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Fucknag posted:Am I bad for brake-checking people who tailgate me on single-lane, double-yellow-line roads? As some other people have pointed out, yes, but could you maybe elaborate on why you are so willing to attempt to get rear ended? Like Disgruntled Bovine said its probably eventually going to happen. Do you honestly think you're going to get out of your car all  like, heh, guess you'll think twice about tailgating next time, now lets have a calm discussion while exchanging info and waiting for the police to arrive? I've had this happen to me a few times, not even purposly tailgaiting I just used to have a bad habit of following too close that some people wouldn't care for, and I have always wondered what the end game is. I know the desired effect is to have the person following too close back off a little bit but I have always wondered if brake checking has ever made a situation better for you? Doesn't it just piss off the person behind you even more? Sorry for so many questions but I've never had a chance to ask one of you people why you do it.
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Jul 17, 2013 17:46
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Maybe its because I'm from Massachusetts, or just a bigger dick than I thought, but I've gotten full on brake slamming brake checks more than once. I've had it happen and realize that oops, I was following a little close, but god drat did you have to almost cause an accident for it? A simple dragging of the brakes, as you guys described, would have sufficed. I also got full on brake checked in barely rolling 20mph bumper to bumper traffic on the highway where I eventually got into a position to pass the car that did it and they yelled over at me to back off because there was a baby in back seat! What the gently caress then why were you trying to get me to rear end you? I realize that when I was younger I drove more aggressively than the average driver, I attribute that to being young combined with commuting 60 miles each way to work and back everyday so I just got really comfortable driving up somebodies rear end until I could get around them which is a fairly common practice during commuting hours where I live, we're called Massholes for a reason I guess. I'm never the guy honking and flashing his lights while giving the finger but sometimes I would provoke a pretty hard brake check. I just always wondered the reasoning behind trying to get me to rear end you.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:55
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FreelanceSocialist posted:In NH, my coworker has to swap out his tires ('96 Jeep Cherokee on 32's I believe) every year to pass due to the bumper height restriction (20" for passenger vehicles, 30" for everything else). The state has no limit on lift or frame height, but for safety reasons the bumpers can be no more than 20" off the road surface. His front prerunner bumper is like 24" or something. I used to know some guys who had big lifted trucks here in MA who used to keep a set of stock wheels and tires around for inspection time because there is a law here (or at least there was at the time, I'm not 100% current on this) about how far tires could stick out of the fenders.
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Jul 30, 2013 17:20
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No way. Somebody obviously dropped it off a balcony. Perfect placement.
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Aug 30, 2013 19:56
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SaNChEzZ posted:Was an old guy that did it, I was mad but meh, the bike is replaceable and the car had all cosmetic damage. With a buyback of $101 on the car I wasn't too displeased. Needless to say, that was last April and I've yet to find a good pair of fenders. Have you rearranged your parking situation in an attempt to protect the car or the bike if it were to happen again? What I mean is, are you now parking them in a way where if 1 gets hit the other won't get hit, or do you really only have the 1 space and that's it? I know that whenever something catastrophic happens to my car in the back of mind I'm thinking, its ok, at least I still have the bike to get around on but sounds like you got a 2 for 1 in that accident.
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Sep 25, 2013 17:59
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Kenny Rogers posted:Some days I miss my South Florida commute. 23 miles from WPB to Boca Raton. There were a few memorable days that the flow of traffic in the fast lane of I-95 southbound was north of 90 MPH. Fastest I ever did that commute was on one of those days. 22 minutes flat. Keeping on topic with the Terrible Car Stuff - I did it in a 1978 Dodge Diplomat that I'd bought in Oregon for $500. Driving to Florida, the muffler straight up fell off on the interstate in Idaho, and the whole rear end poo poo the bed in Nebraska City, Nebraska.
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Oct 9, 2013 17:54
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SierraEchoBravo posted:Really demonstrates the shrinking minority that these people cling to. 30 trucks, really? I would have figured more. I'm guessing the rest of the truckers in the DC area were, you know, trucking. I'm sure there were some things that actually needed to be delivered today.
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Oct 11, 2013 20:17
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So it will never look dirty?
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Jan 17, 2014 20:00
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I've got a 2006 Focus and it has a weight sensor in the passenger seat but there is a weight limit to actually making the seatbelt chime go off. If the amount of weight is too low, like an 18 pack of beer for instance, the chimes won't go off but my Passenger Air Bag Off light will light up. I guess it is probably to protect against people who put rear facing child seats in the pass seat despite all the warnings telling you not to.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:11
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xzzy posted:You might also have reasonable neighbors who don't throw a hissy fit over the slightest inconvenience. I never had a problem all my years of renting but I have been a homeowner for all of 5 months and have been blamed for dumping garbage in the driveway of the house behind me and for blowing leaves into the yard of the house next to me. Both were false accusations but there must be some unwritten rule to Get the New Guy in close knit neighborhoods. Now I have only had about a month of decent riding weather since living here so my motorcycle has been mostly dormant aside from the odd 45 degree day here and there so I'm looking forward of a summer of dirty looks and angry letters when I start warming my bike up every morning at 6:15 a.m.
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Feb 4, 2014 22:49
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I've done that while waiting for a new mirror to be shipped to me. I'm sure not all of the people who rig up ghetto side mirrors are just waiting for a new part to come in but there is hope that it is a temporary solution for some people.
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Feb 21, 2014 20:46
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I bought my last car simply because it was the first dealership that didn't try to sell me something I couldn't afford when I told the sales guy what I was looking for. I'm looking for a 4cyl sedan with a manual transmission for under $10,000. Oh, well here is this car for $12,500. That is out of my price range. No it isn't, take for a ride, lets do some paper work. I think I'll try somewhere else. At one place I actually did humor the dealer and went through the song and dance because it was a nice Mazda 3 with low miles despite being out of my price range. The payments were like just over the edge of being safe and I was considering it and the sales manager came over to "seal the deal" by saying, you bought a $10,000 motorcycle (which wasn't true I paid $6300 for it so I don't know where he got that number) what's the big deal! You can't even ride that in winter! Pro tip, if you're trying to convince somebody to buy something they aren't sure they can afford you don't insult the prior purchases on their credit report and then make light of the purchase they are thinking of making.
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Feb 26, 2014 17:42
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I have a confession. I am Terrible Car Stuff. The photos below are of my now former vehicle. I owned this car for 4 years. It has lived about 2 years in its current condition. I've been waiting and waiting for somebody else in AI to see me on the road and post pictures of my car in this thread. I thought for sure it would happen after seeing a car owned by somebody I actually know personally posted in this thread. For reference it was a few years ago and it was a white VW GTI with the vanity plate ZUG ZUG.Shampoo posted:
And yes, he is exactly the type of guy you think he is. Well years have gone by and I've driven all over Massachusetts and beyond and nobody has spotted me or at least gotten pictures for this thread and now that I have traded this car in I am coming clean. 2006 Ford Focus ST. 218,000 miles. Fake hood scoop off of a late 90's Subaru. Yellow stripe from the internet. Black wheels by rattle can. Driver's mirror taped on. Its all there, and its all terrible. I didn't do all this because I'm living some myth that I drive some sort of fast sports car and need everyone to know it. I don't throw on some sunglasses and cruise downtown areas honking at women with my badass car. I just got bored with my car and decided to put some poo poo on it for my own amusement. Little kids love it. Real men and women laugh at it and that is all that I wanted out of it.   Ok AI, come mock me, I'll be the guy in the corner with the Dunce Cap on.
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Apr 15, 2014 15:04
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kastein posted:I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen that driving around yet. Honestly, you should either pull it all off, or go full retard and make sure it's obvious that it's not serious Well the car is gone now so no worries on looking bad now. I was living on Cape now in Plymouth so I was 2 hours now hour and a half from Worcester. I have replaced that mirror twice and got them for $45 ordered from a junkyard. Third time the mirror got hit (loving Boston street parking) it wasnt damaged as badly so I just taped it back on. I am the bane of AI's existence
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Apr 15, 2014 15:43
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PainterofCrap posted:Plymouth? You should drown your sorrows in a boat of fried clams at The Lobster Hut. I wish I was... I actually live about 5 minutes from there. Never been but we just moved here in September. Though being from The Cape and having friends that fish/clam/lobster etc I always feel dirty paying for seafood.
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Apr 18, 2014 01:56
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E: ^^^or that makes more sense than all that poo poo I just wroteNitrox posted:BLK B UT ? I think he might be going for Black Beaut. With the space between the B and the UT makes me think you're supposed to read it phonetically as BLACK BEE UTE
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May 4, 2014 16:11
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I worked for a company that was trying to start a manufacturing line and we had a whole bunch of trouble with our plant. The plant was in Poland and our company would send them the list of all the nuts/bolts/screws/etc that were to be used, and where to get them. But they took it upon themselves to get their hardware elsewhere because it was cheaper/easier to get but that resulted in the wrong lengths being bought and used anyway or washers not being used where they were needed or stacks of washers being used to make up for screws that were too long for their intended hole and wouldn't tighten up. It was crazy. We spent a week going through their line taking stuff off of it and tagging it unusable only to find they went right back to the stuff after we left because they couldn't waste all the hardware they bought even though it was wrong. So we had to go back over for another 2 weeks and physically throw the stuff into a dumpster and hold their hand through 2 weeks of production to try and get the ball rolling. We had to make a regular habit of sending people over to the plant to keep things in line. They used a temp agency to fill the line with workers and the turnover was incredible from week to week. There were new workers starting everyday and after the weekend there would be a dozen or so new workers to replace people that had left. A lot of whom had never touched a tool before in their lives. You can write all the instructions in the world but inexperience really hurt the effort that was trying to be put forward. They were putting out around 40 units in an 8 hour period and more than half of them were deemed unshippable after in house QC.
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May 11, 2014 17:26
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kimcicle posted:
I saw that happen in Boston once, to an extent. The guy wasn't in a handicapped space but pulled into a no parking area between two apartment complexes to drop off Chinese menus in all the mailboxes. A tow truck pulled in, started to back up to it and the guy sprinted back to his car and got inside. The tow guy picked up the front end, argued with the menu guy for 10 minutes or so then just dropped it and left. I figured the truck driver decided messing around with this guy for any longer was going to cost him another easier target to tow away, cut his losses on the menu guy and moved on to the next one. I can't imagine waiting it out for 7 hours, crazy.
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Dec 24, 2014 20:26
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Great Beer posted:Front airbags didn't/don't always deploy from side impacts, right? Maybe it got hit from the side initially and the damage was severe enough to prevent the front bag from deploying during the rest of the crash. A late '90s Chrysler thing maybe? My family had a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee in '97 and we were on our way to a camping trip towing, I think, a 24' camper and got in an accident with it and the airbags didn't go off. Chrysler said that the impact wasn't enough to set them off. But it was a front impact and the thing basically got sandwiched between a tree, and the camper in tow and the damage was enough to total the vehicle. It was probably better off that they didn't go off since those early years of airbags were pretty nasty and as nasty as the crash was the five of us in the car were completely unharmed. For Terrible Car Stuff, the accident referred to above: We were in the right hand lane of a two lane highway with a dirt shoulder. The highway was crowded because it was a Friday afternoon in the summer and people were traveling for the weekend. We were passed by a standard Ford work van who was traveling down the dirt shoulder. He changed "lanes" back onto the tarmac a foot too soon, clipped the front end of our Jeep and we began to fishtale. Went back and forth across the highway probably 3 times, the third time hitting a guardrail, but the guardrail was similar to the one pictured below, starting from the ground, which was good since it didn't go spearing through the middle of our car but bad because instead of stopping us we did like a 50/50 grind up the guardrail then came off of it into a tree. Bonus terrible car stuff was the guy was driving his brother's van with no license and his pregnant girlfriend was in the passenger seat. He tried to say we ran him off the road but apparently he had passed a number of other cars in the dirt as well and they all stopped to back us up which was cool. But also they thought we were all dead so they stopped to help anybody who actually survived, luckily nobody was hurt. 
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Jan 6, 2015 17:40
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Saw this dude while we were on the way to a racetrack in New Hampshire over the weekend. In case its tough to see, that is a shopping cart ziptied to the roof racks. #Downforce.
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Oct 12, 2015 02:35
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fyodor posted:People who want a fun, practical car and don't care about badges. This also makes some people on the internet invent fantasies so they can rage against them. They should drive a Focus ST, it would lower their blood pressure lol. I had a 2006 ST and it was pretty unremarkable. I just needed a cheap car good on gas and I found it for a good price. I ended up trading it with over 220k miles on it. Pretty good little car but nothing special.
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Oct 12, 2015 19:47
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fyodor posted:Your car had 150hp and 154 ft-lbs of torque. The 2015 ST has 252hp and 270 ft-lbs of torque.
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Oct 13, 2015 00:30
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Powershift posted:
https://youtu.be/bUZi-Ftcs9Y?t=22s
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Jan 8, 2016 01:02
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All this flying manhole cover talk and today in Boston a woman was killed by such a thing. They're saying another vehicle dislodged the cover sending it airborne when It crashed through the windshield of the woman's Honda. Pretty terrible car stuff there. Full story for those interested https://www.bostonglobe.com/2016/02...2ZRN/story.html They're saying that it was most likely a heavy vehicle, possibly a truck, that dislodged the cover and sent it airborne but they are looking over surveillance footage to try and figure out exactly what happened.
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Feb 13, 2016 05:01
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The Locator posted:Wow... that's, pretty terrible. Not a drat thing you could do about that either if you are the poor person that it flys up in front of. I'm surprised at that too, that there are unsecure manhole covers on such a busy interstate. Supposedly there is an inspection process for all the drains and manhole covers set by the state that happens every 2 years and this cover was inspected in June of 2014 so it was just about due for its bi-annual checkup. I don't know what there is to inspect though if it isn't even held down by bolts or welds. Maybe just the overall fit?
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Feb 13, 2016 16:45
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cephalopods posted:I have an '06 and it's the best domestic vehicle I've ever experienced I had an '06 for a while and that thing was pretty pissah. Put 220,000 miles on it before giving it up a couple years ago.
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Feb 14, 2016 01:12
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kastein posted:You know what's even more fun? Getting an inspection ticket (car was uninspectable because the brand new windshield had cracked days before I was due for inspection), then getting the windshield replaced on a Saturday afternoon and getting a giant rock chip right in my field of view (i.e. again uninspectable) on Monday morning on my way to work. So long brand new windshield #2 of 2014, we hardly knew ye. Less than 48 hours old and already trashed by MassDOT's habit of not cleaning up after road construction. That is my biggest fear when getting a new windshield. I've got a cracked one right now but I'm waiting until May when my inspection is up in hopes that all the debris left over from this winter is gone and that they are finally done with all the road construction around Plymouth because they have every street around me torn up right now.
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Mar 4, 2016 00:55
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8ender posted:I feel like I'd wouldn't pull over for a rapey looking Aerostar even if it did have red and blues on. Yeah that's when you call the cops on the phone to find out if you are actually getting pulled over. I guess if it is a cop for real then you get an illegal phone use ticket on top of your speeding ticket. Around me I've seen a stock silver Chevy Malibu running around the highway pulling people over. They don't use too many unmarked cars around where I am but that one fits right in with normal traffic.
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Apr 24, 2016 14:28
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Ozz81 posted:Wish it was this way in the US, but then again we have unmarked cars with dark tint that resemble the same dark-tint street cars that get pulled over routinely because cops have a hard-on for hassling people. I had a cop pull me over for a dead tail light on my way home about a month ago while he ignored other people around me who were tailgating, obstructing traffic lanes like dumb assholes, and a guy that blatantly ran a red light in the lane next to me. So you drew the short straw. Should the cop ignore you with the dead tail light and pull over the car tailgating so that guy can complain about people with broken tail lights driving around while he gets hosed with for following too close? I get that cops profile lovely cars, or cars with tinted windows, or MODZ but if you actually have something wrong with your car you can't really complain that much. I have been pulled over many times where I grew up for a "lane violation" because I was a young kid driving a crappy car at night which to a cop basically means I'm up to something. Many times I've gotten satisfaction from the disgruntled cops face because I had nothing wrong with my car and wasn't actually doing anything wrong. If you've got a light out or are speeding or whatever and you know you drive a car that is going to get profiled I don't see how you can complain like that.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:20
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dissss posted:I see an awful lot of expensive newer cars with miss aimed headlights and bald tyres too - lack of attention to maintenance isn't necessarily anything to do with lack of money. Lack of maintenance can be because of money on a nice car too. Think of how many people buy a car above their means and live paycheck to paycheck just to afford the payments forgetting that, oh yeah oil changes, tires, brakes, bulbs, etc. all cost money too. But yeah there are those people too. The ones that are just that car dumb that they don't realize they need new tires until one of them wears all the way through or their brakes are metal to metal and they bring it to a dealer because it sounds funny.
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Jun 11, 2016 01:58
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Mercury Ballistic posted:New car took a good scratch from somewhere the other day. I came out of the grocery store to one of those a couple months ago. The loving shopping cart was left up against my car. I know poo poo happens but you rail a cart against someone's car leaving at least a foot long scratch across the fender and don't even have the decency to take it away? It's like somebody just pushed it away and let it go and gently caress whatever it hit to stop it. I wasn't even parked next to one of those parking lot cart return things.
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Sep 15, 2016 23:42
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iospace posted:Lifted Truck? Check.
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Sep 16, 2016 02:03
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dee eight posted:It's relatively common around here. Guy needs a flatbed-ish rig for (reasons), orders a pickup without the box, bulids flatbed-ish thing himself. I see it a lot around me as well. Usually around me its fishermen who have to haul lobster pots and poo poo like that and don't need the sides of the bed because they can fit more pots on the truck if it's a flatbed. The tail light set up is usually pretty iffy on all of 'em that I see too.
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Sep 22, 2016 22:42
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beep-beep car is go posted:Old MA plates were awesome like that too. White plate, reflective green letters. They started checking green plates at inspections. My friend's mom put up a big stink about keeping her green plate when she bought a new car at some point and managed to keep it for a couple more cars after that. However, the plate lost its reflective quality from so many years exposed to the elements and it failed inspection and she had to get the new red on white plates. So I guess if you know somebody holding on to their green plates like their life depends on it tell them to garage their car and help keep them as nice as they can. The red on white are not bad at all compared to some of the poo poo in this thread though. Some of these plates look like loving tie dye t-shirts.
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Nov 15, 2016 00:07
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Fire Storm posted:I am pretty sure that's what was happening to my Focus when I took the pic below. Rear driver's side tire, I was experiencing some occasional strong vibrations at freeway speed. I thought it was the brakes before I pulled off the tire but they were fine. Funny I had the same thing happen to a Focus I had except mine was passenger side rear tire. I thought I had a wheel out of balance or something and then I saw the tire. Mine was a 2006 Focus ST.
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Dec 13, 2016 00:48
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Imagined posted:I worked at 7-Eleven for a couple of years. Our prices were entirely based on the prices of the three nearest competing stores. A manager or someone else in the company would drive by a competitor, and whatever their price was, we'd go two cents lower. They would often respond in kind, and then a mini price war would result. The price could change ten times a day. It had little to do with the cost of gas. The gas is basically a loss leader to get people to buy coffee and soda. AFAIK basically nobody makes money by selling gas. A guy we race with comes from a family that owns a few gas stations locally and he was telling us the same thing. For the most part gas is priced as low as it possibly can be just to get people in the store for Red Bulls and poo poo.
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Jan 5, 2017 00:16
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It is so nice going to a place that doesn't spend all their time trying to squeeze more money out of you and just give you what you want. I hadn't ever financed a car until I was probably 25 or so and when I was looking I didn't have anything specific in mind and I hadn't dealt with dealers so I was just kind of putting my toe in the water to see what would happen. I had a long commute at the time so I just needed a little commuter car that was good on gas. I'd walk in and say I was looking for something 4cyl, with a 5 speed manual, and under $10,000. I bought from the first dealer who didn't immediately show me a $12,000 car and try to convince me I could afford it.
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Jun 2, 2017 22:47
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I haven't had too many dealings with big tire companies but I straight walked out on a Town Fair Tire last year. I just needed a quote on 2 tires. I was strapped for cash and had 18" rims and needed 2 tires pretty badly. It was going to be expensive no matter what but I was just getting some quotes so I could pit some of these guys against each other and try to get a good deal. 20 minutes into trying to get a quote I just walked out. First we had to enter all my info in the computer. Then we had to go outside and check the tread on all four tires with a depth gauge. Then I need to get the EXACT mileage because if I'm going to buy today the mileage needs to be exact even though I repeatedly said I just wanted a quote. Then we went back inside where I pleaded just to give me a quote on the two cheapest pieces of rubber I could slap on the car. He tells me, you don't want the cheapest, that's dumb. You want comfort and performance, let me show you these over here. No, lets not because I have no money. He tells me, well let me get my manager over here, maybe we can do something on the price. At that point I was done. Now I have to haggle this poo poo as if I was buying the whole car. Later. I ended up just buying Goodyear takeoffs with 85% tread online and had the garage down the street put them on. Whole thing with mounting and balancing cost right around $180 bucks.
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Jun 6, 2017 00:36
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InitialDave posted:Yeah, you could just spend the same money on buying any of the stuff you like and you'd probably come out ahead on value. Pretty much. I was looking at one of those crate deals around Christmas time last year and each one I found there were like 1 or 2 things that would be cool to get as a gift and the rest of it would just be kind of throw away junk. You'd be better off buying the good poo poo out of each crate separately on Amazon or something and making your own crate for the same money.
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Jun 25, 2017 13:51
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Cacafuego posted:Didn't a piece of a bridge built in the big dig fall and kill someone due to lovely concrete poured by some company that was giving kickbacks to some MA or Boston politician? Yes both of those things happened. Big Dig: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse and the manhole cover: http://www.wcvb.com/article/teacher-killed-by-airborne-manhole-cover-on-i-93-identified/8231603 xzzy posted:I think in Illinois you can only claim damages if you can demonstrate the city knew about the issue and neglected to fix it in a "timely manner."
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Jul 11, 2017 23:18
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