacia Sandero, in that out on public highways, you really don't need...or can use...more than 300-350hp, and that bad things await you if you want to try to push a car beyond that. I've known guys to strip engines out of Camaros and Corvettes because the engine was amazing, but the stock chassis were unsafe as hell concerning any hit they might take in one, so the engines went in much-safer tube-frame cars. Hell, the ARCA series relies on a basic sealed crate engine (around 400hp-ish) and they can still injure a buy pretty bad.  Am I paranoid? Probably. I just look at cars differently, as I'm sort of a wannabe Adrian Monk concerning what all can happen during an accident with cars traveling at a high rate of speed, and as a result of that, my backyard-educated 'magic number' for survivability is right around...the 300-350hp mark (depending on the car). WRC (World Rally Cup) limits their cars to a touch above 300hp, and look at how much speed...and carnage...you can generate with one of those 'slow' beasts. To that end, I'm just not that interested in street cars that make more than 300-350hp, for those obvious and long-winded reasons, I just don't think that it's a great idea to want to own or drive anything any more powerful in a street-based chassis, whether on the street or a track, anything past that sorta needs a dedicated frame or chassis that's designed to take hits at higher speeds. A 3-point belt in the latest ZR1 Corvette? Uh, no. "After experiencing the TX2K racing scene here in Houston (a space I don't play in, but I've seen a fair bit) I learned to not care about the power levels if the chassis in question has all-wheel-drive and four drag radials (or slicks). Nothing made me a bigger fan of modern Lamborghinis than what was created by the likes of Underground Racing.  UGR and their competitors are simply amazing...even if you can't truly enjoy their performance without owning an airport." That is the seductive part: all-wheel-drive. I spent nearly an entire day installing and reinstalling tunes (I was helping out a local import shop) and then driving a modified 2006 Subaru WRX STI (at around the 410hp level) to see how it behaved, which obviously involved a lot of full-throttle runs on a flat stretch of highway not too far from the shop. Even at 100hp more than stock, the car was surprisingly manageable...and having driven a similar STI on ice later that same year, dear God, what a fun time. At no point was I scared, I had a blast.  At least until I was reminded of how flimsy those cars are, when another customer had a near-fatality crash in yet another STI right after that shop day, the car was wadded up into a smallish ball, and he was estimated to be doing only between 70-80mph. I was, ahem, doing just a bit faster than that in a similar car, and clearly not at full steam. Remember my mentioning that thing I mentioned in a mentioning manner above concerning crash tests only determining if the car was safe with hits around 40mph?   AWD gleefully hides many sins, especially with 1000+ hp Lamborghinis. I am incredibly impressed with the engineering that goes into building those cars, but it's just hard to get excited about getting involved, especially if I'm having an Adrian Monk meltdown about crashing in one, lol. I think that the overall problem here is that I've seen how the sausage was made, and I can't really go back to ignoring that sausage doesn't exist. To that end, I think back to Mark Twain, in how he used to simply adore the Mississippi river, and more specifically, steamboats.  That love was crushed like a child discovering there wasn't a Santa Claus once Twain became a steamboat captain, and he never looked at steamboats or even the river the same way ever again. I still love the automobile, but past a certain point, I'm just turned off by street-based cars making over 300-350hp, as the looming specter of what can go wrong is always there.  ... View more

Not all of us can meet the requirements nor afford such a tool as that.  I, for instance, can only dream of that...  😋 ... View more

Nooo noo noo noo noo. That's silly.  That's also an additional 600 or so pounds...directly over the nose. Not entirely certain that would be a good idea from a physics standpoint. ... View more

My Aunt has a 67 Catalina convertible in white and has owned it since it was new. It was a blast to ride around the Jersey Shore in. It has resided in a S. Florida garage since the 80's under a mountain of boxes and such. Probably has not seen daylight in 30 years. I've been promised the car but she will not part with it so I can begin to restore it. ... View more

I consider my '15 GMC Sierra 1500 5.3 4WD Crew Cab to be an SUV with a usable bed. Don't have to use as a daily driver so mileage is not an issue, though pretty good at highway speeds. And 4WD is great for the occasional blizzard. Just a good all around gas-burning GLAM **bleep** truck! ... View more

I liked mine after I fixed all the broken stuff, but thanks to a special mission for LBJ, I could not get in and out easily, so it went away. The top lock down switch was a real problem. After reading about leaks, never took it through a car wash. ... View more

The smoothy Lincoln needs a "carson top".   Would still have the bathroom sink look when the top is off though, as your eye (well mine) does want to see an actual roof with those rear lines especially. ... View more

So many barn find homes in the city I grew up in!   You made me laugh SJ. ... View more

Well, I typed up a brilliant suggestion as to what's wrong, but I didn't copy/save at the right point, and it's all gone. Apologies, but no time to redo it. ... View more

Car is great, awesome build, hopefully won't crash, etc.... nice when money is no object. ... View more

Any Lincoln Mark ... View more

Valid point dan5   I'm laughing thinking of the genius-savant that could just manually read QR codes with no device.   Most mechanics have a laptop in the shop and a smartphone handy at all times now, unless choosing not to work that way (which is probably only a choice for those working on older stuff exclusively). ... View more

“ Which comes first the voting or the legislators” I dunno, but most should study history and fear lamp posts.   ... View more

John DeLorean learned how to put stuff in production before the bugs were worked out from GM! If any company knows how to do that, it is GM, especially back in those years. ... View more

Is a "discerning" snob better? ... View more

The current A Class shares a platform and engines with Infiniti/Nissan/Renault. So all you're getting is a fancy badge and vape shop interior. BMW is interesting because they've had to share FWD platforms with MINI, which means MINIs have gotten too big for their class. I would have thought the smarter move would have been to drop their own FWD platform and keep all BMWs, even small ones RWD. MINI could platform share with someone else. ... View more

Didn't even need to change the wheel in my Early Bronco...bought a 'generic' cover kit (the 'typical' $10 perforated one as a base/pad) AND a 'generic' leather cover kit ($20?) and carefully laced it on per the included instructions. A few hours worth of work and I now have a nice "leather covered wheel" (I'd post a photo if I could) in my classic ride. Made a world of difference in that 'touch point'. Now if I could just figure a nice solution for that factory 3-on-the-tree shift knob...(NO I'm NOT putting a floor shifter in it!) And, I would add that swapping in a good set of gas charged shocks (versus "standard" O.E.M. bits) can make a world of difference in drive-ability too! USUALLY, a simple job on most classic "Detroit" rides (a quality "penetrating oil" IS your friend!!!). ... View more

Concerning the turbo idea in a 928, I know that some turbo builds have been done, but I don't think Porsche was ever going to turbocharge the 928 engine, because if any Porsche engines weren't designed to be turbocharged...it was pretty much the entire 928 engine line that was definitely not designed to be turboed, as simply the exhaust side of the valvetrain and the head itself...wasn't designed for this sort of thing.    Given how poorly the 928 sold throughout its lifespan, at best, the N/A 5.4 was all we were ever going to get. ... View more

my current project RM wagon is prob in level 3 . i rebuilt the entire front end that cost prob at least 25% of the value of the car's purchase price, but it already had new tires, brakes, radiator etc. I want it to be as safe and reliable as possible considering i use it to drive long distances at times. Only thing it really needs now is a minor tune up. The rest is cosmetic- things you can live with and aren't safety issues, like peeling window tint, replacing fake wood trim, rubber moldings. Problems run into is scheduling multiple repairs that need to be done at same time. Cargo roof area needs to be disassembled at same time as the headliner replacement so water intrusion issue is addressed as well as eliminating future rust issues these are prone to happen in this area. And of course now we are talking a repaint at LEAST of the roof area. My old college class Decision Theory would come in handy here to determine what order things should be done. ... View more

Recent transmission repair and rebuild. ... View more

I'm sorry, and you're welcome. ... View more

"Hang on, can't hear you, any desire that I might have for another large project is going through a tunnel!" ... View more

We struck an object in the road a while back , driving a 2001 turbo diesel beetle at night a couple miles from home , doing about 45 , on a four lane , got into the left turn lane to turn onto another four lane at the light. BOOM ! It seems the city had added a divider to make the first part of the left turn lane useable only for a small side street just before the main intersection. Now I know what the inside of a Volkswagen tdi looks like since part of it was stuck in the one day old concrete curb . ... View more

These were created in response to the recent-ish Acura Integra Crossover reveal.                     ... View more

Jack pulls into the parking lot at work. Frank sees him and asks “Hey Jack, how do you like your newEV Cadillac?” Jack just looks at him and walks into the office. Bill pulls up and parks. As he and Frank walk into the office, Frank says, “Hey, Bill, you notice how much of a **bleep** Jack has become since he got that new car?” ... View more

I heard once that the US military does not sell combat vehicles to the general public... most of the military Hummers you see on the road are Israeli. Not sure if that is true though ... View more

Our gasoline engines these days are likely more than sufficient to meet reasonable carbon goals if we weren't loading cars with 500 pounds of copper, 500 pounds of 'safety systems' so you can keep facebooking without touching the steering wheel or brakes and huge flat screen displays to help us facebook. My sister was shocked to find out that her 3 Series beemer weighs more than my 65 Impala. We are doing the same absurd things with the EVs by making them massive, 1000 horsepower $100k machines which will no doubt eat up any efficiency gains in no time flat. We like solutions that look and sound good, not ones that actually involve any real lifestyle changes  ... View more

Globally most mfgs are all focused on CUV and SUV models as that is what is selling. Sedan and coupe sales are really tanking globally. Don't blame the MFGs it is the customers who are driving the market. The public in general see cars as an appliance and they expect utility. ... View more